This exquisitely modelled alabaster sculpture is so powerfully expressive because of the way Venus has been depicted. Although the figure is unabashedly sensuous, it is presented as a Flemish beauty from the sixteenth century rather than the goddess of love known from Greco-Roman antiquity. Clad in a cloth cap and a long, open garment that only covers her back and arms, this Northern Renaissance Aphrodite stands in elegant contrapposto next to Eros, the child god of desire, and looks fondly down on him. Cupping one breast in her right hand, in her left she holds up the Golden Apple which, as mythology has it, Paris awarded to her. Eros is depicted as a naked toddler who has climbed up on his quiver to grasp her left thigh. Reaching up with his right hand, he begs for the apple, which the goddess tantalisingly withholds. The material of which this sculpture is made, its stylistic features and the mode of representation indicate that this unusual work came from the southern Low Countries, where alabaster sculpture flourished in the mid-sixteenth century, thanks to Habsburg patronage and the growth of an aspiring patrician class. During the sixteenth century, sculpture workshops were established not only in Mechelen but also in Mons and Antwerp that contributed substantially to the formulation of Renaissance art north of the Alps by translating the Italian Rinascimento language of forms into the context of Netherlandish art production and reinterpreting it in the process.



The creator of the Aphrodite and Eros group was obviously a sculptor in the circle of Jacques Dubroeucq (ca 1500–1584), a Flemish sculptor and architect, who ensured his place in the annals of art history by being Giambologna’s (1529–1608) first teacher and is still viewed as one of the most important Renaissance artists in the southern Low Countries. As an alabaster statue in a small format and with more than a tinge of eroticism, made expressly for display in a Kunstkammer, this Aphrodite belongs to a new subgenre of sculpture that emerged in the southern Low Countries in the sixteenth century. 



The circumstance that the present Aphrodite is not carved of marble like her ancient prototypes but is worked in alabaster is due not only to the availability of this tractable material in Flanders but especially to the aesthetic properties of the stone, which is translucent and yellowish white. In fact, alabaster is so highly suited for rendering flesh tones that the metaphorical alabaster body as a sign of feminine beauty would soon become a trope in sixteenth-century literature. As a material for sculpture, alabaster heightens the sensuous aspect of Aphrodite, who is represented both as an object of erotic fantasizing and as a warning against the consequences of lust. The Golden Apple that Aphrodite is holding in her hand is, according to mythology, not only a symbol of her beauty but also the cause of the Trojan War. After Aphrodite, Athene and Hera began fighting over the Golden Apple, Paris, the beautiful youth, was supposed to judge which of the three goddesses was the most beautiful and to hand the Golden Apple to the one he chose. Since Aphrodite promised to reward him with the love of the most beautiful woman in the world if he chose her, Paris decided in her favor. However, Helen, a beauty already married to the king of Sparta, was the one to catch his eye. And the abduction of Helen sparked off the Trojan War. If, therefore, Aphrodite is withholding the Golden Apple from Eros, the god of lust, this gesture is meant to warn the viewer: although he may at first glance be enthralled by the physical beauty of the lovely and all too worldly goddess, the childish behaviour of the toddler at her side should immediately remind him of the dangers of Eros.



Condition: Old restoration in places, old cracks, right arm original, broken off and reattached in an early repair, surface worn

More Information