Copy of the Venus of Cnidus of Praxiteles

The goddess who is fabled as having sprung from the briny foam of the sea, was also looked upon as the tutelar divinity of navigators and as such was invoked under the name of ευπλοια. The Greco-Roman artist who executed this figure has retained the usual type of the Venus of Cnidos, with the exception of some slight variation in the position and attributes of the left arm. None of the symbols which form the proper and special characteristics of the goddess have been forgotten. Upon a Doric pillar at her left is a ship on which she rests her left arm, the hand grasping the upper end of a rudder held reversed in sign of the accomplished voyage. On her right is a dolphin. This subject is one of great rarity, nor is it perhaps to be met with in any other collection, and it is more than probable from the multiplicity of the attributes which accompany the figure, that it was once used as an object of divine worship. The symbols have been partly restored, but with antique fragments.

Inv. nr. 146. H. 2.05. Excavated in 1865.