Classical Clayton

PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED: KNIDIAN APHRODITE & TINTED VENUS STATUES OF THE MONTH: MARCH 2020 This month we’re going to look at a pair of nude statues - one Classical, one Victorian – depicting the goddess Aphrodite (aka Venus).   These statues are linked not just by their subject-matter, and by the likelihood that one was intended as a homage to the other, but by the impact they had when first exhibited, as they were both considered to be shocking and radical pieces of work. Left: Roman copy of Praxiteles'  Knidian Aphrodite, from Hadrian's  Villa at Tivoli Right: John Gibson's Tinted Venus, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Praxiteles: Knidian Aphrodite If you’ve ever studied an A-level or undergraduate module on Classical Sculpture, you’ll probably remember spending 90% of your course looking at sculptures of nude men (give or take the odd clothed statue of a charioteer).   In the last few weeks of the course, you begin

TINTED VENUS: A SHORT STORY INSPIRED BY JOHN GIBSON’S STATUE IN THE WALKER ART GALLERY , LIVERPOOL                                                     Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons The heat in Rome was different to the heat in India ; it was stickier, more cloying.   At this time of year Hestia and her husband would usually have stayed up in the hills, in the fresh breezes of Shimla; Rome , by contrast, felt like a vapour bath.    In the daytime she had already abandoned her whalebone corset and most of her petticoats, reverting to the simple muslin dresses that she used to wear back in India .   Some of the expatriate community in Rome , sweating under their heavy coats and dresses, might have looked down their noses at her, but she didn’t care; she was probably wealthier than most of them.   She knew that most of the English and Irish aristocrats she met out here, despite their grand titles, were only living in Rome because it was a damn sight cheaper