Ana de Macedo: the Venus of Alentejo
Photo used with permission from her Instagram account
I.
Venus rising from the sea - or, as the Little Greek would say, αναδυομένη Αφροδίτη - is, of course, one of the iconic figures within the cultural (and pornographic) imagination of the West.
According to Athenaeus, the idea was inspired by the ancient Greek courtesan Phryne [1], who liked to let down her hair and step naked into the sea, particularly during the time when the Eleusinian Mysteries were being celebrated, or festivals held in honour of Poseidon .
The renowned painter Apelles created a much-admired picture of this event [2], whilst the equally renowned scuptor Praxiteles - who was one of Phryne's many lovers - is believed to have used her as the model for his statue of Aphrodite (the first life-sized nude female form ever sculpted in ancient Greece).
Although some historians have pooh-poohed the story of Phryne's skinny dipping in the sea as sensationalised fabrication [3], I can happily believe it, and see how it might inspire artists. For as D. H. Lawrence writes, we glimpse the gods in the bodies of men and women [4] ...
II.
In his poem 'The Man of Tyre', for example, Lawrence describes a man watching as a woman who had waded into the pale green sea of evening in order to wash herself, now turns, and comes slowly back to shore:
Oh lovely, lovely, with the dark hair piled up, as she went deeper,
deeper down the channel, then rose shallower, shallower,
with the full thighs slowly lifting of the wader wading shorewards
and the shoulders pallid with light from the silent sky behind
both breasts dim and mysterious, with the glamorous kindness
of twilight between them
and the dim blotch of black maidenhair like an indicator,
giving a message to the man.
So in the cane-brake he clasped his hands in delight
that could only be god-given, and murmured:
Lo! God is one god! but here in the twilight
godly and lovely comes Aphrodite out of the sea
towards me! [5]
However, Lawrence also catches sight of the gods in the bodies of animals too. Thus, in the poem 'Whales weep not!', he informs us that Aphrodite is a happy hot-blooded she-whale:
and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
These are surely some of the loveliest lines in Lawrence's poetry and, crucially, they encourage us to reconsider (i) the relation we have to ourselves and our own flesh; (ii) the relation we have to others and their bodies; (iii) the relation we have to animals; and (iv) the relation we have to the gods.
And, surely, that's the purpose of art, isn't it?
Fresco from Pompei, Casa di Venus, 1st century AD
A classic example of Venus Anadyomene
Notes
[1] Phryne, whose real name (somewhat ironically) was Mnesarete, was born c. 371 BC and became a notorious member of that highly educated class of companion women known as hetaerae [ἑταῖραι]. She is perhaps best remembered for her beauty and for her trial for impiety (a capital offence), where she was defended by the orator Hypereides (another of her lovers).
When it seemed as if his arguments might be falling on deaf ears, Hypereides removed Phryne's robe and bared her breasts before the judges in order to arouse their pity. This seemed to do the trick; the judges decided they could not condemn a priestess of Aphrodite to death. And so Phyrne was acquitted. Little wonder that modern poets and artists have continued to find her irresistable.
[2] Sadly, this picture is now lost. It is mentioned, however, in Pliny's Natural History [XXXV, 86-87] According to the Roman author, Apelles employed Pancaspe (aka Campaspe) - mistress to Alexander the
Great - as his model.
[3] See for example Christine Mitchell Havelock, The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art, (The University of Michigan Press, 1995).
[4] See the post 'I Shall Speak of Geist, of Flame, and of Glimpses' (29 Sept 2021), where I speak of Lawrence's idea of glimpsing something divine in mortal being with reference to his poetry.
And see also 'The Southend Venus' (26 Aug 2016) and 'The Southend Venus (Alternative Version)' (27 Aug, 2016), where I write of glimpsing the goddess in the girl on a beach in Essex.
[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Man of Tyre', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 606-607.
[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whales weep not!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ibid., pp. 607-608. Lines quoted p. 608.
For a related post to this one, discussing Rimbaud's poetic take on the idea of Venus anadyomene, click here.
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