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Athenian Avant-Garde

There have been several notable moments in the history of mankind where some single event, usually catastrophic, has come to symbolize what was subsequently realized to be a paradigm shift in human culture – perhaps the burning of the Parthenon by the Persians in 480 BC, a disaster which ushered in the Golden Age of Athens and the world’s first democracy; maybe the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 AD, seen by many to be the end of civilization and the start of the Dark Ages; or the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, heralding the arrival of the Turks in Anatolia and the beginning of the end for the Christian Byzantine Empire; or 1815, the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo presaging the dawn of modern Europe.

But, with one remarkable exception, there has never been anything as iconic as an individual statue, let alone a female statue, which can aptly be said to personify the birth of a whole revolution in human imagination and universal ambition. That exception is the Aphrodite of Knidos. Sculpted by the gifted Greek artist Praxiteles in his studio in Athens somewhere about 350 BC, the Aphrodite came to personify the emancipation of society from prudery, prejudice and parochialism, to herald the ending of the ancient world and to chart the birth of the new all-embracing philosophies and ideals of Hellenism, many of which are with us to this day, though this event is more usually characterized by the military exploits of that world-bestriding hero Alexander the Great and the spread of a new vision of freedom of thought and commerce. The Praxiteles Aphrodite, commonly known as the Knidia, was so radical and innovative not only because she was said to be the most beautiful and natural representation of the female form ever created, but especially because she was sculpted undraped. For the first time a female deity had been carved totally unclothed, revealed in all her astounding beauty.

The Knidians had bought her to commemorate the relocation of their own citizenry to a brand new city which they had built at a spectacular site on the coast of

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