Cypriot antiquities to be displayed at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford will open the exhibition The Making of a Goddess, dedicated to the image of Aphrodite, on October 8. Cypriot antiquities will be displayed outside Cyprus for the first time, Cyprus Mail reports.
The history of Aphrodite
The exhibition will bring together archaeological finds, sculpture, painting, contemporary art and fashion. It will trace Aphrodite’s transformations from her early origins in the eastern Mediterranean through ancient Greece and Rome and Renaissance Europe to contemporary interest in the goddess.
The museum noted that Aphrodite’s story begins in Cyprus — the island where she emerged as a goddess and where visitors and settlers from the Greek Aegean region first encountered her. According to the museum, the myths of Aphrodite recounted by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Ovid and Virgil developed from these origins.
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Exhibits and sanctuary
Among the announced exhibits are the sculpture Crouching Aphrodite from the Royal Collection, the Capitoline Venus from the Louvre, Botticelli’s Venus from the Berlin Picture Gallery, and works by Yves Klein and Michelangelo Pistoletto. A Loewe dress by Jonathan Anderson worn by Beyoncé will also be displayed.
A separate section will be devoted to the cult of the goddess in ancient Cyprus and its connection to earlier traditions of female deities in the eastern Mediterranean, including Astarte and Ishtar. Visitors will be able to see the earliest known depiction of Aphrodite — a unique copper-alloy figurine from the Ashmolean Museum collection, dating to around 1200 BCE.
A sanctuary of Aphrodite will be recreated for the exhibition using exceptional loans from Cyprus and major international collections. This is intended to show how the goddess was worshipped across the island and how she was depicted in Cypriot art. The project is curated by Cypriot archaeology specialist Anha Ulbrich. The exhibition will run until April 11.
