The Roman goddess of beauty
and sensual love, identified with [the Greek goddess]
Aphrodite, in some accounts said to have sprung from the foam
of the sea, in others to have been the daughter of Jupiter
and Dione, a Nymph. Vulcan was her husband, but she had
amours with Mars and many other gods and demigods. By Mercury
she was the mother of cupid, and by the hero Anchises, the
mother of Aeneas, through whom she was regarded by the Romans
as the foundress of their race.
(Source: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
1981)
Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c.
1485-86) is based on a poem by Hesiod, one of the earliest
Greek poets.
Venus was born of the sea -
from the foam produced by the genitals of the castrated
Uranus when they were cast upon the waters. She floated
ashore on a scallop shell propelled by gentle breezes,
and
finally landed at Paphos, in Cyprus, one of the principal
seats of her worship in antiquity. Her Greek name, Aphrodite,
may be derived from aphros, foam. The type "Venus
Anadyomene" (rising from the sea), representing her
standing and wringing the water from her hair, was originally
found in classical sculpture and is thought to derive from a
lost work of Apelles.
(Source: Hall's Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols in
Art (revised), 1979.)
Botticelli wasn't the first artist to represent this event; this Greek terracotta statue from the 4th century BC shows Aphrodite emerging from a half-opened shell.
