The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Marble head of the goddess Aphrodite looking straight ahead, her wavy hair pulled back into a bow shape on top of her head. She has a small mouth barely wider than her chipped nose and thick lips, curving up slightly at the edges. Rust and dark-brown colored spots speckle the marble, particularly in Aphrodite's hair.

Head of Aphrodite

100–200 CE

Italy, Roman

marble
Overall: 30.3 cm (11 15/16 in.)
Gift of J. H. Wade 1926.53
Location: 010 Focus Gallery

Did You Know?

The elaborate hairstyle, arranged in a bow atop the head, identifies this figure as Aphrodite.

Description

With idealized features including a straight nose, small mouth with thick lips, and a hairstyle best known from the so-called Capitoline Venus (now in Rome), this head likely belonged to a full-scale statue of the goddess of love. Like the Capitoline Venus and many other sculptures of the Roman period, it probably showed the goddess nude and bathing, harking back to the groundbreaking sculpture of Aphrodite at Knidos, carved by Praxiteles in the mid-fourth century BC.
  • W. M. M., T. S., R. H., and F. A. W. "In Memoriam: Jeptha Homer Wade." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 13: 4 (1926): 63-91. Mentioned, p. 69. www.jstor.org
    Bieber, Margarete. "Greek Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art," Art in America: An Illustrated Magazine Quarterly Magazine 31: 3 (July, 1943), pp. 112-126. Ill. fig. 12, discussed p. 124. archive.org
    Noelle, Alexander J., and Cleveland Museum of Art. Filippino Lippi and Rome. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2025. Reproduced: p. 106, no. 7
  • Filippino Lippi and Rome. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 26, 2025-February 22, 2026).
    The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941).
  • {{cite web|title=Head of Aphrodite|url=false|author=|year=100–200 CE|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1926.53