The Venus of Arles, drawing on Praxiteles’ art, is one of the most striking depictions of Aphrodite, goddess of desire, beauty, and vital energy. Discovered in Arles in 1651, gifted to Louis XIV, installed at Versailles, and now considered a major work at the Louvre, her absence from Provence has enhanced her prestige and created the myth of “the great pagan” celebrated by the Félibres. Its loan to the Musée départemental Arles antique, accompanied by numerous masterpieces, offers an opportunity to explore the Empire of Venus in all its breadth: a dazzling apparition born of sea foam, an erotic and cosmic force, goddess of adornments, an ardent figure, then a fertile one, finally a myth contested and reinvented by today’s writers, historians, and artists. This book on the Venus of Arles, featuring numerous illustrations, scholarly essays, thematic analyses, and historical documents, unveils the multiple identities of the Arlesian statue. Aphrodite emerges as an active force, admired and feared, a figure still alive, still capable of bewitching our present.
