praxiteles's

Updated: May 4, 2025

I went first to "Pharaoh's Bed." Imagine a woman with a perfectly lovely face, with features as exquisitely proportioned as those, say, of Praxiteles's statue of the Cnidian Aphrodite, for which King Nicomedes was willing to remit the entire national debt of Cnidus, and with a warmly white rose-leaf complexion one of those complexions one sometimes sees in Italian women, colorless, yet suggestive almost of glow, of purity, with the flame of passion behind it.

Robert Smythe Hichens - The Spell of Egypt

Hawthorne's analysis of Praxiteles's "Faun," in his "Romance of Monte Beni," being a subject in which he was particularly interested, is almost without a rival in the literature of its kind; and this is the more remarkable since the copy of the "Faun" in the museum of the Capitol is not one of the best, at least it is inferior to the one in the Glyptothek at Munich.

Frank Preston Stearns - The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is no impiety, surely, in illustrating mortal beauty by the work of mortal hands unless you take the thing that Phidias fashioned to be indeed Athene, or Praxiteles's not much later work at Cnidus to be the heavenly Aphrodite. But would that be quite a worthy conception of divine beings? I take the real presentment of them to be beyond the reach of human imitation.

of Samosata Lucian - Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03

Were you ever at Cnidus? Poly. I was. Ly. Then you have seen the Aphrodite, of course? Poly. That masterpiece of Praxiteles's art! I have. Ly. And heard the story they tell there, of the man who fell in love with the statue, and contrived to get shut into the temple alone, and there enjoyed such favours as a statue is able to bestow. But that is neither here nor there.

of Samosata Lucian - Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03

You must put up with being moved back, and not object to the owner of such a golden snout being preferred. Aph. Then, Hermes, find me a place in the front row; I am golden. Herm. Not so, Aphrodite, if I can trust my eyes; I am purblind, or you are white marble; you were quarried, I take it, from Pentelicus, turned by Praxiteles's fancy into Aphrodite, and handed over to the Cnidians. Aph.

of Samosata Lucian - Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03

The picture, from all that we can learn of it, seems to have been imbued with the same spirit of refinement and grace as Praxiteles's statue of Aphrodite in the neighboring city of Cnidus. The Coans, after cherishing it for three hundred years, were forced to surrender it to the emperor Augustus for a price of a hundred talents, and it was removed to the Temple of Julius Caesar in Rome.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art