Aphrodite and the Gods of Love: MFA Boston Exhibition Review
This paper reviews "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love," the first museum exhibition in the United States devoted solely to the goddess Aphrodite, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from October 2011 to February 2012. The review summarizes the exhibition's scope — spanning over 160 classical works including marble sculptures, painted Greek vases, mosaics, and precious objects — and traces the narrative arc from Aphrodite's Near Eastern origins and mythological birth to her Roman incarnation as Venus. The paper highlights three standout works: the celebrated "Bartlett Head," a Pompeian fresco of the Three Graces, and the "Sleeping Hermaphrodite," offering both descriptive analysis and personal critical assessment of the exhibition's significance.
- Introduction to the Exhibition: Overview of MFA Boston's landmark Aphrodite exhibition
- Scope, Collection, and Curatorial Vision: Curator Kondoleon's vision and Warren collection loans
- The Bartlett Head: Aphrodite in Marble: Close analysis of the exhibition's iconic marble sculpture
- The Three Graces and Objects of Beauty: Pompeian fresco and Aphrodite's role as beauty icon
- The Sleeping Hermaphrodite: Roman sculpture depicting androgyny and dual identity
- Conclusion and Critical Assessment: Sponsorship details and overall critical recommendation
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves logically from a broad overview of the exhibition's scope to focused analysis of individual works, giving the reader both context and close observation.
- Descriptive passages — particularly on the Bartlett Head's tilted neck, softly modeled features, and lampadion hairstyle — demonstrate careful visual analysis rooted in the work itself rather than secondary sources alone.
- The writer integrates multiple sources (curator statements, critical reviews, museum documentation) to build a well-supported argument for the exhibition's cultural importance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses ekphrasis — the verbal description of visual art — as its central academic technique. In the section on the Bartlett Head, the writer moves from physical observation (the tilt of the neck, heavy eyelids, bound hair) to interpretive inference (the suggestion of interiority and gentleness), modeling how art-historical analysis connects formal qualities to meaning. The comparison to Degas's late bathers adds art-historical breadth.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a detailed overview of the full exhibition (paragraphs 1–2), then narrows to three specific works the writer identifies as standouts (paragraphs 3–5), and closes with a brief evaluative conclusion. This funnel structure — general to specific — is well suited to exhibition reviews and allows the writer to demonstrate both comprehensive knowledge of the show and the capacity for focused critical judgment.
Introduction to the Exhibition
"Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" was the first exhibition ever devoted to the goddess Aphrodite in the United States. Aphrodite (Venus), one of the most compelling of the ancient divinities, personifies female beauty and human love. The exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, told the story of Aphrodite's influence in the daily lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans through beautiful artworks ranging from large marble sculptures to painted Greek vases, precious metals, mosaics, and coins. The exhibition traced Aphrodite's early worship in the Near East as a fertility goddess, her legendary birth in the waters off Cyprus, and her emergence as a love goddess for the Greeks. It also highlighted the goddess's role as a beauty icon on objects used for female beautification — bathing utensils, mirrors, perfume, and cosmetic containers.
Variations of the female nude, most famously the MFA's "Bartlett Head," were displayed in the exhibition, along with jewelry — especially gold — which enhanced the splendor and seductive power of Aphrodite, known as "the golden one." The show concluded with pieces illustrating the Roman adoption of Aphrodite as Venus, mother of Aeneas and divine ancestor of Augustus and other Roman emperors (Exhibition Sponsorship 1). On view from October 26, 2011, to February 20, 2012, in the Lois and Michael Torf Gallery, it was the first museum exhibition of classical works devoted solely to the goddess the Romans called Venus. "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" re-awakened an age of pagan belief through some of the finest classical art in the world. Visitors saw stunning works depicting Aphrodite as the personification of idealized beauty, grace, and feminine guile embodied in a divinity.
Scope, Collection, and Curatorial Vision
Organized by Christine Kondoleon, the museum's senior curator of Greek and Roman art, the exhibit featured more than 160 works from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Greek and Roman collection — among the finest holdings in the United States — complemented by 13 key loans that included several works never before displayed in the U.S. Nine of these lent works came from Rome and Naples, including the spectacular "Sleeping Hermaphrodite," which had left Italy only once prior to this exhibition. Kondoleon used these rare works to transform the Lois and Michael Torf Gallery into a pan-Mediterranean temple that chronicled the ancestry, violent birth, and evolution of the goddess whose many brilliant facets illuminated the era. Kondoleon explained that Aphrodite was a primal goddess of manifold identities: she was seductress and the first woman portrayed naked, and believers prayed to her for success in marriage, war, and love (Bergeron 1).
The exhibit aimed to answer the questions: "Who was Aphrodite, and why was she so important to the Greeks and Romans?" In addition to celebrating the goddess's legacy as an icon of romantic love and ideal beauty, the exhibition examined her more complicated nature as a powerful and sometimes capricious deity who influenced the daily lives of mortals. It also explored the roles played by the other gods of love — Aphrodite's children from her many love affairs — particularly the mischievous Eros ("Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" 1).
"Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" began with the deity's birth in Cyprus and her origins rooted in Near Eastern mythology, followed by an exploration of the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess's myth and her influence over marriage, the concept of beauty in both ideal and daily life, and the role that Eros and other gods of love played in ancient Greek lore. Additionally, the exhibition assembled for the first time works given to the MFA by noted Boston art collector Edward Perry Warren (1860–1929). In fact, half of the objects in the exhibition can be traced to him — either as gifts from Warren or works he purchased on behalf of the Museum. These are among the 4,000 objects that form the core of the Museum's holdings of Greek and Roman art, a premier collection. Warren was responsible for the acquisition of the MFA's most renowned classical work, the "Head of Aphrodite" ("Bartlett Head") (Greek, 330–300 BC, MFA), a sculpture so admired that even Henry James wrote about it in his book of travel writing, The American Scene (Harper & Brothers Publishers, NY, 1907) ("Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" 2).
The Bartlett Head: Aphrodite in Marble
In my opinion, three incarnations of Aphrodite stand out in the exhibit. The first is the famous "Bartlett Head," named for Francis Bartlett, who provided the funds for its acquisition by the MFA in 1900. Celebrated in rapturous prose by Henry James within a few years of its first appearance in Boston, it was carved from luminous marble shortly after Praxiteles's Knidian Aphrodite, and remains to this day one of the most admired examples of classical Greek sculpture. The life-size head fuses human beauty with a divine ideal in a way that is as perfect and enigmatic as the Venus de Milo (Bergeron 2).
The goddess turns her head down and to her lower right, as indicated by the curve of the neck. This tilt, combined with the softness of the carving on the skin and the heavy lids, imparts a certain gentle quality to the goddess, leading connoisseurs to interpret her as Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. Her long, wavy hair is bound in a thin taenia (ribbon) wrapped twice around her head and pulled back into a bun at the nape of the neck. Some locks are pulled up in loops at the top of the head, an effect that appears as a topknot and has been referred to as a lampadion ("little torch") (Boston 03.743 [Sculpture]). The goddess's shadowed eyes, set deep in her softly modeled face, seem to carve out a sense of interiority, much as Degas's late bathers bend over an inviolate space defined by the contortions of their self-tending bodies (Smee 4f.).
Conclusion and Critical Assessment
"Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" was organized under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Conservation support for objects in the exhibition was provided by the Leon Levy Foundation. Additional support was provided by The Hellenic Women's Club (Aphrodite and the Gods of Love 1).
I consider "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love" an absolute must-see for anyone interested in the powerful goddess that ancient writers and artists described as complex and even dangerous.
Works Cited
"Aphrodite and the Gods of Love' Exhibit at MFA." Bostoniano.info. 27 October 2011. 1–4. Accessed 22 November 2011. www.bostoniano.info/.../aphrodite-and-the-gods-of-love-exhibit-at-
Aphrodite and the Gods of Love. 2011. Accessed 22 November 2011. www.mfa.org/programs/other/aphrodite-and-gods-love
Bergeron, Chris. "Exhibit Review: 'Aphrodite and the Gods of Love' Reign at Museum of Fine Arts." Gate House News Service. 19 November 2011. 1–3. Accessed 22 November 2011. www.patriotledger.com/.../EXHIBIT-REVIEW-Aphrodite-and-the-G
Boston 03.743 (Sculpture). Accessed 22 November 2011. www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifact?name=Boston+03.743
Exhibition Sponsorship. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. 2011. 1–3. Accessed 22 November 2011. www.mfa.org/give/corporate-giving/.../exhibition-sponsorship
Owen, William. "MFA Explores Aphrodite's Many Guises." 14 November 2011. Accessed 21 November 2011. www.tuftsdaily.com/mfa-explores-aphrodite-s-many-guises-1.2671091
Smee, Sebastian. "More to Aphrodite than Meets the Eye." Boston Globe. 30 October 2011. 1–6. Accessed 21 November 2011. articles.boston.com/2011-10.../30339433_1_aphrodite-roman-art-mf
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