Images of the Divine Child

Once we remember that Aphrodite was born of the seafoam when the genitals of the castrated Ouranous landed in the water, we can see the movement of the image in some stories in which Aphrodite is the mother of Eros. Aphrodite, as beauty, is the divine child who emerges in full flower from the sea of the Unconscious and gives birth to Love. This springtime myth appears with freshness and delight in frescoes at Pompei where Aphrodite, nude, wearing a necklace and anklets and bracelets, lies on a scallop shell resting on her right arm (Figure 4). She is lead by a child on a dolphin carrying a staff and followed by another winged child. [The posture has been repeated in paintings by Giorgione, Titian and Manet.] In Botticelli's Birth of Venus she stands on the scallop shell washed into shore with the spring breeze blowing her hair about her graceful nude body (Figure 5).
 

[aras-image:3Pa.036,,9,,,Figure 4 Birth of Aphrodite.]   [aras-image:5Fb.007,a,7,,,Figure 5 Birth of Venus.]

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