Aphrodite, The Greek Goddess of Love, Beauty, and Marriage.

Venus, universally worshiped in ancient Greece,
reveared for her beauty (and she reportedly had a really nice personality)
epitomized the love that binds marriages, gives rise to great civilizations, and horrible wars. One of the twelve Olypian divinities, she gave life to Cupid and Galatea (Pygmaliaon's statue) and wreaked the marriage that exploded into the Trojan war. Pursued by all the Greek guy-gods and dominated by none, she devistated those who angered her.
Her image captured in stone and oil, and now magnetic media, is amoung the mostly widely admired in the world.
One of the most famous statues, the Venus de Milo, is over 2,000 years old, was carved by 'the chisler' (hey, this a first draft)... now in some snobby French museum.

She was known by many names including: Venus, Aphrodite, Dionaea, and Ashtoreth (in Biblical referances).

Referenced: Women in Classical Mythology (Princeton) but check out the pictures here first !

This may take a while to download ... the blurb above was offered to give modem users something to read during the download ...

Venus de Milo: oil, stone, and a Java applet: computer animation.

A programmer's guide to classy stuff like high brow art: get your culture now.

venus statue #1 venus statue #2 venus statue #3

my faceted venus statue

Your browser can't run 1.0 Java applets. If it could, you'd see a spinning Venus statue.

Java Applet

venus statue 3d points

Photographs are inherently limited to a single view,
a single lighting condition, a single moment in time; computer imaging and other web technologies allow an enhanced view of three dimensional objects giving us two added dimensions: rotation effectively adds depth, and animation adds the dimension of time.
In computer graphics we can recreate reality, or create something new. Sometimes we model teapots, sometimes humans. Sometimes web page creators include a picture of Cindy Crawford to troll for extra traffic.

look ... Cindy Crawford posing as Venus ! --->
The spotty yellow image above shows a 3-D data set created by laser scanning a statue. See also: 3d scanning written in Greek! ( France )
If the Java applet doesn't work it must be your fault because Gossling declared it to be portable.

I converted the spinning venus from a ".fli" file, I didn't create the original video clip. The animated oil painting was created by ( insert name here -- not me ).

Art Lovers: Buy a replica. 10" - 34", $100 - $1,000+
( I have no relationship with this vendor, and assume no responsiblity for them, etc. )

Animation: Venus de Milo (faster download)	Same animation, only one other picture
A tiny Object Archive	Faceted objects: tanks to teapots
The Quadric Surfaces	All (6) curved surfaces easily raytraced.
A gentle introduction to raytracing	Imaging the Imagined, the math...
Imaging the imagined (home page)	da Vinci & I tell all.