Aphrodite
In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder records the legend of an ancient traveler who, sometime in the fourth century bce, voyaged to Knidos, a city on the western tip of the Datça peninsula in modern-day Turkey. The young man came specifically to see the statue of Aphrodite in the temple that the Knidians had erected to her cult. The great Athenian sculptor Praxiteles had created two monumental images of the goddess: one clothed, the other nude. The former was purchased by the people of Kos — an island whose mountains are visible from the temple ruins on Knidos on a sunny day — in keeping with the Greek moral preference for female modesty. But it was the Knidians who, in acquiring the less desired (if not less desirable) of the statues, lucked out. The naked Aphrodite generated an explosive shock, garnering renown across the Mediterranean world, attracting thousands of pilgrims like Pliny’s young man, and ultimately transforming the course of Western art.