Praxiteles' Aphrodite was shown nude, reaching for a bath towel while covering her pubis, which, in turn leaves her breasts exposed.

It depicted the goddess Aphrodite as she prepared for the ritual bath that restored her purity, discarding her drapery with one hand, while modestly shielding herself with the other.

Most copies show Aphrodite covering her pubic area with her right hand, while the left holds drapery which, along with a vase, helps support the figure.

When making the Aphrodite of Knidos, Spivey argues that her iconography can be attributed to Praxiteles creating the statue for the intent of being viewed by male onlookers.

[6] The Aphrodite of Knidos established a canon for the proportions of the female nude,[7][better source needed] and inspired many copies, the best of which is considered to be the Colonna Knidia in the Vatican's Pio-Clementine Museum.

A lyric epigram of Antipater of Sidon[9] places a hypothetical question on the lips of the goddess herself: Paris, Adonis, and Anchises saw me naked, Those are all I know of, but how did Praxiteles contrive it?

[11] The temple of Aphrodite in Knidos where the statue was displayed is described by two ancient sources, Pliny the Elder in his Natural History and Pseudo-Lucian in his Amores.

For a time in 1969, the archaeologist Iris Love thought she had found the only surviving fragments of the original statue, which are now in storage at the British Museum.