“You can’t just look at a woman, or a goddess, naked; you have to imagine that you’ve just surprised her as she was having her bath”

Janina Ramirez: I wanted to ask you about three specific artworks that pop up in the series, and why we should be looking at them afresh. I know you’ve been looking at the first, the Aphrodite of Knidos (see page 75), for a long time, and that she’s close to your heart. Has the way you’ve thought about her changed?

Yeah, I think it has. When I was a young classicist, I thought that the line-up of nudes going back to the was actually pretty dull. Let’s face it, you go into museums in which there are