Detail of the The Birth of Venus (also known as Aphrodite) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1879.

In Plato’s Symposium the speech of Pausanias distinguishes two manifestations of Aphrodite, represented by the two stories: Aphrodite Ourania (“heavenly” Aphrodite), and Aphrodite Pandemos (“Common” Aphrodite). These two manifestations represented her role in homosexuality and heterosexuality, respectively. –via Aphrodite’s Wikipedia page [Aug 2006]

In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world. In 1900, his contemporaries Degas and Monet reportedly named him as most likely to be remembered as the greatest 19th century French painter by the year 2000. Although with Degas’ famous trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the two Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant as an ironic comment on the taste of the future public.