As in all cases where a supreme artist rises above his fellows and creates works of which emulation appears hopeless, the period succeeding the time of Praxiteles seems to mark a decline in the art of sculpture, and though the decline was more apparent than real for about half a century, there was naturally a depreciation in the representation of the deities of whom the great man had fashioned masterpieces. This was so in the case of Aphrodite. Whoever the sculptor it seemed impossible to approach the Cnidian ideal, and the result was a series of variations stamped with artificial devices as if to emphasize the departure. But meanwhile the painter's art had developed upon much the same lines as sculpture, and Apelles produced an Aphrodite, which, considering the limitation of the painter, appears to have been almost, if not quite, as marvellous as the stone model of Praxiteles. Nearly two thousand years have passed since the painting was last known to exist, but its fame was so great that the reverberations from the thunder of praise accorded it have scarcely yet died away. No close description of the painting remains, but from certain references to it by ancient authors we know that it represented the sea-born goddess walking towards the shore to make her first appearance on earth, holding in each hand a tress of hair as if in the act of wringing out the water therein.[46] These are practically all the written details we have of the famous Venus Anadyomene, but we really know much more of it from the existence of certain pre-Roman sculptures. All but one are broken, with parts missing, but the exception, which dates from about the beginning of the third century B.C., enables us to gain a good idea of the picture. The figure represents the goddess with her lower limbs cut off close to the hips; that is to say, it produces the whole of that part of the figure in the picture of Apelles which is visible above the water.[a] Clearly a subject in which Venus is shown to be walking in the sea, so foreign to the art of the sculptor, could not have suggested itself independently to a Grecian artist, nor would we expect to find one attempting a work which necessitated amputation of the lower limbs, unless a very special occasion warranted the design. The special occasion in this case was the picture of Apelles, which was at the time renowned through the whole of Greece as an extraordinary masterpiece, and with this work in their minds the sculptured head and torso would appear quite appropriate to those Greeks interested in the arts, that is to say, the entire citizen population. [a] See Plate 4.