#and has been ❤️❤️ with the color richness and playing with shadow factor of it lol

[davidluongart]

“Of Kythereia, born in Kypros, I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it…”

Series of illustrations of Aris and Afroditi, in belated celebration of Valentine’s Day, the day of love. Behind them is one of the oldest temples dedicated to the goddess, the sacred Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia in Paleopaphos (Kouklia), Cyprus. (built somewhere within the 12th century BC, around the time of the Late Bronze Age; which acted as the main sanctuary and pilgrimage site late until the late Roman times.)

Its architectural style, depicted in the later Roman coins, didn’t really resembled to the usual well-known Greco-Roman architecture that we usually associated with “classical temples”at all, so I kind of based a lot of my interpretations & researching on other temples that found in neighboring Mycenaean Crete, Ancient Egypt and other Levantine/Upper Mesopotamian civilizations of Near East. (particularly Phoenicians, Hittites & Ugarit.)