What skin color was Aphrodite?

Aphrodite's skin color in Greek mythology and ancient art is not described as a specific human skin tone because she is a goddess and her depiction varied by artist, period, and medium, but in classical ancient Greek art she was typically depicted with light or fair skin, reflecting the artistic conventions of the time. In ancient Greek vase painting and sculpture, goddesses and women were often painted with lighter skin to distinguish them from men, who were shown with darker, tanned skin from working outdoors. This was a stylistic convention, not necessarily a literal description of skin color. In literature, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aphrodite is described with epithets like golden Aphrodite and laughter-loving Aphrodite, referring to her radiance and beauty rather than skin tone. As the goddess of beauty born from sea foam, she was imagined as luminous and radiant. In Renaissance and later European art, such as Botticelli's Birth of Venus, she was painted with fair skin, reflecting European beauty standards of those periods. There is no canonical myth that assigns Aphrodite a specific skin color, and modern interpretations depict her in diverse ways to reflect universal beauty. Since she is a mythological deity, her appearance was symbolic, representing ideal beauty, love, and fertility rather than a specific human ethnicity.