Athenaeus provides many anecdotes about Phryne. He praises her beauty, writing that on the occasion of the festivals of the Eleusinia and Poseidonia, she would let down her hair and step nude into the sea. This would have inspired the painter Apelles to create his famous picture of "Aphrodite Anadyomene" (Ἀφροδίτη Ἀναδυομένη, "Rising from the Sea" also portrayed at times as Venus Anadyomene). Supposedly the sculptor Praxiteles, who was also her lover, used her as the model for the statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos, the first nude statue of a woman from ancient Greece.