The Venus de' Medici

The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a lifesize (1.53m) Greek marble sculpture that since ca. 1677–88 has been in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, where it was universally esteemed as one of the half-dozen finest antique statues to have survived, until a reaction in taste began to set in during the nineteenth century, in the form of a few dissenting voices (Haskell and Penny p. 325).^[1] The Medici Venus is a first century BCE copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original following the type of the Aphrodite of Cnidos.^[2] Among other Venuses that derive at several removes from Praxiteles' Aphrodite, its closest rivals have been the prominently-displayed Capitoline Venus and the Barberini or Jenkins Venus, which broke the world auction record for an antiquity after selling for almost £8 million at Christie's in 2002. It occupies a prominent niche in the top-lit Neoclassical tribune erected at Newby to designs of Robert Adam. There are other surviving Venuses of this type. The Venus de' Medici bears a Greek inscription CLEOMENES SON OF APOLLODORUS OF ATHENS on its base. The inscription is not original, but in the eighteenth century the name "Cleomenes" was forged on sculptures of modest quality to enhance their value, while the inscription on the Venus de' Medici was doubted in order to ascribe the work to one of various highly-thought-of names: Phidias, Praxiteles or Scopas.^[3] The restorations of the arms was made by Ercole Ferrata, who gave them long tapering Mannerist fingers that did not begin to be recognized as out of keeping with the sculpture until the nineteenth century. The Uffizi Gallery (Italian: Galleria degli Uffizi) is a palace or palazzo in Florence, holding one of the oldest and most famous art museums in the world. ... Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus, was the greatest of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC, who has left an imperishable mark on the history of art. ... There are several things called niche, a word English has borrowed from French: Generally, a niche is a special place within the scheme of things. ... Lazienkowski Palace in Warsaw The neoclassical movement that produced Neoclassical architecture began in the mid-18th century, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived purity of the arts of Rome, the more vague perception (ideal) of Ancient... Robert Adam Robert Adam (3 July 1728 - 3 March 1792) was a Scottish architect, interior designer and furniture designer, born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. ... Phidias (or Pheidias) son of Charmides, (c. ... Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus, was the greatest of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC, who has left an imperishable mark on the history of art. ... Scopas (Σκόπας) (c. ... Ercole Ferrata (1610-1686) was an Italian sculptor of the Roman Baroque school. ... Mannerism is the term used to describe the artistic style that arose in mid-16th century. ...

The origin of the Venus is undocumented: "its reputation seems to have grown up gradually," Francis Haskell and Nicolas Penny have remarked. It was in the Villa Medici, Rome, by 1638 for certain,^[4] and possibly a generation earlier. Though visitors to Rome like John Evelyn found it "a miracle of art", it was sent to Florence in August 1677, its export permitted by Innocent XI, it was thought, because it stimulated lewd behavior. In the Tribune of the Uffizi it was a high point of the Grand Tour. Luca Giordano made hundreds of drawings of it, Samuel Rogers made daily appointments with it and Lord Byron devoted five stanzas of Childe Harold to describing it. It was one of the precious works of art shipped to Palermo in 1800 to escape the rapacious French, to no avail: such diplomatic pressure was brought to bear that the Vénus de Medicis was shipped to Paris in 1803. After Napoleon's fall it arrived back in Florence 27 December 1815. The Villa Medici is a villa in Rome, founded by Ferdinando I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, housing the French Academy in Rome. ... John Evelyn (October 31, 1620 – February 27, 1706) was an English writer, gardener and diarist. ... The Blessed Innocent XI, né Benedetto Odescalchi (May 16, 1611 – August 12, 1689) was pope from 1676 to 1689. ... The interior of the Pantheon in the 18th century, painted by Giovanni Paolo Panini In the 18th century, the Grand Tour was a kind of education for wealthy British noblemen, wherein the primary educational value was exposure to the cultured artifacts of antiquity and the Renaissance as well as the... The creation of man, fresco in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence, 1684-1686. ... Samuel Rogers (July 30, 1763 - December 18, 1855) was an English poet. ... Lord Byron, English poet Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. ... Childe Harolds Pilgrimage by J.M.W. Turner, 1823. ...

A variant of the Praxitelean Capitoline Venus, Roman, 2nd century CE (Louvre)

The Medici Venus is one of the most-copied antiquities. Louis XIV had no less than five, marbles by Carlier, Cleron, Coysevox and Frémery and a bronze by the Keller brothers. (Haskell and Penny, p. 325). In lead, copies of the Venus de' Medici stand in many English and European gardens, sometimes protected by small temples; in small bronze reductions it figured among the most familiar of the antiquities represented in collectors' cabinets; it was even reproduced in Sèvres biscuit porcelain with the matte whiteness of marble. The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is the largest museum in the world. ... Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné) (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre from May 14, 1643 until his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday. ... Charles Antoine Coysevox (September 29, 1640 - October 10, French sculptor, was born at Lyons, and belonged to a family which had emigrated from Spain. ... A stone grinder for turning quartz, feldspar, kaolin and other stones into fine powder for making ceramic paste Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Manufacture nationale de Sèvres The Manufacture nationale de Sèvres is a porcelain factory located in Sèvres, France. ...

Notes

1. ^ The twentieth-century recovery from shipwreck sites in the Mediterranean of Classical and Hellenistic Greek bronzes, made possible by scuba equipment, has resulted in a reappraisal of what constitute the finest survivals.
2. ^ Mansuelli
3. ^ Haskell and Penny p. 326.
4. ^ It was given three plates in the anthology of the most noble sculptures that the ravages of time had spared in Rome in François Perrier, Segmenta nobilia signorum et statuarum que temporis dentem invidium evase, Rome 1638, noted in Haskell and Penny p, 325.

SCUBA is an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. ...

References

• Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900 (Yale University Press) 1981
• Guido Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le Sculture (Rome) 2 vols. 1958–61, vol. I, pp. 71–73.