Crouching Venus

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The Lely Venus once belonged to the painter Sir Peter Lely (Royal Collection, on loan to the British Museum Lely Venus BM 1963.jpg
The Lely Venus once belonged to the painter Sir Peter Lely (Royal Collection, on loan to the British Museum

The Crouching Venus is a Hellenistic model of Venus surprised at her bath. Venus crouches with her right knee close to the ground, turns her head to the right and, in most versions, reaches her right arm over to her left shoulder to cover her breasts. [1] To judge by the number of copies that have been excavated on Roman sites in Italy and France, this variant on Venus seems to have been popular.

Contents

A number of examples of the Crouching Venus in prominent collections have influenced modern sculptors since Giambologna and have been drawn by artists since Martin Heemskerck, who made a drawing of the Farnese Crouching Venus that is now in Naples.

Attribution

The model is often related to a corrupt passage in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (xxxvi.4), enumerating sculptures in the Temple of Jupiter Stator in the Portico of Octavia, near the Roman Forum; the text has been emended to a mention of Venerem lavantem sese Daedalsas, stantem Polycharmus ("Venus washing herself, of Daedalsas, [and another], standing, of Polycharmus"), recording a sculpture of a Venus who was not standing, by the otherwise unknown Doidalses or Daedalsas. [2]

Ancient examples

Such terse archival references and so many existing ancient versions make archival identification of the Roman copies insecure, though some include a water jar and/or an additional figure of Eros which make identification easier (e.g. the Hermitage example, and here). The Crouching Venus was often paired with the other famous crouching sculpture of Antiquity, the Arrotino .

Crouching Venus and Cupid of the Farnese collection (Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli) Kauernde Venus und Amor.jpg
Crouching Venus and Cupid of the Farnese collection (Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli)
Venus Accroupie (Musee du Louvre) Crouching Aphrodite Louvre Ma53.jpg
Vénus Accroupie (Musée du Louvre)

Small ancient bronzes of the Crouching Venus have survived. One, found in Syria, and formerly in the collection of Joseph Durighello, was sold by the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris. [12]

Appreciation in the Renaissance

Crouching Venus engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, 1505-06: which Roman marble furnished the model? MarcantonioRaimondiCrouching Venus.jpg
Crouching Venus engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, 1505–06: which Roman marble furnished the model?

The early interpretation of the figure, as Venus at her birth, about to be carried ashore – a type of Venus Anadyomene – encouraged the restoration of a shell upon which she crouches, in which form the Medici sculpture was engraved by Paolo Alessandro Maffei, Raccolta di statue antiche e moderni..., 1704 (plate XXVIII)

Versions since the Renaissance

Several versions of the Crouching Venus issued from the atelier of Giambologna and his heir Antonio Susini; among examples of Susini's bronze reduction, one from the collection of Louis XIV is conserved in the Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, [13] while another, in the collection of Prince Carl Eusebius von Liechtenstein by 1658, remains in the Liechtenstein collection, Vienna. [14]

Allegory by Peter Paul Rubens, 1612-13, executed after his stay with the Gonzaga at Mantua, where he saw the Lely Crouching Venus, then in the Gonzaga collection RubensVenusCupidBacchusCeres.jpg
Allegory by Peter Paul Rubens, 1612–13, executed after his stay with the Gonzaga at Mantua, where he saw the Lely Crouching Venus, then in the Gonzaga collection

Notes

  1. Some of the many copies have significant variants in the upper body and the position of the arms.
  2. The passage is interpreted in Monumenta Rariora. Beyond Pliny's mention of this sculpture in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, only a Zeus Stratios in Nicomedia is known of "Doidalses", who, because of the Nicomedia location, would be a Bithynian sculptor of the 3rd century BCE (Haskell and Penny 1981:323, noting Lullies 1954). A marble statuette of the Zeus Stratios recovered at Camirus gives an approximation of the lost sculpture. Calling this model a "Doidalses Venus" creates avoidable problems.
  3. Inventory 6293.
  4. Now detached from the sculpture: Louvre site officiel: Aphrodite accroupie
  5. Published by Carlo d'Arco, Delle Arti e degli artefici di Mantova, II (1857), pp. 168–71, noted by A. H. Scott-Elliot, "The Statues from Mantua in the Collection of King Charles I" The Burlington Magazine101 No. 675 (June 1959, pp. 214, 218–227) p 219f, note 18.
  6. "une figure de femme accroupie de marbre, aucuns disent Venus delli Eli, autres Hélène de Troye, c'est la plus belle statue de tous estimée à 6 mille escus": (a marble figure of a crouching woman, called by some the Venus of Elis, by others Helen of Troy, it is the finest statue of all, and is valued at 6000 Ecus) in the letter of the French agent Daniel Nys to Lord Dorchester, 13 June 1631; Scott-Elliot 1959:220; Haskell and Penny 1981:321
  7. Alessandro Luzio, La Galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all'Inghilterra nel 1627–28 (1913), noted by Scott-Elliot 1959:220 note 19.
  8. In the Commonwealth Sale Inventory it is lot 10, £600, with the annotation bought by Lilly the Painter with Severall other his Mats. rarities. (A. H. Scott-Elliot, "The Statues from Mantua in the Collection of King Charles I" The Burlington Magazine101 No. 675 (June 1959, pp. 214, 218–227) p.220).
  9. Haskell and Penny 1981:323
  10. Site officiel: Aphrodite accroupie
  11. Illustration from Theoi.com.
  12. Described by Étienne Michon in Syria n°6 (1925), p 303-13.
  13. Susini's Kneeling Woman Bathing
  14. "Liechtenstein Museum". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 3 December 2006.
  15. A precedent for this connection of Venus with a tortoise can be seen in Alciato's Emblematum liber, 1531 and many subsequent editions.

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References

Further reading