Capitoline Venus
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The Capitoline Venus is a type of statue of Venus, specifically one of several Venus Pudica (modest Venus) types (others include the Venus de' Medici type), which ultimately derive from the Aphrodite of Cnidus. It is recognisable from the position of the arms - standing after a bath, Venus begins to cover her breasts with her right hand, and her groin with her left hand. This original of this type (from which the following copies derive) is thought to be a lost third or second century BCE variation on Praxiteles' work from Asia Minor, which modifies the Praxitelean tradition by a carnal and voluptuous treatment of the subject and the goddess's modest gesture with both hands (rather than only one - over the groin - in Praxiteles's original).
[edit] Principal example
The statue from which this type's name is derived is a slightly over lifesize[1] marble statue of Venus. It is an Antonine copy of a late Hellenistic sculpture that ultimately derives from Praxiteles (Helbig 1972:128-30).
It was found on the Viminal Hill during the pontificate of Clement X (1670-76) in the gardens belonging to the Stazi near San Vitale.[2] Pope Benedict XIV purchased it from the Stazi family in 1752 and gave it to the Capitoline Museums,[3] where it now resides in a niche of its own (called "the cabinet of Venus") on the ground floor of the Palazzo Nuovo on the Campidoglio.
Its reputation vis-a-vis the Venus de' Medici in Florence grew only slowly, according to Haskell and Penny, fueled in part as a negative sensitivity to extensive restorations began to undermine the Florentine Venus. It was triumphantly removed to Paris by Napoleon under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino; the Emperor commissioned a marble replica from Joseph Chinard, now at the Château de Compiègne. When the original was returned to the Vatican in 1816, the plaster cast that had replaced it during the Napoleonic era was shipped to Britain, where John Flaxman praised it to his students (Haskell and Penny 1981:319).
[edit] Others of this type
The Campo Iemini Venus: another sculpture of the same model was unearthed in the spring of 1792 among other sculptures in the excavation of a Roman villa at Campo Iemini, near Torvaianica, in Lazio (illustration, left). The dig was directed by the English dealer in Roman antiquities Robert Fagan (1761-1816) under the patronage of Prince Augustus, the Duke of Sussex in partnership with Sir Corbet Corbet (British Museum). At the time of its discovery the English in particular found it superior to the Capitoline Venus. After restoration in Rome it was shipped to London, where Prince Augustus gave it to his brother the Prince Regent, who set it up at Carlton House. After his death, when Carlton House was replaced by a terrace of houses, William IV donated it to the British Museum.
The Aphrodite of Menophantos was found at the Camaldolese monastery of San Gregorio al Celio. It bears the signature of Menophantos[4], a Greek sculptor, apparently of the first century BCE, of whom nothing more is known. The Camaldolese coenobites occupy the ancient church and monastery of S. Gregorii in Clivo Scauri founded on the slope (clivus) of the Caelian Hill by Pope Gregory the Great about 580. His foundation was dedicated in honor of the apostle Andrew, on his own property. By the tenth century Gregory's name was appended to that of the apostle, whom he eventually supplanted.[5] The sculpture came into the possession of prince Chigi. Johann Joachim Winckelmann described this sculpture in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (vol V, ch. II).[6]
There is another at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.[1], and the Hermitage has one[2] (or, if the Venus Tauride, is accounted one, two (here and here).
[edit] Notes
- ^ 1.93 m (6 ft. 3 ¾ in.).
- ^ According to the memoirs of the antiquarian Pietro Santi Bartoli noted in Haskell and Penny 1981:318).
- ^ Accession number MC 0409
- ^ "Apo tis en troadi afroditis minofantos epoiei"
- ^ Christian Hülsen, Le Chiese di Roma nel Medio Evo: S. Gregorii in Clivo Scauri
- ^ William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, (1870) v.II.1044 (on-line text).
[edit] References
- Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press). Cat. no. 84.
- Helbig, Wolfgang, Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom 4th edition, 1963-72, vol. II.
- Wilton, A. and I. Bignamini (editors.), Grand Tour: the lure of Italy in the eighteenth century (London, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1996), pp. 269-270, no. 228 (the Campo Iemini Venus).
