Venus Genetrix (sculpture) encyclopedia topics

Original

In 420 - 410 BC the Athenian sculptor Callimachus created a bronze sculpture of Aphrodite (now lost), which, according to Pliny's Natural History showing her dressed in a light but clinging chiton or peplos (which was lowered on the left shoulder to reveal her left breast, hanging down in a sheer face and decoratively carved so as not to hide the outlines of the woman's body), and holding the apple won in the Judgement of Paris in her left hand, whilst her right hand is moving to cover her head. The composition was frontal, the body's form monumental, and its proportions are close to the Polyclitean canon. From the lost bronze original are derived all surviving copies.

Caesar's Venus Genetrix

In 46 BC, a statue of Venus Genetrix was made by one Arcesilas, and set up by Julius Caesar in his new forum, probably in the cella of his temple of Venus Genetrix. This now-lost statue, or Sabina in the same pose, is represented on the reverse of a denarius (illustration, left), above the legend VENERI GENETRICI, with Sabina on the obverse. The iconological type of the statue, of which there are numerous Roman marble copies and bronze reductions at every level of skill, was identified as Venus Genetrix (Venus Universal Mother) by Ennio Quirino Visconti in his catalogue of the papal collections, Museo Pio-Clementina, by comparison with this denarius. "From the inscription on the coins, from the similarity between the figure on the coins and the statue in the Louvre, and from the fact that Arkesilaos established the type of Venus Genetrix as patron goddess of Rome, and ancestress of the Julian race, the identification was a very natural one. A Venus Genetrix in the Museo Pio-Clementina has been completed with a Roman portrait head of Sabina, on this basis.

Other copies

A number of the Roman examples are in major collections, including the Centrale Montemartini

(discovered in the Gardens of Maecenas), Detroit Institute of Arts

, Metropolitan Museum of Art

, the Royal Ontario Museum

, the J. Paul Getty Museum

, the Louvre Museum, and the Hermitage Museum.

Aphrodite of Fréjus

A 1.64m high Roman statue, dating from the end of the 1st century BC to the start of the 1st century AD, in Parian marble, was discovered at Fréjus (Forum Julii) in 1650. It is considered as the best Roman copy of the lost Greek work.

The neck, the left hand, the fingers of the right hand, the plinth, and many parts of the drape are modern restorations. It was present in the palace of the Tuileries in 1678, and was transported from there to the park of Versailles about 1685. It was seized on the Revolution, and has thus been in the Louvre since 1803, as Inventaire MR 367 (n° usuel Ma 525). The statue was restored in 1999 thanks to the patronage of F. Marc of Lacharrière (Fimalac).

Hermitage Museum

Another Roman copy of the statue, which is 2.14m high, was in the collection of Giampietro Campana, marchese di Cavelli, Villa Campana, Rome, from which it was acquired for the Hermitage in 1861, following Campana's disgrace.

The head does not belong to this statue, which must originally have had a portrait head. In Rome an ideal figure of a divinity might often be adapted slightly (here, for instance the chiton covers the breast) and given a separately made portrait head. Evidence that this was the case here can be seen in the locks of hair falling onto the shoulders. These are also seen in posthumous portraits of Agrippina the Elder, which enables us to date this statue to the second quarter of the first century AD.