Venus

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Bronze sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 17

Inventory

PV 10789

Material and technique

Bronze, natural dark brown patina, opaque black lacquer

Author

attributed to Girolamo Campagna (1549-1617/1625)

Dimensions

53 x 14 x 12 cm.

Origin

Auriti Collection (1963)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

A version of this Venus is held in the Untermyer Collection at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The initials “IC” are engraved on the edge of the base, the letters separated by tiny decorative circles, which for a long period were thought to be the signature of Girolamo Campagna. Both the sculptures, however, seem to derive from the Medici Venus. The left arm is placed in a different position though, no longer a chaste gesture, as is the leg, resting on the dolphin. There is some doubt though over how Campagna came to know the Uffizi marble, which until 1677 was in the Villa Medici in Rome. The many versions of the Venus Marina in museums and collections all vary in the manner in which the dolphin is rendered. It is always fused on its own and added to the base in different places, with its tail modelled in different ways.

Pietro Cannata

Bibliography

A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. La Collezione Auriti, Rome 1964, p.20; A. Bacchi, La bellissima maniera: Alessandro Vittoria e la scultura veneta del Cinquecento, exh. cat., Trento 1999, p. 410, no. 92.