Lely Venus

Lely Venus
The Lely Venus displayed in the British Museum, photographed in 2011
Completion date	2nd century CE
Subject	The Graeco-Roman goddess Venus (in Latin) or Aphrodite (in Greek)
Dimensions	c. 112 cm (44 in) in height, 43 cm (17 in) in width, and 58 cm (23 in) in depth
Location	British Museum, London
Owner	Royal Collection
Accession	GR 1963.10-29.1 (British Museum) RCIN 69746 (Royal Collection)

The Lely Venus is a Roman marble statue of the goddess Venus. It was sculpted in the second century CE, probably as a version of a Greek statue from the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE). It is an example of the Crouching Venus type, which developed from the Knidian Aphrodite type sculpted by the Athenian Praxiteles around 350 BCE, and is characterised as a more sensual and sexualised development of earlier poses in which Venus, or her Greek counterpart Aphrodite, had been depicted.

The sculpture is approximately 112 centimetres (44 in) in height, and set on an ovoid base. It has remained mostly intact since antiquity, apart from restorations to the lower parts of both arms. From some time after 1502, it was owned by the Gonzaga ruling family of the Italian city of Mantua. It has been credited as an influence on several Renaissance and early modern artists active in Italy, including Raphael, Marcantonio Raimondi, and the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens, who painted several figures, including Venus herself, in the pose of the statue.

In 1629, the statue was sold to Charles I of England, along with several other artworks and antiquities from the Gonzaga collection. After Charles's execution in 1649, it was sold to Robert Houghton, formerly the king's brewer, to pay debts owed to him by the Crown, and it came into the possession of the painter Peter Lely. It was returned to the Royal Collection in 1682, after Lely's death, and displayed in the Palace of Whitehall. It was saved from the fire that destroyed most of the palace in 1698, but stolen afterwards; it returned to royal possession in 1702. The statue was moved to Windsor Castle in 1902, and lost at some point afterwards. Following its rediscovery in the 1950s, it was placed on permanent loan to the British Museum in 1963. It has since featured in exhibitions at the British Museum, at the National Gallery, and at the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford.

The Crouching Venus type

The Lely Venus is an example of the "Crouching Venus" or "Crouching Aphrodite" type. The Crouching Venus was a style of statue of the Graeco-Roman goddess Venus (equivalent to the Greek Aphrodite) depicting her in a crouched position, often in the act of bathing. Images of nude female figures, including goddesses, are known in this position from the sixth century BCE, though life-size versions of Aphrodite in this position are known only from the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE) and onwards. Art historians mostly date the origin of the Crouching Aphrodite to the third century BCE, though Andreas Linfert dates it to the middle of the second century BCE. The art historian Geoffrey Waywell calls the Lely Venus "arguably the finest version of this much copied statue type".

The Crouching Aphrodite was a development of the Knidian Aphrodite type, or Venus Pudica ("Venus Ashamed"), first sculpted by the Athenian Praxiteles around 350 BCE. It bears similarities to the standing Capitoline Aphrodite type, a descendant of the Knidian type known from Roman versions of Hellenistic sculptures, and may have been a development of it. In the early twentieth century, the art historian Gerhard Krahmer [de] argued that the archetype of the form was a sculpture made by a sculptor named Diodalsas for Nicomedes I of Bithynia (d. c. 247 BCE); modern scholars reject this view.

The Crouching Venus form was widely adapted and imitated by sculptors of the Italian Renaissance, including Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi ("L'Antico), Andrea Riccio and Giambologna. It was also used, particularly in the first half of the sixteenth century, as inspiration for paintings, prints and drawings, though this trend declined after 1550 and, in the words of the art historian Selma Hoyo, "an esoteric and empty cliché" by the last third of the century. It remained a highly visible fixture of European art into the nineteenth century.

The art historian Christine Havelock suggests that it made "a more outspoken statement about the ripened female body" than standing types, via "the heavy weight of the pear-shaped body, the pendulous breasts, and the ample rolls of flesh around the abdomen". The classicist Sophie Schoess characterises it as "a statue type that simultaneously seduces the viewer and holds them at bay".

Description

The Lely Venus is a marble statue posed in a crouched position, in or around the act of bathing. The figure's head is turned to the right; its right arm is lifted towards the head, as if in the act of adjusting its hair, while the left arm is rested on its left thigh. The statue is approximately 112 centimetres (44 in) in height, 43 centimetres (17 in) in width, and 58 centimetres (23 in) in depth. It is set on an ovoid base, approximately 86 centimetres (34 in) in circumference, and weighs around 600 kilograms (1,300 lb). It is similar to another Crouching Venus, held by the National Archaeological Museum, Naples; both are known by the traditional label of "Diodalsas type", after the sculptor once thought to have executed the Greek original. The art historians Ian Jenkins and Victoria Turner call it "a teasing composition" in which "from whichever viewpoint she is seen, some aspect of Aphrodite's sexuality is always tantalizingly obscured".

The statue is considered to date from the second century CE, during the Roman period, and to be based on an earlier Greek statue of the Hellenistic period, executed either in marble or bronze. The fingers of the right hand have been restored since antiquity, as has the left arm from the elbow downwards. The art historian Cornelius C. Vermeule has argued, by analogy with other examples of the Crouching Venus type, that the restoration of the right arm is incorrect, and that the hand should be set closer to the figure's hair. The statue is otherwise largely intact.

Modern history

The statue belonged to the Italian aristocrat and condottiere (mercenary commander) Guidobaldo da Montefeltro from the end of the fourteenth century until 1502; in that year, it was briefly owned by Cesare Borgia, who occupied Guidobaldo's duchy of Urbino on 21 June and seized his palace there, but soon returned to Guidobaldo. A little after 1502, Isabella d'Este, the marchioness consort of the Italian city of Mantua, purchased it for the city's Ducal Palace. It was recorded in the 1631 inventory of the collections of the city's Gonzaga rulers.

Duke Vincenzo II Gonzaga of Mantua sold the statue to Charles I of England (r. 1600–1649), alongside several other works of sculpture and the Triumphs of Caesar, a series of paintings by the Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna, in 1629. The total cost of the sculptures, plus the Triumphs of Caesar, was £10,500; to these were added a collection of paintings, including Titian's The Entombment and Antonio da Correggio's Allegory of Love, which brought the total sum to £18,280, 12s. 8d. Charles's agent, Daniel Nijs, described it in a letter of 1631 to the diplomat Thomas Carey as "the most beautiful sculpture of all"; he also suggested, falsely, that it may be the Venus de Milo or the Helen of Troy sculpted by Praxiteles. It was still in Nijs's house in Venice, unpaid for by Charles, when Nijs's creditors visited him on 13 June 1631, and only left Venice for England (aboard the ship Assurance) on 4 August 1632. A catalogue of Charles's collection, kept in the twentieth century in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, wrongly identified it as a statue of Helen of Troy.

Post–Civil War history

After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the statue was acquired in the Commonwealth Sale, in which it was listed for £600, by Robert Houghton. Houghton, formerly the king's brewer, was the head of the "third dividend", one of the fourteen syndicates of creditors owed money by the Crown, each of which was allotted goods equivalent to 15,000 Spanish escudos, or £3,750. After the Stuart Restoration of 1660, Colonel William Hawley compiled a list of Charles's sculptures that remained outside royal possession; this included the Lely Venus. The statue was bought by the Dutch painter Peter Lely, along with other objects from Charles's collection.

As it had been given to a royal servant, Houghton, in payment of debts owed to him by the Crown, the Lely Venus was exempted from the general requirement under the Indemnity and Oblivion Act of 1660 to return to the Crown goods sold from Charles's property after his execution. Lely died in 1680; the statue was bought by Charles II in 1682 and returned to the Royal Collection. It was displayed in the garden of Charles's palace at Whitehall, and was saved from the fire that destroyed most of the palace on 4 January 1698. After the fire, it was stolen, but it was recovered by the Royal Collection in 1702.

In 1902, the statue was moved from Kensington Palace to Windsor Castle. At some point afterwards, it was lost, but was rediscovered in the 1950s. In 1955, it was on display, along with other works of the Royal Collection, in the orangery at Windsor Castle. In 1963, it was placed in the British Museum, on permanent loan from Elizabeth II.

In 2005–2006, the statue was included in the National Gallery's exhibition Rubens: A Master in the Making. For the British Museum's "Statuephilia" exhibition in 2008–2009, Siren, a solid gold statue of the supermodel Kate Moss by Marc Quinn, was positioned facing the Lely Venus from the entrance of the Duveen Gallery, which houses the Elgin Marbles taken from the Parthenon. The Lely Venus was the first object displayed to visitors in the museum's exhibition Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art in March–July 2015, curated by Ian Jenkins. A 2017 study quoted museum curators as saying that barriers had been erected around the statue because "people kept patting her behind". In October 2026, it was loaned to the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford for the exhibition Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess.

Influence

The Lely Venus is the most complete instance of the Crouching Venus type to have survived into the Renaissance period. The Italian painter Raphael, whose father was a painter and poet in Guidobaldo's court, may have seen the statue; his unfinished Esterházy Madonna (painted between 1507 and 1508) poses the Virgin Mary in a manner similar to the Crouching Venus, and the art historian Selma Holo sees a preparatory drawing made by Raphael for the painting as specifically echoing the Lely Venus.

The Italian artist Marcantonio Raimondi made a print based on the Lely Venus in 1509; Holo argues that the accuracy of the drawing indicates that Marcantonio must have seen the statue in Mantua in person. The Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens may have seen the statue when he visited Italy in 1600; several of his paintings, including his Venus Frigida ("Freezing Venus", 1614) and his Three Nymphs with a Cornucopia (c. 1625 – c. 1628), show the goddess or related mythological figures in a similar pose to the Lely Venus. It may have been used by the French sculptor Antoine Coysevox as a model for his bronze version of the Crouching Venus type, made in 1686 for the French royal residence at Versailles. The Flemish sculptor John Nost probably used it as the model for his own Crouching Venus, executed in 1702. Adam Buck included a depiction of it in a watercolour of 1801.

Footnotes

Explanatory notes

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1. ↑ Also known as Naked Aphrodite Crouching at Her Bath, and as the Windsor Venus.
2. ↑ In a letter to The Art Bulletin in 1975, the art historian Clifford M. Brown argued that, while the Lely Venus was certainly the sculpture purchased from Mantua by Charles I, it could not be demonstrated that it was the same sculpture as that acquired by Isabella d'Este.
3. ↑ By way of comparison, this was approximately 3% of Charles's average annual revenue from regular sources between 1631 and 1635, which was £618,376.
4. ↑ The dated entries in the list fall between May 1660 and August 1661.
5. ↑ Writing in his 1954 work on the Crouching Aphrodite type, the art historian Reinhardt Lullies believed that the statue had been lost in the fire of 1698, and was as yet unrecovered.

Bibliography