Italian, circa 1900 after the antique

In 1756 the Arundel marbles were removed from the staircase niches at Easton Neston and replaced some years later by plaster figures after antique models. Some of these are illustrated in a view of the staircase in Country Life in 1908 and summary descriptions are given in the 1910 inventory. By 1928 (and the publication of another photograph in Country Life) the plaster statues had been replaced by a group of marble statues, of which this lot and the following formed a part.

The present model is after the Venus de’ Medici. The prototype is in the Tribuna of the Uffizi in Florence, having been placed there in 1688. It is probably from the first century B.C., after a bronze original derived from the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles. The Venus is known to have been in the Villa Medici in Rome in 1638, where Perrier included it in the group of prints for his anthology of the most beautiful statues.