School of Prague, 17th Century

This is loosely inspired by a classical marble, the so-called Crouching Venus. It is not known when the first versions were excavated, but Giambologna made several bronzes derived from it, so it was well-known by the mid-16th Century.  In the painting only the lower half of the figure derives from the Crouching Venus, whose hands cross her body, and the painter may have used a Giambologna derivation.

This painting is strongly reminiscent of the female figure and facial types of  Rudolfine Court Painters in Prague, Joseph Heintz, and more particularly, Dirk de Quade van Ravesteyn, although the unusual reddish-brown ground, suggests that it may be later in date.  Joseph Heintz drew a free adaptation of Giambologna's bronze, perhaps drawn from life from a model approximately imitating Giambologna's figure (private collection, London; see J. Zimmer, Joseph Heintz der Ältere, Munich/Berlin 1988, p. 155, no. A 88 N, reproduced plate 131). It is particularly close in conception to two panel paintings of a recumbent female nude, both often called Sleeping Venus, which were both traditionally attributed to Heintz, but are now generally accepted to be by Ravesteyn (see T. DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague. Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago-London 1988, pp. 224-5, nos. 16.12 & 16.13, both reproduced).  Ravesteyn painted a Venus, now lost, which was recorded in the possessions of Elizabeth Sweerts, widow of Paulus Aertsz. van Ravesteyn, in 1662, and was celebrated in a poem "op een Venus-beeld door Ravesteyn schilder van Keizer Rudulfus geschildert", by Hieronymus Sweerts, published in 1697 (idem, p. 225).  The present painting may record the missing Venus.