After Giambologna (1529-1608), Italian or French, 17th/ 18th century

Giambologna's Cesarini Venus was the sculptor's final exploration in marble of the single female nude. Carved in 1583, it was commissioned by Giangiorgio II Cesarini, Marquis of Civitanova, and executed on the orders of Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587). The marble, today housed in the Palazzo Margherita, the American embassy in Rome, is nonetheless thought to derive from an earlier wax model used in the casting of a signed bronze statuette of Venus drying herself from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 5874). This statuette has been identified with a bronze 'figurina' sent, according to Raffaello Borghini, as a gift from Francesco I to his future brother-in-law, the Emperor Maximilian II, towards the end of 1564. The Cesarini Venus became one of Giambologna's most celebrated and highly praised models, with reductions being cast by Antonio and Gianfrancesco Susini and later by other workshops.

RELATED LITERATURE
C. Avery and A. Radcliffe (eds.), Giambologna 1529-1608. Sculptor to the Medici, exh. cat. Arts Council of Britain and Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, London, 1978, pp. 62-63; C. Avery, Giambologna. The Complete Sculpture, London, 1993, no. 14, pp. 30, 107