Venus at her bath
after Giambologna (Douai 1529 - Florence 1608)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1801 - 1899
Materials
Marble
Measurements
825 x 240 x 235 mm
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436829
Summary
Marble, Venus at her bath, after Giambologna, 19th century. A restored quarter-sized marble statue of Venus, nude, at her bath. With her right knee and shin lifted on a stool, Venus twists around to the right to dry her foot. The cloth she uses to dry herself is held in her left hand and drapes over the stool. The stool has an inverted cabriole shape, terminating in scroll and ball feet.
Full description
The statue is after a bronze modeled in the workshop of the celebrated late-renaissance sculptor Giambologna (1527-1608). The model was one of a series of compositional studies by Giambologna and his followers showing nudes occupied with their toilet (see Avery and Radcliffe 1978 pp.62-7, nos.1-11 and Katz 2007, pp.36-9). The bronze after which this statue was modeled is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (inv.no. T.1357, reproduced in Avery and Radcliffe 1978, p.66 no.8). A more commonly-known variant of this composition includes Cupid attending Venus (see the cast by Antonio Susini, of Giambologna's workshop, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv.no. 32.100.183). Alice Rylance-Watson October 2018
Provenance
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984.
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1994)
Makers and roles
after Giambologna (Douai 1529 - Florence 1608), sculptor
References
Avery and Radcliffe 1978: Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, Giambologna, 1529-1608: sculptor to the Medici, exh.cat. venues: Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 1978, nos.5-11 Katz 2007: Daniel Katz, Master Bronzes from the Beit Collection, exh. cat., Daniel Katz Gallery, London, 2007, pp. 36-39 Radcliffe and Penny 2004: Anthony Radcliffe and Nicholas Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500-1650, The Robert H. Smith Collection, London 2004, no.31, pp.188-91 Avery 1987: Charles Avery, Giambologna, The Complete Sculpture, Oxford 1987