Borghese Venus
Unknown (Roman, Capitoline Venus type) · c. 160 AD
Aphrodite stands naked, one hand across her breast and the other before her lap, in the gesture of modesty that later writers called pudica. Her hair is drawn back in bands from the brow into a bun knotted with a ribbon, with a few locks escaping onto her shoulders. Beside her a small Eros, with a tuft of hair standing up over his forehead, balances on the back of a dolphin. The dolphin and the boy are both a support for the marble and a signature: the goddess was born from the sea, and love is her child.
The group belongs to the type known as the Capitoline Venus, after the famous statue in Rome, itself a descendant of the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles, the first monumental female nude in Greek art. Here the goddess is broader in the hips and softer in the flesh than her Knidian ancestor, and the drill has been used to hollow the hair into deep curls that catch shadow. The head and body are of different marbles. Many parts are restorations: Aphrodite's left forearm, right arm from the elbow, right leg below the knee and left foot, and on Eros the nose, arms, right leg, left foot and most of the wing.
The statue was found in 1758 at Monte Compatri near Frascati, in the territory of ancient Tusculum, where Roman aristocrats had their villas, and it entered the Borghese collection in Rome. It was carved around one hundred and sixty AD, in the Antonine period, when demand for Greek types at large scale was at its height. Napoleon purchased it with the rest of the Borghese antiquities in 1807, and it has been shown in the Louvre ever since. Stand to one side and note how the turn of the head away from the covering hands gives the goddess a hint of surprise, as if the viewer had just walked in.
Did You Know? The little Eros riding a dolphin is not only a charming companion but a structural prop that keeps the tall marble goddess from snapping at the ankles.
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