Venus Cesi
Unknown (Roman, after a Praxitelean type) · Roman imperial period
Aphrodite stands with her upper body bare and a himation wrapped around her hips, a bracelet on her arm, her wavy hair drawn back in bands to a low bun. The half draped goddess was a favourite subject of the late classical period, and this figure belongs to the same family as the Venus of Arles, also in the Louvre, whose model is thought to go back to Praxiteles. The head is a modern reassembly, and according to the nineteenth century scholar Froehner the nose, forearm, half the right leg and thigh and the feet are restorations.
Carved in Thasian marble, probably in Rome, the statue is known as the Venus Cesi after the sixteenth century Roman collection of the Cesi family, in whose garden it stood. It came to France before the Revolution and entered the Louvre when aristocratic collections were seized by the revolutionary government. For a long time a diademed head that is now displayed separately was placed on this body. Look at the fall of the cloak: its heavy folds are the sculptor's foil for the smooth skin above.
Did You Know? For years this body wore a different head, a diademed one now catalogued separately, until restorers separated the two.
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