Venus Emerging from the Bath, called The Bather
Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain (1710-1795) · 1767
Venus steps from her bath, twisting to look down over her shoulder as she gathers a cloth behind her. The pose is a slow spiral: weight on one leg, hips turned one way, shoulders another, head bent. Allegrain polished the marble to a soft, almost waxy skin and left the drapery and the rocky base rougher, so that the figure seems to emerge from the stone as well as from the water. Walk around her; the statue was designed to offer a new silhouette from every angle, and the back is as carefully finished as the front.
The Marquis de Marigny, director of the king's buildings, ordered the statue in 1755 for the château de Choisy, and the plaster model appeared at the Salon of 1757. The marble, signed and dated 1767 on the back of the plinth, was admired by the critics of the day as one of the most beautiful nudes of the century. In 1772 Louis the Fifteenth gave it to his mistress Madame Du Barry for the gardens of Louveciennes. Seized for the nation in 1793, it passed through Versailles before reaching the Louvre by 1824.
Did You Know? Louis the Fifteenth gave this Venus to Madame Du Barry as a present less than a year after it left the sculptor's studio.
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