Object Description
Domenico Brucciani & Co., 19th century
Venus Genetrix, After the Antique
Plaster
Inscribed on reverse: 2581 D. Brucciani & Co. London
71 cm. / 28 ins high
This plaster figure is cast after the marble statue in the Louvre known as the Aphrodite of Fréjus. It was found in 1650 in the southern French town of Fréjus, known in Roman times as the Forum Julii.
The Louvre Aphrodite (inv. no. MR 367) shows the Greek goddess of love and sexual desire wearing a light chiton lowered at the left breast and clinging closely to her skin to reveal the delicate curves of her body. The statue is assumed to be a Roman copy of a bronze Greek original probably dating to the late fifth century BC. This sculptural prototype, of which several other Roman-period copies are based on, is known by its Latinised designation of Venus Genetrix (from the Latin: “founder of the family”), since a famous statue of this type was set up in a temple on the Roman forum by Julius Caesar, whose Julio-Claudian dynasty claimed ancestry from the goddess.
The present plaster comes from the workshop of Domenico Brucciani (1814-80), whose firm of plaster modellers operated in London during the nineteenth century. It is published in a Brucciani & Co. catalogue of 1889 listing their inventory of casts made for art schools (op. cit.).
In this plaster model of the Venus, the whole of the right arm and the lower part of the left arm are missing, perhaps because the arms were thought to be modern restorations. This, together with the smoky yellow/brown patina and well-modelled wet drapery, imbues the figure with a seductive, antique atmosphere.