After the Antique, Italian, 18th Century

Colnaghi and Co., London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 5 February 2018.

Rediscovered in Italy in the 16th century, the Venus Callipyge is believed to be a marble Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue, possibly associated with the shrine of Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse. The sculpture was first recorded in the celebrated Italian Farnese Collection in 1594, and since it entered that collection, it enjoyed immense popularity, particularly amongst foreign travellers visiting Italy on their Grand Tour. 

The earliest known copy of the Venus Callipyge is a bronze statuette in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, attributed to the Flemish sculptor Hans Mont, who left Rome in 1571. In the 17th century, Jean-Jacques Clérion and François Barois made marble copies for Louis XIV. In the 18th century, it was widely copied, including by the sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel for Gustavus III of Sweden for the Hall of Mirrors in the Royal Palace, Stockholm. Sergel's Venus was modelled with the features of the royal mistress, Countess Ulla van Hopken.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven 1981, pp. 316-318, fig. 168.