Copy of the "Venus de Medici"

Artist Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (Italian, 1656 - 1740)

Dateca. 1710-1720

MediumBronze

DimensionsOverall (with base): 62 1/2 inches (158.75 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: the Elmer F. Pierson Foundation

Object numberF73-3

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Sculpture Hall

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Birmingham Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK, 1972.

Gallery Label

This is a copy after the famous ancient Greek sculpture Venus de Medici (2nd century C.E.), so-called because it belonged to the Medici family, the hereditary rulers of Florence from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Venus, goddess of love, gazes into the distance while her son, Cupid, plays on the back of a dolphin. This example is one of several copies cast in bronze from a plaster cast of the original marble, which is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Manufacturing replicas of classical statues became an industry in the 18th century with the expansion of cultural tourism.

Provenance

Madame Boël, Paris;

Private Collection, New York;

With Heim Gallery, London, on joint account with Artibus, S. A. and Harrison, by 1969;

Purchased from Heim Gallery, Artibus and Harrison by Alfred W. T. Hood, Oxford, March 17, 1969-February 23, 1973 [1];

Purchased from Hood, through Heim Gallery, London, by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1973.

Published References

Possibly Klaus Lankheit, Florentinische Barockplastik die Kunst am Hofe der letzten Medici: 1670-1743 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1962), 144-45.

Andrew Ciechanowiecki and Gay Seagrim, “Soldani’s Blenheim Commission and other Bronze Sculptures after the Antique,” Festschrift Klaus Lankheit (May 20, 1973): 180-84, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 144, (repro.).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 179, (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 86, (repro.).

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