Crouching Venus

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The source is an ancient composition often identified as the “Aphrodite of Doidalses,” the best-known marble—and the one our bronzista consulted—being that in the Uffizi.[1] It was restored by 1704, when an engraving records the seashell that supports the goddess’ left buttock, present in our work too.[2] The conceit was that she appeared on land immediately after her birth, borne there by the shell. Our man gives her two armlets for extra allure. Reductions apparently were sold in eighteenth-century Rome by Neoclassical founders Giacomo Zoffoli and Francesco Righetti, but this one still has more than a whiff of the Baroque about it.[3] -JDD Footnotes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.) 1. Haskell and Penny 1981, pp. 321–23. 2. Maffei 1704, pl. 28. 3. Haskell and Penny 1981, p. 323.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art