Venus De Martres School XX Eme

20th century school, after the Antique proof in patinated plaster, edition sculpture. Excavations in 1826 at Villa Chiragan unearthed this remarkable head of Aphrodite-Venus. The reputation of the work was such that it benefited from a name, “Venus of Martres”, which therefore distinguished it and testified to the prestige which had been granted to it. The Count of Clarac, with his expert and discerning eye, made it a Venus “one of the most beautiful in existence, even if it is not superior to them”, comparing her to the Medici Venuses of Arles and Milo, supreme references in this first half of the neo-classical 19th century. Exhibited in Paris in 1867, it was attributed to the Greek Praxiteles R before becoming, more reasonably, one of the replicas of the Aphrodite of Cide, a coastal town in Caria