Aphrodite

myminifactory

The Vatican Museums' collections boast the Colonna Venus, a Roman marble replica of Praxiteles' lost Aphrodite of Cnidus, carefully preserved at the Museo Pio-Clementino. It stands as the most well-known and possibly most accurate Roman copy of Praxiteles' original work. The Colonna Venus is one of four marble Venuses donated to Pope Pius VI in 1783 by Don Filippo Giuseppe Colonna; this, the finest of them, was featured in Ennio Quirino Visconti's catalogue of the Museo Pio-Clementino, where it was first identified as a copy of the Cnidian Venus. It quickly surpassed the somewhat flaccid variant of the same model that had long resided in the Vatican collections as the Belvedere Venus. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, a modest tin drape covered the legs of the Colonna statue - this was removed in 1932 when the statue was relocated to the Gabinetto delle Maschere where it can be seen today.