The Lely Venus is a marble statue of the
crouching Venus
:''This article discusses the type itself: see links within it for specific instances of the type.''
The ''Crouching Venus'' is a Hellenistic model of Venus surprised at her bath. Venus crouches with her right knee close to the ground, turns he ...
type. It is a copy of a
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium i ...
original by Doidalses of Bithynia and dates from the
Antonine period.
History
The statue is first recorded in the
Gonzaga
Gonzaga may refer to:
Places
* Gonzaga, Lombardy, commune in the province of Mantua, Italy
* Gonzaga, Cagayan, municipality in the Philippines
*Gonzaga, Minas Gerais, town in Brazil
*Forte Gonzaga, fort in Messina, Sicily
People with the surna ...
collection in
Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name.
In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...
, where it was inventoried in the Gonzaga collection in 1627 Whilst there it was seen by
Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradit ...
, who stayed with the Gonzaga family whilst on the continent on diplomatic and art-collecting duties for
Charles I of England
Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after ...
. It was an important influence on his