The Venus Tauride or Venus of Tauris is a 1.67 m high sculpture of

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

. It is named after the Tauride (Tavrichesky) Palace in

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, where it was kept from the end of the eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth. It is now in the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and holds the large ...

. It shows the goddess rising from her bath (with a column on the right on the piece, to her left-hand side, with her towel or clothing draped over it). It lost both arms in antiquity and her nose has been restored, but is otherwise complete (including an elaborate ancient hairstyle popular amongst classical upper-class women, with locks falling down onto her shoulders, and an original ankle bracelet on her left ankle). It was thought to be a 2nd-century AD Roman copy from a Greek original, but recent research suggests it is in fact a Greek original dating from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. It is by an unknown sculptor, who takes inspiration from the

Aphrodite of Cnidus The Aphrodite of Knidos (or Cnidus) was an Ancient Greek sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite created by Praxiteles of Athens around the 4th century BC. It was one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history, d ...

(particularly of the Capitoline Venus type) but does not follow it strictly (the Tauride Venus, though well-proportioned and fully nude as in the exemplar, is slighter in build and of a more refined beauty than the exemplar). It was ceded by

Pope Clement XI Pope Clement XI (; ; ; 23 July 1649 – 19 March 1721), born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 November 1700 to his death in March 1721. Clement XI was a patron of the arts an ...

Peter I Peter I may refer to: Religious hierarchs * Saint Peter (c. 1 AD – c. 64–68 AD), a.k.a. Simon Peter, Simeon, or Simon, apostle of Jesus * Pope Peter I of Alexandria (died 311), revered as a saint * Peter I of Armenia (died 1058), Catholicos ...

in Rome in 1718, after protracted diplomatic negotiations: though a peasant had offered it to the Czar's agent, the Pope had vetoed the exportation; he relented only when the Czar proposed to exchange it with the relics of

Bridget of Sweden Bridget of Sweden, Bridgettines, OSsS ( – 23 July 1374), also known as Birgitta Birgersdotter and Birgitta of Vadstena (), was a Swedish Catholic Mysticism, mystic and the founder of the Bridgettines. Outside Sweden, she was also known as the ...

; they were in Revel, today called

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

, which the Russians had just conquered. On its arrival in Russia two years later it was the first classical sculpture to be seen in that country.

References

External links

Image (copyrighted)

Hermitage site
3rd-century BC Greek sculptures 2nd-century BC Greek sculptures Capitoline Venuses Sculptures in the Hermitage Museum Works of unknown authorship {{Russia-sculpture-stub