Medici Venus

In 1803 this marble Venus arrived in Paris, sent north on Napoleon's orders from Florence, where for more than a century it had stood in the Tribuna of the Uffizi as the emblem of the whole collection. Grand Tourists had crossed Europe partly to stand in front of it. The statue itself is far older: a marble carved in the 1st century BC, its base bearing the signature of Cleomenes, an Athenian sculptor, copying a lost Greek bronze in the tradition of Aphrodite caught covering herself as she steps from her bath. It stayed in Paris until Napoleon fell and only then returned to Florence. Today it stands again in the Tribuna, its weight on one leg, both hands raised in that old gesture of modesty.