Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix

Prince Camillo Borghese ordered this marble in 1804, a year after he married Pauline Bonaparte, and in the same year her brother Napoleon made himself emperor. So the head of one of Rome's grandest families asked Canova for a portrait of his wife, now an imperial highness, reclining half-nude as Venus. The apple in her hand is the one the Trojan prince Paris awarded to the most beautiful of the goddesses. Canova carved it in Rome until 1808 and finished the marble with a fine polish and a coat of wax, which gives the skin its warm sheen.

The statue hardly stayed in Rome at first. In 1809 it travelled north to Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, where Camillo governed for Napoleon, and in 1814, with the empire collapsing, it was shipped back by sea from Genoa. In the Borghese palace in the city it was shown at night, by the light of torches. It came to this villa only in 1838.