The Birth of Venus

Somewhere on this canvas a hand wrote in chalk: 73, Reservado. That was the filing mark of a room in the Prado you could not enter without permission. The Spanish crown had accumulated a great many painted nudes, and Charles III once ordered them burned. His court painter Mengs argued they were needed for teaching young painters, and in the 1790s the group went to the Academy of San Fernando instead. This Venus travelled with them. The museum claimed the pictures back in 1827, and by 1834 the canvas was entered in the reserved room's inventory as number 29.

It had been painted for a hunting lodge. Cornelis de Vos made it between 1636 and 1638 for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV's lodge in the hills of El Pardo, following a small oil sketch by Rubens. Venus wrings the sea out of her hair, a nymph holds out a string of pearls, and a triton blows a conch to announce her.