Paulina Borghese as Aphrodite, aka Sleeping Beauty 18x36cm Full Alabaster Statue

Pauline Bonaparte as

Venus Victrix ("Aphrodite Victorious") is a semi-nude life-size reclining neo-Classical portrait sculpture by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Reviving the ancient Roman artistic traditions of portrayals of mortal individuals in the guise of the gods, and of the beautiful female form reclining on a couch, it was commissioned by Pauline Bonapartes husband Camillo Borghese and executed in Rome from 1805 to 1808, after the subjects marriage into the Borghese family. It then moved to Camillos house in Turin, then to Genoa, only arriving in its present home (the Galleria Borghese in Rome) around 1838. She holds an apple in her hand evoking Aphrodites victory in the Judgement of Paris. The room in which the sculpture is exhibited at the Galleria Borghese also has a ceiling painting portraying the judgement, painted by Domenico de Angelis in 1779 and inspired by a famous relief on the facade of the Villa Medici. The subject of the sculpture may have also been affected by the Borghese familys mythical ancestry: they traced their descent to Venus, through her son Aeneas, the founder of Rome.

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