Щоденник Марії Башкирцевої

Capitoline Venus

Також відомий як: Capitoline Venus, Vénus Capitoline, Venus Capitolina, Venere Capitolina, à la Vénus Capitoline

Культура · Мистецтво
Marble statue of a nude Venus covering her breast and groin with her hands, hair gathered in a knot with a long lock over one shoulder, an urn draped with cloth at her side
Capitoline Venus, Roman marble copy (Antonine period) of a Hellenistic original, Capitoline Museums, Rome Photo: Jastrow (2006), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Overview

The Capitoline Venus is a slightly over-lifesize marble statue of Venus in the Venus pudica ("modest Venus") pose, a type that descends from Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Cnidus through a lost Hellenistic original of the 3rd or 2nd century BC. The Capitoline example is an Antonine (2nd century AD) Roman copy. It was found on the Viminal Hill in the pontificate of Clement X (1670-76), bought by Pope Benedict XIV from the Stazi family in 1752 and given to the Capitoline Museums in Rome, where it stands in a niche of its own on the first floor of the Palazzo Nuovo, the "cabinet of Venus". Napoleon had it carried to Paris under the Treaty of Tolentino; it was returned in 1816. (Source: Wikipedia, "Capitoline Venus", citing Helbig and Haskell & Penny.)

The statue's hair, parted and drawn back in waves into a knot at the nape with long loose locks, is the reason it turns up in a diary: it was the fashionable model for a "Venus" coiffure.

Marie and this work

In Rome in the spring of 1876 Marie wears her own hair "à la Vénus Capitoline" at home, dressed up in a self-designed costume:

  • 1876-03-04 (055.0096, Rome): staying in because her face displeases her, she does her hair "à la Vénus Capitoline avec mes propres cheveux dorés", in a white flannel dress with a yellow silk cord, a leather aumônière and Russia-leather mules; "j'ai l'air d'une femme du Premier Empire ou d'une Béatrice, ou d'une figure de keepsake".
  • 1876-05-19 (060.0586, Rome): "Je suis coiffée à la Vénus Capitoline, je suis en blanc comme une Béatrix avec un chapelet et une croix de nacre sur le cou", posed "en martyre".
  • 1876-06-18/19 (062.0453): dressing for the evening, her hair "autour de la tête et deux grandes boucles naturellement bouclées devant, comme chez la Vénus Capitoline". The existing footnote 062.0453.3 notes the statue in the Capitoline Museums.

All three are about her own hairstyle, not about looking at the statue; the diary does not record a visit to the Capitoline in these passages.

Sources