34 JOSEPH NOLLEKENS
English (London), 1737-1823
Venus, 1773
Marble
124 cm (48^13 /i6 in.)
Inscribed on the side of the base:
Nollekens R[ 1773
87.SA.106
Venus, one of three female deities by Nollekens in the Museum's collection, was
commissioned by Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second marquess of Rockingham,
to accompany a statue of Paris that Rockingham already owned and believed to
be an important antiquity. With Paris, the marble goddesses—Minerva, Juno, and
Venus—would have formed a group representing the classical myth in which the
mortal shepherd was called upon to decide which goddess was the most beautiful.
Nollekens chose to illustrate the beginning of the Judgment of Paris, depicting each
divine contestant in a different stage of undress as she attempts to win the shepherd's
vote. Minerva, the virgin goddess of wisdom and warfare and by far the most modest
of the three, reaches up to remove her helmet. Juno, the goddess of marriage, bares
one breast as she opens her dress. Venus, the goddess of love and the winner of the
competition, is nude except for the single sandal she is removing.
Although known primarily as a sculptor of portrait busts and monuments,
Nollekens had a particular interest in freestanding mythological figures. Because of
the rarity of such commissions, the Museum's marble goddesses form one of the earliest
important groups of gallery sculpture created by an English sculptor for an English
patron. Nollekens studied in Rome for eight years, and his style, a mannered classicism
inflected by coy charm, exhibits the influence of both ancient and sixteenth-century
Italian sculpture. The statue of Venus draws upon a range of sculptural sources for its
composition, including works by the Florentine Mannerist sculptor Giambologna.
Nollekens's interest in Giambologna, as well as his inventive embellishments on basic
mythological themes, underscores his lyrical and less rigid approach to the classical past.
PAF
EUROPEAN SCULPTURE 97
