Venus Victrix (Canova)

Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix ("Venus Victorious") is a semi-nude and life-size reclining, neo-Classical portrait sculpture of Pauline Bonaparte by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova, who revived ancient Roman artistic traditions of portraying mortal individuals in the guise of deities, a beautiful woman reclining on a couch, or reclining hermaphroditi. The sculpture was commissioned by her husband Camillo Borghese and executed in Rome from 1805 to 1808, after the subject's marriage into the Borghese family. It then was moved to Camillo's house in Turin, then to Genoa, only arriving in its present location at the Galleria Borghese in Rome around 1838.