A George III sculpted wax relief of Venus with a dolphin, early 19th century
Further images
A George III sculpted wax relief of Venus with a dolphin, portrayed standing with her weight on her left leg, drapery held to her shoulder in her right hand and falling behind her, the dolphin at her feet with a rising tail; all atop a waisted plinth, on an integrally moulded rectangular backplate, mounted, glazed and framed within an ebonised wall display case.
Provenance
This relief follows a model known from a terracotta in the Sir Brinsley Ford collection, which is thought to have originally been owned by Giambologna's patron Bernardo Vecchietti. Depictions of Venus in this pose with the dolphin, were by the later 18th century of a fairly generic type, but were influenced in earlier days by examples such as the Mazarin Venus, now held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (object number 54, AA, 11). The Roman Marble copy of a Praxitelean type has a similar stance, distracted and looking elsewhere, the drapery being very much present but covering nothing, and all suggestive of surprised nudity and coy eroticism.