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- The Bathing Venus is a bronze sculpture attributed to Giambologna (1529-1608), the leading late Renaissance sculptor in Europe. It was most likely created for King Henri IV of France with other bronzes as a diplomatic gift from Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to embellish the gardens of the Royal castle in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. A Mercury in the Louvre, recently attributed to Hans Reichle and Giambologna's Triton in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were likely to have been also part of this grand-ducal gift. Documents relating to the commission have recently been discovered in the Florentine State Archives. To enhance the erotic attraction of the female nude, the artist has contrived that the goddess hides her face behind her raised arm holding up a vessel, with which she is bathing. With the other hand she dries herself with a handkerchief. The viewer can approach her without entering her line of sight and, when in front of her, there is a moment of reciprocal discovery. The seated statue is a second, remodelled and rethought version of a marble Venus by the same artist, today in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The two versions show so many similarities that they clearly derive from a common source – most likely a full-scale model, a "modello in grande“. It is documented that Giambologna followed the practice of making full-scale models and keeping them in his workshop. The bronze Venus was discovered in the late 1980s in the possession of a scrap-metal dealer near Paris, who seemed to have obtained it from the demolition of the Château de Chantemesle (sometimes spelt Chantemerle) in Corbeil-Essonnes, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, in the early 1960s. It was at first catalogued as a later copy after the Getty Venus, but recent research has attributed it to Giambologna. (en)
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