In this edition of our A-Z series, volunteer archivist Cluny Wells explores the fascinating journey of Chiswick’s Venus de Medici—from her 18th-century origins in the gardens to her disappearance and eventual return.

The Venus de Medici statue in Chiswick House Grounds, started life standing on a plinth at the south west side of Chiswick House, and can be seen in this position in a 1729 painting by Pieter Rijsbrack.

She was then moved to the top of the Doric Column, which had probably been designed by James Gibbs for Lord Burlington in 1722. She was a copy of the famous marble statue, sculpted by Cleomenes, son of Apollodorus, between the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE.

The History of the Venus statue

Venus, the ancient Roman deity, gained importance in the decoration of the English garden because of her double role related to gardens. She was, the traditional goddess of love and beauty, less known is her identification by Romans as the guardian or goddess of the garden.

Gradually during the seventeenth century one particular ancient statue of Venus began to be identified as an especially notable and beautiful representation of the goddess of love and beauty. This was the Venus de’ Medici, owned by the Medici family in Rome in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and she had been put on exhibition in their Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill.

The statue had a very distinctive pose. She was slightly bent, holding her right hand before her breasts and covering her genital area with her left, suggesting innocence and coy shame. By November 1644, the English tourist John Evelyn, visiting the Villa Medici, noted in his diary.

In the great chamber (of the villa) ……..the Venus is without parallel, being the masterpiece of (name deleted), …….certainly nothing in sculpture ever approached this miracle of art.

Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689) who was particularly devout, wanted the statue moved from Rome to Florence because of the lewd remarks made by art students viewing it. By 1680 it was on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where it is still today. Edward Gibbon (historian) on seeing it in1764, stated “It is the most voluptuous sensation that my eye has ever experienced.”

Venus in England

The Medici Venus was the image that prevailed throughout the eighteenth century as the central figure in gardens of England almost irrespective of the meaning involved. Towards the middle of the century in England, casts and carved copies of antiquities, particularly from the Medici collection in Florence became very popular.

Around this time Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel had a version of the Medici Venus in his gallery of ancient sculpture at Arundel House in London, as shown in a portrait of the earl attributed to Daniel Mytens, 1618.

In 1718 Charles Bridgeman had worked at Stowe for 1st Viscount Cobham to improve the area known as Home Park, and together with Sir John Vanbrugh they erected an open Temple of Venus in 1721which had a dome and rested on ten Ionic columns. A gilded copy of Venus stood under the dome. The Venus at Stowe was an attempt to reconstruct the ancient shrine of Venus on the Island of Cnidus.

Differing views of Venus

The Venus de Medici figure was originally seen as a beautiful, shy, innocent being who was nevertheless seen by some as existing in an erotic ambience. An example of this was shown in a portrait painted by George Knapton, in 1742 of Sir Francis Dashwood, notorious founder of the Hell Fire Club in West Wycombe. He is depicted dressed in the habit of a Franciscan friar, kneeling before a statue of Venus de Medici, with “his gloating eyes fixed, as in a trance, on what the modesty of nature seems desirous to conceal.” (John Wilkes).

A descendant, Sir John Dashwood-King destroyed most of the temple of Venus and its statue in 1819, and it collapsed leaving only an overgrown grotto. Over 100 years later the new Sir Francis Dashwood decided to rebuild the Temple very accurately, apart from a version of the Venus de Medici. In 1986 a version of the more lusty and bold Venus de Milo was placed in the Tempietto – perhaps more suited to 20th century taste.

On a visit to Rousham in 2021, we saw several Venus de Medici – one really stood out as the work of Kent – knowing his weakness for an Ogee arch- it was placed in one of his Ogee arch niches on one of the exterior house walls

Back to the Chiswick Venus story

At some point in the 19th century she was moved, with other statues, to Chatsworth, when the estate was to be rented out. A few of us volunteers visiting Chatsworth in 2019, saw the Chiswick statues near the entrance to the gardens – the goat, the wolf, the boar and Samson slaying the Philistine, then further in to the gardens we came across a Venus de Medici on a plinth. Was this the Chiswick one, missing for well over a hundred years? That’s our next task maybe.

Chiswick’s modern Venus

In 2009 during the major Restoration of the Grounds, Chiswick House Friends commissioned the sculptor Andrian Melka to make a new copy of Venus de Medici, and since then she has stood demurely on the Doric Column exactly where her statue stood in Lord Burlington’s time.

To conclude

Venus de Medici statues found their heyday in the English Garden of the eighteenth century. Ideas and inspiration were definitely shared between the great gardens of the time through their garden designers, who worked on those gardens. The Medici Venus fulfilled a dual role as the goddess of love and beauty and protector of the Garden, and although Chiswick lost its own Venus for a while, it is as if a new one has come to watch over us through the next phase of the Garden’s existence.

Sources:

• Chiswick House Gardens. David Jacques.
• Chiswick House and Gardens a History. Gillian Clegg.
• Venus in the Eighteenth-Century English Garden. David R. Coffin.
• Article in Garden History Journal , Winter 2000