Venera with apple

During his second trip to Europe, Nikolai Konstantinovich and Fanny Lear visited Rome at the Villa Borghese. Here he admired the famous sculpture by Antonio Canova, depicting Paulina Borghese, Napoleon's younger sister, in the form of a naked beauty, lying on a marble bed in the form of the Venus-winner with an apple in her left hand. Nikolai Konstantinovich immediately ordered the sculptor Tommaso Solari, making an almost exact copy of the sculpture, but instead of Pauline Borghese, his beloved should lie on the marble bed - Fanny Lear in the form of Venus with an apple.