Venus of Arles

This is an 18th-century plaster cast of the celebrated Roman marble statue known as the Venus of Arles, from the first century AD. The original stands in the Louvre in Paris. The Venus of Arles was inspired by an Aphrodite by Praxiteles from the fourth century BC. It was found in 1651 among the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre of Arles. For centuries it was regarded as the supreme icon of feminine beauty, until the Venus of Milo ousted it from this position of honour in 1819.