A reduced copy after the antique marble sculpture in the Uffizi. This was one of the few surviving antique marbles in Florence and a prime attraction for Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century. This copy was very likely made for that market as it is a good but undistinguished copy. The Medici Venus is a life-size Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. The goddess is depicted in a fugitive, momentary pose, as if surprised in the act of emerging from the sea, to which the dolphin at her feet alludes. Elements of the female nude are bound to include something about the social and erotic character of the person represented; when the cult of worship for the goddess is abandoned, women will be represented more as they are seen by sculptors and their audiences than by how the goddess was worshipped.