The Venus de Medici at Florence is the most perfect specimen of ancient sculpture remaining; and is spoken of as the Model of Female Beauty. It was so much a favorite of the Greeks and Romans, that a hundred ancient repetitions of this statue have been noticed by travellers. This statue is said to have been found in the forum of Octavia at Rome. It represents woman at that age when every beauty has just been perfected.
“The Venus de Medici at Florence,” says a distinguished writer, “is like a rose which, after a beautiful daybreak, expands its leaves to the first ray of the sun, and represents that age when the limbs assume a more finished form and the breast begins to develop itself.”
The size of the head is sufficiently small to leave that predominance to the vital organs in the chest, which, as already said, makes the nutritive system peculiarly that of woman. This is the first and most striking proof of the profound knowledge of the artist, the principles of whose art taught him that a vast head is not a constituent of female beauty. In mentioning the head it is scarcely possible to avoid noticing the rich curls of hair.(Venus de Medici. Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World))
