The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #108748 Message #2266339
Posted By: JohnInKansas
19-Feb-08 - 11:48 AM
Thread Name: BS: 482 Year Old Lady Too Hot for London
Subject: RE: BS: 482 Year Old Lady Too Hot for London
The "This" link in my first post illustrates the prudery that's been common. The link shows a Venus with figleaf, with the estimate of restorers that the "leaf" was added about 75 years ago. An arrow leads to the restored image without the leaf (and with nothing suggestive found under it) as now at the Canadian National Gallery.
The Venus on the poster is the same one that kat found at a poster gallery. Unfortunately neither the poster people nor most of the several newsclips since found give any info on the original. I would have assumed it belongs to the London National Academy, but Art Daily identifies it, with a very good (for web) image of the poster:
Jim Dixon's Google search showed only one other "usable" that I didn't already know about, at the National Gallery of Scotland. It's a Venus and Cupid that's a little different than several others, and that appparently contradicts a claim made by one Czech museum about the "uniqueness" of their somewhat similar one. (More ^$%#@ research needed now, I suppose.)
As Jim noted, Google gives you lots of fakes, and isn't generally a good place to find "good art," although it's sometimes useful as a backup to other sources.