The Townley Venus is a 2.14 m (7 ft) high 1st or 2nd century AD Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 in Proconnesian marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 of the goddess Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

, from the collection of Charles Towneley

Charles Towneley

Charles Townley was an English country gentleman, antiquary and collector of the Townley Marbles ....

. It was bought by him from the dealer Gavin Hamilton

Gavin Hamilton (artist)

Gavin Hamilton was a Scottish neoclassical history painterwho is more widely remembered for his hunts for antiquities in the neighborhood of Rome...

, who excavated it at Ostia

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is a large archeological site, close to the modern suburb of Ostia , that was the location of the harbour city of ancient Rome, which is approximately 30 km to the northeast. "Ostia" in Latin means "mouth". At the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was Rome's seaport, but, due to...

 in 1775. He shipped it to England in two pieces (it was already in these pieces when found) to get it past the Papal antiquaries' customs checks.

Adapted from a lost Greek original of the 4th century BC, the goddess is half-draped, with her torso nude. The arms were restored in the 18th century and the statue was set in another plinth, thereby changing the original pose and viewpoint. If the restoration is correct, her arms are in a pose reminiscent of the Venus of Capua or Venus de Milo

Venus de Milo

Aphrodite of Milos , better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a marble sculpture, slightly...

, and like them she may have held a mirror.

It is now in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 as Registration Number 1805,0703.15 and Sculpture 1574, and is usually on display in Room 84, although it went on tour to the 2007 Praxiteles exhibition at the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

.