This Roman copy of a Hellenistic original is ultimately derived from the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles. Rather than using bathing imagery with a water jug at her feet for washing, there is a dolphin denoting the foamy waves from which she was born and has just emerged.

Already known in Rome in the sixteenth century, the Medici Venus was one of the most copied antiquities and a high point of the Grand Tour