France, circa 1700 Venus Medici and Antinous from the Belvedere Pair of bronze figures Resting on a fully cast square base H.50 and 52 cm (19 ¾ and 20 ½ in.) Comparative bibliography: F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique - The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, no. 88, pp. 141-43 and 325-28, figs. 5 and 173. A pair of bronze figures of Venus Medici and Belvedere Antinous, after the Antique, French, circa 1700 *Information for buyers: Lot from outside the EEC: to the commissions and taxes indicated in the general terms and conditions of purchase, import VAT must be added (5.5% of the hammer price). *Information to the buyers : Lot from outside the EEC : an import tax (5,5 % of the hammer price) will be due, in addition to the commissions and taxes indicated in the general conditions of purchase. The antique version of Antinous from Belvedere, kept in the Vatican Museums in Rome, was first recorded in 1543, when Pope Paul III paid 1,000 ducats to place the statue in the Belvedere gardens. Since then, it has been considered one of the finest surviving sculptures from antiquity, displaying, according to Hogarth, "the most beautiful proportions" (op. cit, p. 142). Similarly, the Venus Medici (Uffizi, Florence), first recorded in the 1640s-50s, was highly prized by artists, writers and patrons, all of whom celebrated its form and beauty. With a touch of humour, Haskel and Penny (ibid., p. 325) go so far as to say that any writer who sang the praises of the Medici Venus had to begin by accepting his inability to "describe the indescribable" (to use the expression used by Byron in his five-stanza description of the Medici Venus). It's hardly surprising, then, that since the mid-seventeenth century, two of the finest surviving examples of the idea of classical beauty have been assembled in pairs.