Image: The Rokeby Venus (1647-51), oil on canvas painting by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), dimensions 122 cm x 177 cm (48 in × 69.7 in), located at the National Gallery, London.
The Rokeby Venus (also known as: The Toilet of Venus, Venus at her Mirror, Venus and Cupid, or La Venus del espejo) by the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age Diego Velázquez, depicts goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed looking at a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid.
The nude Venuses of the Italian painters, such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (1510) and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), have been quoted as the main inspiration for this work. The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez. Nudes were extremely rare in this period of Spanish art due to moral policing by the Spanish Inquisition. But at the same time, nudes by foreign artists were collected by the court circle, and The Rokeby Venus was hung in the houses of Spanish courtiers until 1813 when it was brought to England to hang in Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. The National Art Collections Fund for the National Gallery, London, purchased the painting in 1906. Though it was vandalized and badly damaged in 1914 by the suffragette Mary Richardson, it soon was fully restored.
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