...The Esquiline Venus is a smaller-than-life-size Roman nude marble sculpture of a female in a sandal and headdress.
It was found in 1874 in Piazza Dante on the Esquiline Hill in Rome, probably part of the site of the Horti Lamiani, one of the imperial gardens, rich archaeological sources of classical sculpture.
The sculpture inspired many artistic reconstructions in the decade after its discovery. Chief among these are Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's A Sculptor's Model (1877) and Edward Poynter's Diadumene (1884). These both portrayed the statue's model binding her hair with a strip of fabric (as with the statue type diadumenos) in preparation for modelling for the sculptor or for taking a bath respectively...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquiline_V…
...The painting represents one of only four major nude subjects painted by Alma-Tadema. He painted it as an instructive piece for John Collier, son of Sir Robert (Lord Monkswell). Sir Robert was amateur landscapist and Gladstone's Attorney General. John Collier received his initial art training by being allowed to observe Tadema work on the large canvas. His father later purchased the painting as payment for the lessons and it won an award when exhibited in Berlin that year.
The artist later decided to paint over the sculptor's torso with a smock. It is not known why he chose to retouch it, but the effort had negative results confirming the worst premonition of his brother-in-law, Edmund Gosse, who wrote to Vosmaer:
"The Venus Esquilina has been quite repainted, I hear, during the last week. I have not had time to go over to Townshend House to see it. I hope Alma-Tadema has not spoiled it, there is always a danger of that when he retouches his finished works."
When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, it elicited a heated debate. The Bishop of Carlisle wrote of this painting:
"My mind has been considerably exercised this season by the exhibition of Alma-Tadema's nude Venus...[there might] be artistic reasons which justify such public exposure of the female form, but for a living artist to exhibit a life-sized, almost photographic representation of a beautiful naked woman strikes my inartistic mind as somewhat, if not very mischievous."
Alma-Tadema responded by painting a soiled smock over the sculptor's toga...
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2001/…
...Alma-Tadema's The Sculptor's Model (1877), undraped apart from a headband, pubescent, fully frontal, yet observing the ancient Greek convention of a bald, unclefted pubic triangle...
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert…
