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| attributed to Girolamo di Benvenuto Venus with Cupid ca. 1500 oil on panel Denver Art Museum |
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| Lucas Cranach the Elder Venus ca. 1518 oil on panel National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
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| Giacomo Francia Venus and Cupid ca. 1520-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Paolo Veronese and workshop Venus and Mars ca. 1570-80 oil on canvas Seattle Art Museum |
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| Christoph Gertner Cupid with sleeping Venus 1612 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| Paulus Moreelse Venus and Adonis 1614 oil on panel Centraal Museum, Utrecht |
-1617-etching-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art-New-York.jpg) |
| Odoardo Fialetti Venus blindfolding Cupid 1617 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Johann Michael Rottmayr Venus at the Forge of Vulcan ca. 1690-95 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Ludwigsburg Porcelain Manufactory Venus and Adonis 1765-67 porcelain Seattle Art Museum |
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| François Boucher Venus rising from the Waves ca. 1766 oil on canvas North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh |
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| Anonymous French Maker Venus 19th century gilt-bronze furniture mount Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| James Pradier Birth of Venus 1844 plaster Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| John Gibson Venus 1850 marble Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
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| Carl Gutherz Cast of an Antique Venus 1869 drawing Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee |
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| Karl Gussow Washing Venus 1878 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai |
-Venus-after-Jean-Baptiste-Pigalle-c1890-marble-statue-Newport-Mansions-Preservation-Society-Rhode-Island.jpg) |
| Jules Allard et fils (Paris) after Jean-Baptiste Pigalle Venus ca. 1890 marble Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island |
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| Paul Manship Venus Anadyomene #2 1924 plaster Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
from Hymn to Hermes
Out of the lofty cavern wandering
He found a tortoise, and cried out – 'A treasure!'
(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing).
The beast before the portal at his leisure
The flowery herbage was depasturing,
Moving his feet in a deliberate measure
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son
Eyeing him laughed, and laughing thus begun: –
'A useful god-send are you to me now,
King of the dance, companion of the feast,
Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you
Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain beast,
Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,
You must come home with me and be my guest;
You will give joy to me, and I will do
All that is in my power to honour you.
'Better to be at home than out of door; –
So come with me, and though it has been said
That you alive defend from magic power,
I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead.'
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,
Lifting it from the grass on which it fed,
And grasping it in his delighted hold,
His treasured prize into the cavern old.
Then scooping with a chisel of grey steel
He bored the life and soul out of the beast –
Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal
Darts through the tumult of a human breast
Which thronging cares annoy – not swifter wheel
The flashes of its torture and unrest
Out of the dizzy eyes – than Maia's son
All that he did devise hath featly done.
And through the tortoise's hard strong skin
At proper distances small holes he made,
And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
And with a piece of leather overlaid
The open space and fixed the cubits in,
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er all
Symphonious cords of sheep gut rhythmical.
– Homeric Hymns (8th-6th century BC), translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)