A Venetian Voyage

The voyage of the Susini Crouching Venus to Venice.

The Holburne Museum is lending one of its masterpieces to an exciting forthcoming exhibition. The small-scale bronze will be travelling to Venice to be exhibited alongside a group of masterpieces of Italian Renaissance sculpture. It will be on show in the Ca’ Corner della Regina, an 18th-century Venetian palace overlooking the Grand Canal, as part of an exhibition at the Prada Foundation called ‘Portable Classics: Ancient Greece to Modern Europe’. The exhibition brings together works of art on loan from the British Museum, the Royal Collection, and many Italian collections including the Bargello in Florence.

The Susini bronze will be shown alongside a Venus by the Florentine sculptor Giambologna from Museo del Bargello and a Venus by Antico from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, in a section of the exhibition exploring the origins and functions of miniature reproductions of iconic classical sculptures famous from antiquity to the Renaissance. The exhibition means that the Holburne’s Crouching Venus, cast by Susini after a model by his master Giambologna, will be shown alongside the work of Giambologna himself.

The Susini bronze will return to the galleries at the Holburne Museum in September 2015 after its voyage to Venice.