The Rokeby Venus (also known as Venus at her Toilet, Venus and Cupid, or ' La Venus del espejo') is a painting by the baroque Spanish artist Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) in the National Gallery, London. Completed between 1644 and 1648, and probably probably painted during the artists visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus lying on a bed, looking into a mirror held by the god of erotic love and sex, Cupid.

The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez, and one of only two such paintings in 17th-century Spanish art, which was often censored by the Spanish Inquisition. It was innovative in showing an athletic female nude form; nude works had conventionally depicted rounder, full-bodied women, and it is this break that makes the painting provocative. The composition has only three main colours: red, white and grey, which include the pigment of Venus's skin.

In The Rokeby Venus Velázquez combines two two traditional methods of portraying Venus; recumbent on a bed (as in Titian's Venus and Cupid with an Organist), and gazing into a mirror. While numerous works, from the acient to the baroque, have been cited as sources of inspiration for Velázquez, in many ways the painting represents a departure.^[1]

La Venus del espejo was long believed to be one of Velázquez's latest works. In 1951, it was found recorded in an inventory of 01 June, 1651 from the collection of Gaspar Méndez de y Guzmán (1629-1687). Guzmán was the great-nephew of Velázquez's first patron, the Count-Duke of Olivares.^[2] A notorious libertine, according to the art historian Dawson Carr, Guzmán "loved paintings almost as much as he loved women",^[3] and was known to have had "an excessive taste for lower-class women during his youth". For these reasons it was believed logical that he would have commissioned the painting.^[4] However, in 2001, the art historian Ángel Aterido discovered that the painting had first belonged to the Madrid art dealer and painter Domingo Guerra Coronel, and was sold to Guzmán in 1652, following Coronel's death the previous year.^[5] Coronel's ownership of the painting raises a number of questions; how did it come into Coronel's possesion, and why was Velázquez's name ommitted from Coronel's inventory. The art critic Javier Portús has suggested that the reason for the ommission may be due to the fact that the painting is of a female nude, "a type of work which was carefully supervised and whoes dissemination was considered problematic".^[6]

These revelations make the painting difficult to date. Velázquez's painting technique does not offer assistance, though it can be assumed that the painting broadly originates from his mature period, in that it is characterised by a strong emphasis on colour and tone. The best estimates of its origion are that it was completed sometime in the last 1640s or the early 1650's, either in Spain or Italy.^[3]

It was intended as a pendant piece to a 16th-century Venetian painting of a recumbent nymph in a landscape, reversing the pose and moving the setting indoors. After passing to another Spanish aristocratic collection, the painting came by descent into the collection of the Dukes of Alba. In 1802, Charles IV of Spain ordered the family to sell the painting, with others, to Manuel de Godoy, his favourite and chief minister.^[7] He hung it alongside two masterpieces by Goya he appears to have commissioned himself, The Nude Maja and The Clothed Maja. These bear obvious compositional similarities with Velázquez's Venus.

The Venus was brought to England in 1813, where it was purchased by John Morritt, and hung it in his house at Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. This location gave the painting its popular name. In 1906, the work was acquired for the National Gallery by the newly-created National Art Collections Fund, its first campaigning triumph. King Edward VII is thought to have given £8,000 towards the cost of the painting, which he greatly admired, and became patron of the Fund thereafter.

The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving nude by Velázquez, but four others are recorded in contemporary Spanish inventories. Two were mentioned in the Royal collection, but may have been lost in the 1734 fire that destroyed the main royal palace in Madrid. Two more were recorded in the collection of Domingo Guerra Coronel.^[8] These records mention 'a reclining Venus', Venus and Adonis, and a Psyche and Cupid.^[9]

The portrayal of nudes was offically discouraged in seventeenth century Spain. However, within intellectual and aristocratic circles the aims of art where believed to superceed questions of morality, and there were many, generally mythological, nudes in private collections.^[1] Velázquez's patron, the art loving King Philip IV of Spain, held a number of nudes by Titian and Rubens in his collection, and as the king's painter Velázquez need not have feared painting a nude.^[3] The court of Philip IV was the first in Spanish history to have broad support for the principal of artistic freedom, in paticular in relation to depictions of the naked human body.^[9]

However, the contemporary Spanish attitude to paintings of nudes was unique. Though they were appreciated by some, they were generally treated with suspicion. For Spaniards, the issue of the nude in art was tied up with concepts of aesthetics, morality, and power. This attitude is reflected in the literature of the Spanish Golden Age, in works such as Lope de Vega's play La quinta de Florencia, which features an aristocrat who committes rape after viewing a mythological painting by Michelangelo.^[10] In 1673, a pamphlet was published with the title "A copy of the openions and censorship by the most revered fathers, masters and senior professors of the distinguished universities of Salamanca and Alcala, and other scholars on the abuse of lascivious and indecent figures and paintings, which are [a] mortal sin to be painted, carved and displayed where they can be seen".^[11]

Venus, the goddess of love is shown reclining languidly on her bed, gazing into a mirror. She can be identified because Cupid is also present, though when the work was first inventoried, it was described as 'a nude woman'. Venus' face is reflected in the mirror, and though here image is blurred it is clear that she is looking outward at the viewer of the painting. Intertwining ribbons are draped over the mirror, an allusion to the fetters used by Cupid to bind lovers. The folds of the bed sheets echo the goddess' form, are are rendered to emphasise her sweeping curves of her body.^[1]

The figure was significantly altered douring its completion. Pentimenti can be seen in Venus' upraised arm, in the position of her left shoulder, and on her head. infra-red reveals that she she was origionaly shown more upright whith her head turned to the left.^[3]

On March 10, 1914, the militant suffragette Mary "Slasher" Richardson walked into the National Gallery and attacked the canvas with a meat cleaver, provoked by the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst the previous day.^[12] In a statement that given to the Women's Social and Political Union shortly afterwards, Richardson explained, "I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history". She added in a 1952 interview that she "didn't like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long". She left seven slashes in the canvas, which have been successfully repaired.^[13]

• Carr, Dawson (2006). Painting and Reality: The Art and life of Velázquez. Yale: Yale University Press. ISBN 1-8570-0303-8
• MacLaren, Neil; revised Braham, Allan. The Spanish School, National Gallery Catalogues. National Gallery, London, 1970. p. 126. ISBN 0-9476-4546-2
• Portús, Javier. Nudes and Knights: A Context for Venus. . Yale: Yale University Press. ISBN 1-8570-0303-8
• White, Jon Manchip (1969). Diego Velazquez: Painter and Courtier. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

• National Gallery: The Rokeby Venus
• More info on the painting
• Biography of Mary Richardson
• Political vandalism, art and gender – Mary Richardson