The
Venus de' Medici or
Medici Venus is a lifesize Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the
Greek goddess of
love Aphrodite. It is a 1st-century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the
Aphrodite of Cnidos, which would have been made by a sculptor in the immediate
Praxitelean tradition, perhaps at the end of the century. It has become one of the navigation points by which the progress of the
Western classical tradition is traced, the references to it outline the changes of taste and the process of classical scholarship. It is housed in the
Uffizi Gallery,
Florence, Italy.