3-053-546 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Castellani Collection in the British Museum - bronze head of Venus, 1873. 'The recent purchase of the Castellani collection of art-antiquities by the trustees of the British Museum has added to the public property of this kind some things of considerable value for their beauty or curiosity. Among those which may be esteemed beautiful is the bronze head of Aphrodite or Venus, now said to have been found in Armenia. This is of heroic size, with the back and crown of the head partly battered in and wrenched away, and with the eye-sockets empty; but for the rest, presenting a front view quite unimpaired, with nose and mouth perfect and uninjured. We give an illustration of this noble head of the Goddess of Love'. The Satala Aphrodite was first acquired in Istanbul by a Greek antiquities dealer called Savas Kougioumtsoglou who passed it to another dealer, Photiades who took it to Rome where it was sold to Castellani. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.