Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix

The most important Neoclassical sculpture in Rome. Napoleon's sister Paolina reclines as Venus, holding the Apple of Discord — a portrait of a living woman posed as a goddess, in marble of supernatural smoothness. Canova's technical mastery of different textures in a single block: the cushion beneath her feels soft; the drapery crisp; her skin luminous. The sculpture rotates on a hidden mechanism so Cardinal Borghese could show it in lamplight.