Venus Anadyomene (Ingres)

[1] The pose was inspired by Botticelli's The Birth of Venus – Ingres visited Florence and the Uffizi in 1805 and could have seen the painting there.

A drawing of 1806 then shows the goddess with her arms in the air and her hair in her hands, a pose the artist also used in his 1856 The Source.

The painting remained in the planning stages until 1848, when he completed it as a commission from the banker and botanist Benjamin Delessert.

[2] It was closely followed by later treatments of the subject, such as Théodore Chassériau's Vénus marine and Bouguereau's 1879 The Birth of Venus.

A smaller copy of the painting from c.1825–1850 is in the Louvre[3] and the preparatory drawings are now in the Ingres Museum in Montauban.