Venus Genetrix (sculpture)

On the night before the decisive battle of Pharsalus (48 BC), Julius Caesar vowed to dedicate a temple at Rome to Venus, supposed ancestor of his gens.

In establishing this new cult of Venus,[4] Caesar was affirming the claim of his own gens to descent from the goddess, through Iulus, the son of Aeneas.

The composition was frontal,[6] the body's form monumental, and in the surviving Roman replicas its proportions are close to the Polyclitean canon.

The iconological type of the statue, of which there are numerous Roman marble copies and bronze reductions at every level of skill, was identified as Venus Genetrix (Venus Universal Mother) by Ennio Quirino Visconti in his catalogue of the papal collections in the Pio-Clementino Museum by comparison with this denarius.

"[8] A Venus Genetrix in the Pio-Clementino Museum has been completed with a Roman portrait head of Sabina, on this basis.

In Rome, an ideal figure of a divinity might often be adapted slightly (here, for instance the chiton covers the breast) and given a separately made portrait head.