"She has just issued from the bath, and yet is animated with the enjoyment
of it. She seems all soft and mild enjoyment, and the curved lines of her
fine limbs, flow into each other with a never ending sinuosity of
sweetness. Her face expresses a breathless yet passive and innocent
voluptuousness, free from affectation. Her lips, without the sublimity of
lofty and impetuous passion, the grandeur of enthusiastic imagination of
the Apollo of the capital, or the union of both like the Apollo Belvidere,
have the tenderness of arch, yet pure and affectionate desire; and the mode
in which the ends {72} of the mouth are drawn in, yet lifted or half
opened, with the smile that for ever circles round them, and the tremulous
curve into which they are wrought, by inextinguishable desire, and the
tongue lying against the lower lip, as in the listlessness of passive joy,
express love, still love!
"Her eyes seem heavy and swimming with pleasure, and her small forehead
fades on both sides into that sweet swelling, and then declension of the
bone over the eye, in the mode which expresses simple and tender feelings.
"The neck is full and panting, as with the aspiration of delight, and flows
with gentle curves into her perfect form.
"Her form is indeed perfect. She is half sitting and half rising from a
shell, and the fullness of her limbs, and their complete roundness and
perfection, do not diminish the vital energy with which they seem to be
animated. The position of the arms, which are lovely beyond imagination, is
natural, unaffected and easy. This perhaps is the finest personification of
Venus, the deity of superficial desire, in all antique statuary. Her
pointed and pear-like person, ever virgin, and her attitude modesty
itself."