Although not regarded as an important masterpiece of Antique sculpture in the early part of the 18th century, the Capitoline Venus (Gk. Aphrodite) gained favour at the expense of The Medici Venus due to concern about the extensive degree of restoration to the latter.

Indeed, when a plaster cast from the model reached England in the early 19th century, the sculptor, John Flaxman, drew the attention of his students to it and maintained that the Venus was 'certainly' a copy of one of three Venuses 'enumerated by Pliny among the work of Praxiteles'.

Praxiteles, arguably the finest of Greek sculptors, was an Athenian of the mid-fourth century B.C. His work was much admired and imitated throughout Antiquity. It is possible, though not certain, that he worked on the Mausoleum.