This is a splendid mystery. The maker of this superbly cast bronze woman is unknown, and the subject is uncertain. The nude woman opens her mouth, seeming to shout, showing her finely chased teeth, while turning away from the source of her fear and covering the front of her body with her hands. This is a pose from classical sculpture called Venus pudica, or “modest Venus,” in which a woman covers her body, especially her genitals, with her hands. In the past, scholars have associated her with the biblical and mythological stories of women who have been menaced or intruded upon in some way: she has been called Susannah, who, in the Bible, was spied upon, while bathing, by a group of lusty male elders; and she has been called Diana, the goddess from classical mythology, who, also at her bath, was surprised by Actaeon.

The mystery of her pose raises the question of whether this bronze was originally conceived as part of a group, or if, perhaps, she was meant to be cowering from her Renaissance male viewer. She and small bronzes like her were meant to be grasped and manipulated by their owners and viewers, and it was in doing so that the extraordinary details of her making would have become apparent: the delicate chasing of her hair, eyes, and teeth; the extremely fine lines of her fingernails and of the wrinkles on the palms of her hands; the now-tarnished silver pins inset as her eyes and her nipples. The artist may have been associated with Mantua, because the bronze’s enraged expression resembles the often-impassioned figures of the Mantuan artist Andrea Mantegna. Beyond that, however, she is an enigma. The object is singular among the small bronzes of the Renaissance that survive today.