Hazlitt questions the judgements of the Venus de' Medici and the Apollo Belvedere which saw them as offering unique examples of execellence, and he makes a point of comparing them with the so-called' Theseus' which was among the marbles taken by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in Athens (on which see Friezes of the Parthenon):
Besides, one has seen the Venus so often and in so many shapes, that custom has blinded one equally to its merits or defects. It is like a passage in the 'Elegant Extracts', which one has read and admired, till one does not know what to make of it, or how to affix any meaning to the words: beauty and sweeetness end in an unmeaning commonplace! If I might notwithstanding hazard a hypercriticism, I should say, that it is a little too like a marble doll. I should conjecture (for it is only conjecture where familiarity has neutralized the capacity of judging) that there is a want of sentiment, of character, a balance of preetnsions as well as of attitude, a good deal of insipidity, and an over-gentility. There is no expression of mental refinement, nor much of voluptuous blandishment. There is great softness, sweetness, symmetry, and timid grace - a faultless tameness, a negative perfection. The Apollo Belvedire is positively bad, a theatrical coxcomb, and ill-made: I mean compared with the Theseus. The great objection to the Venus is, that the form has not the true feminine proportion; it is not sufficiently large in the lower limbs, but tapers too much to a point, so that it wants firmness and a sort of indolent repose (the proper attribute of woman), and seems as if the least thing would overset it. In a word the Venus is a very beautiful, but not the Goddess of Love, or even of Beauty. ( Hazlitt, Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, p. 222)