Rokeby Venus created National Art Collections Fund, its first campaigning triumph. King Edward VII greatly admired the painting, and anonymously provided £8,000 (£ in 2019) towards its purchase, and became Patron of the Fund thereafter. In part because he was overlooked until the mid-19th century, Velázquez found no followers and was not widely imitated. In particular, his visual and structural innovations in this portrayal of Venus were not developed by other artists until recently, largely owing to the censorship of the work. The painting remained in a series of private rooms in private collections until it was exhibited in 1857 at the
Rokeby Venus controversial in France also. In northern Europe it was seen as acceptable to portray artfully draped nudes. Examples include Rubens's "Minerva Victrix", of 1622–25, which shows Marie de' Medici with an uncovered breast, and Anthony van Dyck's 1620 painting, "The Duke and Duchess of Buckingham as Venus and Adonis". In 17th-century Spanish art, even in the depiction of sibyls, nymphs, and goddesses, the female form was always chastely covered. No painting from the 1630s or 1640s, whether in the genre, portrait, or history format, shows a Spanish female with her breasts exposed; even uncovered arms were only rarely shown. In