Rokeby Venus connoisseurs steal a glance without drawing the said posterior into the company". The "Rokeby Venus" was long held to be one of Velázquez's final works. In 1951, it was found recorded in an inventory of 1 June 1651 from the collection of Gaspar Méndez de Haro, 7th Marquis of Carpio, a close associate of Philip IV of Spain. Haro was the great-nephew of Velázquez's first patron, the Count-Duke of Olivares, and a notorious libertine. According to the art historian Dawson Carr, Haro "loved paintings almost as much as he loved women", and "even his panegyrists lamented his excessive taste for
Rokeby Venus codes of pictorial decorum would not easily permit a known lady to be painted in this way". For Spaniards of the 17th century, the issue of the nude in art was tied up with concepts of morality, power, and aesthetics. This attitude is reflected in the literature of the Spanish Golden Age, in works such as Lope de Vega's play "La quinta de Florencia", which features an aristocrat who commits rape after viewing a scantily clad figure in a mythological painting by Michelangelo. In 1632, an anonymous pamphlet—attributed to the Portuguese Francisco de Braganza—was published with the title "A copy