Rokeby Venus Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, along with 25 other paintings at least claimed to be by Velázquez; it was here that it became known as the "Rokeby Venus". It does not appear to have been copied by other artists, engraved or otherwise reproduced, until this period. In 1890 it was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London, and in 1905 at Messrs. Agnews, the dealers who had bought it from Morritt. From 1906 it was highly visible in the National Gallery and became well-known globally through reproductions. The general influence of the painting was therefore long delayed, although individual artists would
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