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This painting and its pendant (Bust of Adonis, Museum, Cape Town) are the only still-lifes Van Everdingen painted. For a classicist like this painter still-lifes were a second-rate genre. These two paintings are most unusual still-lifes and, at the same time, figure pieces.
In this painting the woman is a cast of the upper section of the Venus Medici, a full-length sculpture of a nude. It was at the Villa Medici in Rome until 1677 when it was transferred to the Uffizi in Florence. It is a copy after a Greek original dating from the late classical era. The child beside the bust is Cupid, the son of Venus.
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