VELÁSQUEZ’ ROKEBY VENUS SUFFERED VANDALISM IN 1914, when suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to it in London’s National Gallery. (In a 1952 interview she conceded that she “didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.”) Known also as The Toilet of Venus or La Venus del espejo, painted between 1647 and 1651, it is the only surviving Velásquez nude. ” ” This pearl of great price is the motive force behind Michael Gruber’s tour de force of psychological suspense and up-market fraud, The Forgery of Venus.  Continue Reading