The Sculpture
Nude portraits were unusual, subjects of high rank usually having strategically placed drapery (though Canova did produce another of the Bonaparte family, with his 1806 Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker). It is a matter of debate as to whether she actually posed naked for the sculpture, since only the head is a realistic (if slightly idealised) portrait, whilst the nude torso is a neo-classically idealised female form. When asked how she could pose for the sculptor wearing so little, she reputedly replied that there was a stove in the studio that kept her warm, though this may be apochryphal or a quip deliberately designed by her to stir up scandal.
She holds an apple in her hand evoking Aphrodite's victory in the Judgement of Paris. The room in which the sculpture is exhibited at the Galleria Borghese also has a ceiling painting portraying the judgement, painted by Domenico de Angelis in 1779 and inspired by a famous relief on the façade of the Villa Medici.
Canova was first instructed to depict Pauline Bonaparte fully clothed as the chaste goddess Diana, but Pauline insisted on Venus. She had a reputation for promiscuity, and may have enjoyed the controversy of posing naked. The subject of the sculpture may have also been affected by the Borghese family's mythical ancestry: they traced their descent to Venus, through her son Aeneas, the founder of Rome.
The wooden base, draped like a catafalque, once contained a mechanism for rotating the sculpture, as in the case of other works by Canova and in the adapted bases of ancient sculpture in galleries, so that a viewer could observe it from all angles without moving him/herself. In the era of its production, viewers would also admire the sculpture by candlelight. The sculpture's lustre was not only due to the fine quality of the marble but also to the waxed surface, which has been recently restored.
Read more about this topic: Venus Victrix (Canova)
Famous quotes containing the word sculpture:
“You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)