Painter's Corner: The Birth of Beauty

The Birth of Venus, Alexandre Cabanel, 1863. Oil paint on canvas. Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

Amid soft, foamy crests and undulating waves, a voluptuous female form emerges from the sea, born of the gods and destined to be a universal symbol of perfection and beauty. She is Venus, the ideal woman. She slowly awakens, seeming to stretch out upon the waves that slowly move her to shore, as putti, or cherubs, herald her arrival with music and celebratory gestures. Cabanel’s painting for the Paris Salon of 1863 encapsulates the ancient myth of Venus’ birth, emerging fully-formed from seafoam, while drawing upon a long tradition of the sensuous female nude. Both sweet and erotic, this painting was created during the revitalization of Paris under Napoleon III and demonstrates a renewed interest in the female nude form in French art that contrasts the glorified and gritty male heroes of the Revolution only half a century earlier (1789-99).

Alexandre Cabanel was one of the leading academic artists of his day, highly praised by the Salon and winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1845 for his painting entitled Jesus in the Praetorium. This gained him prominence and ensured a successful career. Primarily a painter, Cabanel was known for his portraits and historical subjects, including several commissions for Napoleon III, who bought this particular work after it was displayed in the Salon.

Venus Anadyomene, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808-48. Oil paint on canvas. Musee Conde, Chantilly.

In The Birth of Venus, he displays his technical mastery of the human form, especially in the soft modelling of Venus’ flesh. She is sublimely proportioned and appears larger-than-life against the waves upon which she rests, alluding to her important status as a leader among the goddesses. Cabanel based his concept upon a work by his contemporary, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, called Venus Anadyomene from 1808. Ingres’ work shows a contoured, glowing Venus similar to Cabanel’s rendering. However, Cabanel’s work creates a moment of greater drama than Ingres’ static goddess, for in his work she is just waking up to greet the world, her pose vulnerable but her half-lidded eyes directly beckoning the viewer, rather than glancing demurely out of frame.

Cabanel’s Venus is every inch a model of beauty. The ample curves of her breasts and hips connote femininity and fecundity. Her long reddish-gold hair streams out underneath her, accenting the serpentine curve of her body while a wave gently pushes up her bust to greater prominence. One arm is folded over her face, as one might expect in sleep, but her eyes gaze out at the viewer from beneath her hand, a coy smile already upon her lips. It is as if she senses she is being watched and enjoys the attention. This is emphasized by the putti flying above her who look on with happiness. One cherub highlights the painting’s erotic nature by virtue of his leer, which would rival that of any man who gazed upon this canvas. The muted blues of sea and sky give this image a dream-like quality, almost as if the viewer shares Venus’ half-slumbering state.          

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485. Tempera paint on canvas. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

At this time in French history, a major revival was underway and Paris was fast becoming the urban metropolis it is today. Baron Haussmann and his city-planning team were making streets wider, improving infrastructure, and erecting Neoclassical buildings designed to connote order, rationality, and governmental stability. The people longed for these elements after the turmoil of the Revolution and the July Uprising, and references to the Renaissance and ancient pasts of Europe provided visual proof of the new age. This painting clearly comes out of the Renaissance tradition of the nude Venus, following the example of such masters as Sandro Botticelli and Titian. Some elements of both artists’ rendering of Venus (in The Birth of Venus and Venus of Urbino, respectively) can be seen here. While Botticelli’s Venus is stiff and outlined, she is larger than her surroundings, demonstrating the hieratic scaling that Cabanel employs, in which physical size is used to connote metaphorical status. Titian’s Venus is much more contoured and shaded with golden light like Cabanel’s but her bold stare lacks the demure nature Cabanel’s Venus portrays.

Cabanel's work is a playful take on an ancient myth by one of the Salon’s most prized students. Meant to both amuse and excite, it allows the viewer to escape temporarily into another world where beauty reigns and the promise of pleasure is nearly within reach.

Further Reading:

Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. "Progress, Modernity, and Modernism - French Visual Culture during the Second Empire, 1852-1870." Nineteenth-Century European Art. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2012.