| Venus Disrobing for the Bath | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Frederic Leighton |
| Year | 1867 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 200 cm× 90 cm(79 in× 35.5 in) |
Venus Disrobing for the Bath is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1867.
| Venus Disrobing for the Bath | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Artist | Frederic Leighton |
| Year | 1867 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 200 cm× 90 cm(79 in× 35.5 in) |
Venus Disrobing for the Bath is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1867.
Leighton's five contributions to the Royal Academy of 1867 were marked by an increasing devotion to Greek ideals, and by a refinement of finish. [1] Among the pictures exhibited was Venus Disrobing for the Bath, one of the most debated of all the artist's paintings of the nude. [2]
The paleness of the flesh-tint of this Venus aroused a criticism which has often been urged against his pictures that such a hue was not in nature. In imparting an ideal effect to an ideal subject, Leighton always, however, followed his own conviction that art has a law of its own, and a harmony of colour and form, derived and selected no doubt from natural loveliness, but not to be referred too closely to the natural, or to the average, in these things. [3]
The art critic J. B. Atkinson praised the work, declaring that "Mr Leighton, instead of adopting corrupt Roman notions regarding Venus such as Rubens embodied, has wisely reverted to the Greek idea of Aphrodite, a goddess worshipped, and by artists painted, as the perfection of female grace and beauty." [4] According to Edgcumbe Staley:
"Venus Disrobing for the Bath" is one of Leighton's most artistic ideal pictures. It is marked by all his calmness of invention and his beauty of execution. The paleness of the flesh tints is very striking; but then Venus was born from the sea-foam. There are a stillness and a depth in treatment which harmonize serenely with the blaze of a midday sun and call to mind the grand effects of Turner and Claude. The goddess, admirably drawn and modelled, is just disengaging her sandal; her pose is quite after Leonardo da Vinci's manner. The accessories are beautifully rendered—the marble columns, the standard rose-bush in full flower, the pair of white doves, and the deep blue sea and crimson-streaked sky beyond. This picture may be regarded as the union of two ideas—ideal Greek without antique conventions and the energies of modern impulse and passion. This is a presentation of Leighton's sense of eclectic beauty in its greatest perfection. [1]
Aphrodite is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess Venus. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus, Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution" in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous.
Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
Flaming June is a painting by Sir Frederic Leighton, produced in 1895. Painted with oil paints on a 47-by-47-inch square canvas, it is widely considered to be Leighton's magnum opus, showing his classicist nature. It is thought that the woman portrayed alludes to the figures of sleeping nymphs and naiads the Greeks often sculpted.
The Aphrodite of Knidos was an Ancient Greek sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite created by Praxiteles of Athens around the 4th century BC. It is one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history, displaying an alternative idea to male heroic nudity. Praxiteles' Aphrodite is shown nude, reaching for a bath towel while covering her pubis, which, in turn leaves her breasts exposed. Up until this point, Greek sculpture had been dominated by male nude figures. The original Greek sculpture is no longer in existence; however, many Roman copies survive of this influential work of art. Variants of the Venus Pudica are the Venus de' Medici and the Capitoline Venus.
The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a 1.53 m tall Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a 1st-century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the Aphrodite of Knidos, which would have been made by a sculptor in the immediate Praxitelean tradition, perhaps at the end of the century. It has become one of the navigation points by which the progress of the Western classical tradition is traced, the references to it outline the changes of taste and the process of classical scholarship. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
The Esquiline Venus, depicting the goddess Venus, is a smaller-than-life-size Roman nude marble sculpture of a female in sandals and a diadem headdress. It is widely viewed as a 1st-century AD Roman copy of a Greek original from the 1st century BC. It is also a possible depiction of the Ptolemaic ruler Cleopatra VII.
The nude, as a form of visual art that focuses on the unclothed human figure, is an enduring tradition in Western art. It was a preoccupation of Ancient Greek art, and after a semi-dormant period in the Middle Ages returned to a central position with the Renaissance. Unclothed figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as history painting, including allegorical and religious art, portraiture, or the decorative arts. From prehistory to the earliest civilizations, nude female figures are generally understood to be symbols of fertility or well-being.
The Venus Callipyge, also known as the Aphrodite Kallipygos or the Callipygian Venus, all literally meaning "Venus of the beautiful buttocks", is an Ancient Roman marble statue, thought to be a copy of an older Greek original. In an example of anasyrma, it depicts a partially draped woman, raising her light peplos to uncover her hips and buttocks, and looking back and down over her shoulder, perhaps to evaluate them. The subject is conventionally identified as Venus (Aphrodite), though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman.
Cymon and Iphigenia is an oil on canvas painting by Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton. The painting does not bear a date but was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1884. The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, purchased it at a Christie's auction in London in 1976.
Venus Verticordia (1864-1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a semi-nude depiction of the goddess Venus, portrayed as a young woman with a golden halo and flowing auburn hair, surrounded by pink flowers in a dark, lush green garden. Her left breast is visible, the right obscured by the golden apple she holds in her left hand. In her right hand she holds an arrow, the point directed towards her own heart, and on which rests a small yellow butterfly. Other similar butterflies ring the halo surrounding her head, and another sits on top of the apple she holds.
The Bath of Psyche is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1890. It is in the collection of Tate Britain.
Crenaia, the Nymph of the Dargle is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1880. It is in the collection of Juan Antonio Pérez Simón.
The Fisherman and the Syren is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1858. It is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. The picture is in the collection of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1868.
Winding the Skein is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1878.
Nausicaa is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1878.
The Music Lesson is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1877.
The Daphnephoria is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1876.
The historical evolution of the nude in art runs parallel to the history of art in general, except for small particularities derived from the different acceptance of nudity by the various societies and cultures that have succeeded each other in the world over time. The nude is an artistic genre that consists of the representation in various artistic media of the naked human body. It is considered one of the academic classifications of works of art. Nudity in art has generally reflected the social standards for aesthetics and morality of the era in which the work was made. Many cultures tolerate nudity in art to a greater extent than nudity in real life, with different parameters for what is acceptable: for example, even in a museum where nude works are displayed, nudity of the visitor is generally not acceptable. As a genre, the nude is a complex subject to approach because of its many variants, both formal, aesthetic and iconographic, and some art historians consider it the most important subject in the history of Western art.
Psamathe is an oil painting by Frederic Leighton, first exhibited in 1880.