The Birth of Venus (Cabanel)

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The Birth of Venus
Alexandre Cabanel, 1863
Oil on canvas
130 × 225 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Birth of Venus (French: Naissance de Venus) is a painting by the French artist Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889). It is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Finished in 1863 and shown to great success at the Paris Salon the same year, it was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his own personal collection. That same year Cabanel was made a professor of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Cabanel's erotic imagery, cloaked in historicism, appealed to the propriety of the higher levels of society. Cabanel was a determined opponent of the Impressionists, especially Édouard Manet, although the refusal of the academic establishment to realize the importance of new ideas and sources of inspiration would eventually prove to be the undoing of the Academy.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Rosenblum, Robert (1989). Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 1-55670-099-7
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