Detail of The Birth of Venus by Cabanel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2010

Title: The Birth of Venus

Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (French, Montpellier 1823–1889 Paris)

Date: 1875

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 41 3/4 x 71 7/8 in. (106 x 182.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of John Wolfe, 1893

Accession Number: 94.24.1

The first version of Cabanel's Birth of Venus (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) created a sensation at the Salon of 1863, which was dubbed the "Salon of the Venuses" owing to the number of alluring nudes on view. The Salon picture was purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection. In 1875, New Yorker John Wolfe commissioned the present, slightly smaller, replica from Cabanel. The composition embodies ideals of academic art: mythological subject, graceful modeling, silky brushwork, and perfected form. This style was perennially popular with collectors, even as it was challenged by artists seeking a more personal interpretation of truth to nature, such as Courbet.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435831