Woman Bitten by a Serpent 02
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Woman Bitten by a Serpent 02
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Woman Bitten by a Serpent, by Auguste Clesinger, 1847. Back view.
This statue scandalised public and critics alike at the 1847 Salon de Paris. Clesinger's suggestive image showed a woman writhing from the pain of a bite by the serpent around her wrist. As the dimpled flesh at the top of her thighs reveals, he used a plaster cast moulded from a living woman. His model was a Parisian beauty who held a salon in Paris, familiarly known as "La Présidente"; in lending her body to Clésinger she brought him unhoped-for success.
The practice of moulding from life was violently criticized in the 19th century, on the grounds that it induced laziness and lack of integrity in the artist. The generous curves that offended visitors to the Salon with their realism were combined with more conventional elements as the less expressive idealized face and the ornate pedestal , making Woman Bitten by a Snake a perfect example of eclecticism in sculpture. The motif of the abandoned body was frequently copied until the end of the century.
The Orsay Museum was a Beaux-Arts railway station inaugurated in 1900. The main facade was comprised between two clock towers. There is a restaurant behind the western clock and the museum galleries open to the eastern one, the one in the picture.
Orsay is considered the chronological continuation of the Louvre painting and sculpture collections and houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh.
As for Paris... What can one say about the City of Light that has not already been said?
More views of Paris one copy-paste away in my Gallery at http://westonwestmoreland.com/collections/paris
More amazing statues, sculptures and carvings at https://weston-westmoreland.pixels.com/collections/statues+sculptures+carvings
Weston Westmoreland
Uploaded
October 15th, 2020
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