The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 18, 2024
Vénus Astarté (Semitic goddess of fertility and love)
c. 1900
(French, 1840–1917)
Overall: 14.2 x 9.5 x 1.6 cm (5 9/16 x 3 3/4 x 5/8 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2000.22
Location: not on view
Description
This relief of a female nude standing in water may represent the only time the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin provided an ornament for a precious object: a gold and enamel hand mirror designed by Felix Bracquemond (1833–1914). The mirror—acquired by the museum in 1978—was made for Baron Joseph Vitta, one of Rodin's most important patrons during the years around 1900, and it was probably for this reason that the artist agreed to the commission. This plaster cast of Rodin's nude was an intermediate version of the subject. Although the images on the mirror and the plaster cast were clearly derived from the same mold, there are significant differences in the figure's hair. Rodin probably changed the wax version (from which the gold relief of the mirror was made by lost-wax casting) before he used it.- Claude Roger Marx, Paris; [Christie's East, New York]
- Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” June 19, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. Mentioned: p. 3 archive.org
- Paris, Grand Palais, Salon de 1902, Société Nationale Des Beaux-Arts, April 1902, no. 53
- {{cite web|title=Vénus Astarté (Semitic goddess of fertility and love)|url=false|author=Auguste Rodin|year=c. 1900|access-date=18 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2000.22