Venus de Médicis

“ There, in full existence, visible, tangible, seems to be all that the heart has imagined of the deepest and highest emotions. She stoops to please the children, that they may climb her back; the whole of her body speaks the dearest, the purest love. To extend the hands towards her is so natural, it is difficult to avoid actually doing so. Hers is not the polished beauty of the Venus de Medici, whose very fingers have no joints. The typical Venus is fined down from the full growth of human shape to fit the artist's conception of what beauty should be. ”

“ Our picture illustrates the scene of Medea’s temptation at the fountain. The tempter is love, in the form of Venus, the Greek goddess represented in the old mythology as the inspirer of the tender passion. She is accompanied by the little love-god Cupid, the mischievous fellow whose bow and arrow work so much havoc in human hearts. The perplexed princess sits beside the fountain, holding her head in the attitude of one listening. Venus leans towards her from the other side and softly pleads the lover’s cause. ”

“ Yet the Venus de Medici does not strike me as a voluptuous figure; it certainly is not powerfully and perilously so, wanting, as it does, all strength of passion and noble development of soul; for, paradoxical as it may seem, a soul of wild depths and passionate intensity must lie beneath the alluring warmth and brightness of a refined and perfect sensuality. ”

“ Those that every looker-in at a city shop window has seen copies of are here in the original. The room is lighted from the top; but it does not appear the most favorable place for an exhibition of these great works. First greeting the visitor as he enters the door is the celebrated Venus de' Medici, one of the most graceful and elegant statues in the world, the pure, modest beauty of [512] which is wonderful. The easy grace of attitude, the modest beauty of the face, and perfect symmetry of the whole figure are faultless. ”

“ We notice a distinct resemblance between the faces of the two maidens, and perhaps this is the painter’s way of telling us that Venus is only Medea’s other self: the voice of the tempter speaks from her own heart. The expression is quite different on the two faces, tender and persuasive in Venus, dreamy and preoccupied in Medea. If we turn again to Ovid for the interpretation of the picture, we may fancy that Venus is describing the proud days when, as Jason’s bride, Medea would journey with him through the cities of Greece. ”

“ Although the heavens have been ever peopled with threatening gods and the great inane filled with gaping hells; although kings and courts have thundered their inhibitions forth, and society turned upon illicit love Medusa's awful frown, the Paphian Venus has flourished in every age and clime, and still flaunts her scarlet flag in the face of Heaven.
The history of humanity—its poetry, its romance, its very religion—is little more than a Joseph's coat, woven of Love's celestial warp and Passion's infernal woof in the loom of Time. ”

“ This Venus was still in Cnidos during the reign of the emperor Alcadius, about four hundred years after Christ. [Pg 310] This statue seems to offer the first idea of the Venus de Medici, which is likely to be the repetition of another Venus, the work of this artist.” He elsewhere says of the Venus of Praxiteles, it was “the most admired female statue of all antiquity, whose beauty is as perfect as it is elevated, and as innocent as perfect; from which the Medicean Venus seems but a deteriorated variety.” ”

“ As I am about to turn aside into one of the green walks I see Venus sitting before me on a stone bench, not the beautiful woman of marble, but the goddess of love herself with warm blood and throbbing pulses. She has actually come to life for me, like the statue that began to breathe for her creator. Indeed, the miracle is only half completed. Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? ”

“ Not only the gods, but men also, became her lovers, her own favorite among them all being Mars, the god of War—a cruel and savage god, very unlike the rest, delighting in battle and slaughter. Then, on earth, she tried her best to make a very handsome young prince named Adonis fall in love with her. But he—strange to say—cared nothing for her. The only thing he cared for in the world was hunting: he scorned everything else, Venus included. Still, in spite of his scorn for her, she mourned for him miserably when he was killed by a wild boar. ”

“ Again she wandered on and on, helpless and despairing, till one of the servants of Venus met her and knew her. Seizing Psyche by the hair, she dragged her into the presence of the terribly beautiful goddess, who broke into a laugh of cruel triumph when she found her rival in her power. Venus delivered her over to her torturers, Anguish and Sorrow. They, having scourged and tormented her, brought her again before Venus, who flew at her like a fury, as if she would tear her limb from limb.
“You ugly slave!” said Venus, as soon as she recovered breath; “you want a lover, do you? ”

“ We spent an hour there, but, except that her divine beauty filled and satisfied my eye, as nothing else ever did, and that the statue is as unlike a thing to the casts one sees of it as one thing could well be unlike another, I made no criticism. There is an atmosphere of fame and circumstantial interest about the Venus, which bewilders the fancy almost as much as her loveliness does the eye. She has been gazed upon and admired by troops of pilgrims, each of whom it were worth half a life to have met at her pedestal. ”

“ Since the world could not well spare the goddess of beauty, Jupiter refused to let her go to the sunless realm of Pluto; but neither would that dread ruler consent to give up Adonis to her longing arms. Then the gods, touched by the depth of Venus's grief, interceded in her behalf, and reluctantly Pluto agreed to allow Adonis to spend six months with the goddess in the warmth and joy of the sunlight if for the rest of the year he would be content to dwell in Hades. ”

“ Her love for Mars is perhaps the most notorious on account of the disgrace which accompanied it, while her great partiality for Adonis, induced her to abandon her seat in Olympus. This mortal, who was fond of the chase, was often cautioned by his mistress not to hunt wild beasts, fearful of his being killed in the attempt; this advice he however slighted, and at last received a mortal wound from a wild boar which he had speared; and great was the misery evinced by Venus at his loss. ”

“ You may amuse yourself with bow and arrows when the time comes.”
“May I respectfully inquire when this momentous engagement is to transpire?”
“When you see me——”
“Do what, my Lady Venus?”
“Rise from the sea, and give the usual signal.”
The confab ended for the present. Lady Venus and Cupid understood each other perfectly.
A moonlit night and zephyrs wafted in; an easy chair, and no one looking on. Two in shadow, gazing upon legendary Greece; talking mythology such as they alone could understand; feeling fluctuations of quite another kind. ”

“ And she, receiving the urn with great joy, ran back quickly that she might deliver it to Venus, and yet again satisfied not the angry goddess. “My child!” she said, “in this one thing further must thou serve me. Take now this tiny casket, and get thee down even unto hell, and deliver it to Proserpine. Tell her that Venus would have of her beauty so much at least as may suffice for but one day’s use, that beauty she possessed erewhile being foreworn and spoiled, through her tendance upon the sick-bed of her son; and be not slow in returning.” ”

“ To introduce an action involving an apprehension of human failings tends to bring the goddess down to the human level, and thus to destroy the ideal. The Venus de' Medici is a superb sculpture of a woman, but an inferior representation of Venus, for modesty is a human attribute arising from purely artificial circumstances of life, its meaning varying with race conditions and customs. ”

“ We do not say that there is any caprice in the movements of Venus, as known to those who diligently consult their almanacs. The movements of the lovely planet are there prescribed with a prosaic detail hardly in harmony with the character usually ascribed to the Goddess of Love. But to those who do not devote particular attention to the stars, the very unexpectedness of its appearance is one of its greatest charms. Venus has not been noticed, not been thought of, for many months. ”

“ To one so jealous as Venus, this homage paid to Psyche was an enormous crime, and she determined to take vengeance for the offence, by punishing her in the tenderest part of a woman's nature; for she commanded Cupid to make her fall deeply in love, with the ugliest being he could find. ”

“ Compared with this matchless Venus that of Medici seems as inane and trifling as mere physical beauty always must by the side of beauty baptized and made sacramental, as the symbol of that which alone is truly fair. ”

“ VENUS AND ADONIS.
Titian (Venetian: 1477-1576) . See 4.
Venus is endeavouring to detain Adonis from the chase; but the sun is up (see his chariot in the sky) and the young hunts [Pg 107] man is eager to be off with his hounds and his spear. The enamoured goddess caresses him, but it will be in vain. For Cupid, the god of love, is not there: he is asleep and at a distance, with his bow and quiver hanging on a tree; and all the blandishments of beauty, unaided by love, are as naught. ”

“ Neptune prefigures this island, the confessed ruler of the waves and the precise spot of the globe vindicated, as we have seen, by two great poets from the reign of Dulness. Venus is here understood in her noblest character, as the Alma Venus of Lucretius's invocation, as the Power of Love and the Beautiful in the Universe. The Goddess of Wisdom speaks for herself. Against them a heterogeneous rabble of monsters direct their artillery, under a dog-headed barking protagonist, (what a chosen symbol of an impudent, wide-mouthed, yelping Bayes!) ”

“ Even the light of the full moon silvering the tree tops does not exercise greater enchantment over the mind of the contemplative observer. In either of her rôles, as morning or as evening star, Venus has no rival. No fixed star can for an instant bear comparison with her. What she lacks in vivacity of light—none of the planets twinkles, as do all of the true stars—is more than compensated by the imposing size of [Pg 49] her gleaming disk and the striking beauty of her clear lamplike rays. ”

“ She has a head and a face like a woman's; all the rest of the body is that of a fish. The learned men of the nation say that Venus, having been offended by Derceto, inspired her with a passion for a young priest as intense as that which she had awakened in Phedrus and Sappho. ”

“ Venus also loved a beautiful young earthly youth, called Adonis, who died of a thrust from a wild boar’s tusk, while his blood stained crimson the pretty flower, pheasant’s eye, which is still called Adonis. Venus was so wretched that she persuaded Jupiter to decree that Adonis should come back and live for one-half of the year, but he was to go down to Pluto’s underground kingdom the other half. This is because plants and flowers are beautiful for one year, die down, and rise again. ”

“ Venus. Hot ’un! You speak in enigmas? You are fully aware why I come hither?
Alph. I don’t. You are the statue out of them gardens, ain’t you?
Venus. I am no statue—I am Venus, I tell you! I have lain in a long, long trance, how long I know not, in my own palace in the Isle of Cyprus. How long I should have lain in that trance I know not had it not been for thou, most lovely mortal!
Alph. (Aside.) She knows me.
Venus. Yes; it was the touch of your kind mortal hand that has given me power to animate this marble shell!
Alph. (Aside.) She says she’s a shell. ”

“ Venus refused to be wed, and would not listen to any wooing. Then the ruler of the gods, finding his proffered love scorned by the proud goddess, determined to punish her by compelling her to marry Vulcan, the ugliest and most ill-favored of deities; and as Jupiter's word was law in all the universe, Venus was obliged to obey. But though married, she was by no means a devoted or faithful wife, and she caused poor Vulcan many unhappy moments ”

“ If we consider the dominating motive of the statue we must grant that it neither belongs to the very earliest times in which Venus was fully dressed, nor to the latest in which nudity, intensified in its suggestiveness by prudery, had nearly become the most characteristic feature of the deity of love. It takes its place in the midst of Greek art development when the first attempt was made to show the human form, and this is done in such a way as not to go to the extreme of a complete denudation but only suggests it and, as it were, with a protest on the part of the goddess. ”

“ Venus delivering to her son the armor of the gods is a subject equally suitable to artist and poet. For here she can be endowed with all the grace and beauty befitting the goddess of love. Such treatment will be of advantage as helping us the more easily to recognize her. But when Venus, intent on revenging herself on her contemners, the men of Lemnos, wild, in colossal shape, with cheeks inflamed and dishevelled hair, seizes the torch, and, wrapping a black robe about her, flies downward on the storm-cloud,—that is no moment for the painter, because he has no means of making us recognize her. ”

“ She was soon after carried to heaven, where all the gods admired her beauty, and all the goddesses became jealous of her personal charms. Jupiter even attempted to gain her affections, but Venus refused, and the god, to fulfil her destiny, gave her in marriage to Vulcan, the most ugly and deformed of the Gods. ”