Tradition and Innovation: Odilon Redon and the Female Nude

    For centuries, the female nude has been the Holy Grail for artists. Even modern artists who wanted to create something new didn’t fully reject it. Symbolist painter Odilon Redon implemented classical poses in many of his paintings, using the familiar to communicate something new. This curation explores how the female nude has changed and stayed the same from antiquity to post-Industrial Revolution, and how Redon both rejected and embraced the past. 

    Symbolism is typically understood as a radical break with the past, looking to communicate the abstract and the subjective rather than a faithful representation of reality. And while Redon believed that blind adherence to the old, classical rules couldn’t produce good art, he also expressed great admiration for Neo-classical artists like Da Vinci and Michelangelo. As Redon grew confident in his own originality and creative skill, his late work quotes classical poses quite frequently. A surge of French national pride at this time probably also played a part in Redon’s choice to put his art in conversation with the past; many of his peers also showed renewed interest in the female nude.

    Whatever the reason, in Redon’s work, the female nude demonstrated its staying power through yet another century. As you look at examples of two different types of poses throughout history, consider not only the formal similarities and differences between the various poses, but how the poses interact with their surroundings and why the artist might have chosen that specific pose. Are the women fearful, thoughtful, confident, or defeated? How does the narrative of each painting inform the way their bodies are posed? The artists in this curation don’t reference other paintings just for the sake of tradition. They are making use of existing visual language and iconography to help you, the viewer understand their painting.

Medici Venus

Late 2nd century B.C. - Early 1st century B.C.

Parian marble of the lychnite variant (statue); Pentelic marble (base), h. 153 cm

The Uffizi Galleries

    The Medici Venus, created by an unknown artist in the Hellenistic Period, was heavily inspired by Praxiteles’ now lost Aphrodite of Knidos. The Aphrodite of Knidos was the first female nude in the classical tradition, and the Medici Venus follows the iconographic precedent of the Modest Venus pose set by Praxitales. The Medici Venus is posed in a variation of the Modest Venus, with one hand covering her pubis and the other covering her breasts. Though the Aphrodite of Knidos leaves her breasts uncovered, both are said to exhibit the Greco-Roman virtue of pudica, or modesty. Some scholars argue, however, the full story of this sculpture includes more than just a virtuous woman. The way the Venus looks to the side and hunches her shoulders suggests that she is afraid of being seen by an intruder. In depicting her this way, the artist places her at the mercy of the viewer.

Sandro Botticelli

Birth of Venus, c. 1485

Tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm

The Uffizi Galleries

    In the Birth of Venus, Botticelli incorporates the Modest Venus pose into a painting of Venus rising from the sea, a trope often referred to as "Venus Anadyomene". Painted during the Renaissance, the painting is a clear reference to Classical and Hellenistic statues of Venus. Although the pose remains very similar, Botticelli gives the figure a setting, a story, and other figures with which to interact. Zephyr blows her in to shore, while a woman, perhaps one of the Graces, rushes to throw a cloak over her. Influenced by Renaissance values of order and rationale, this Venus is less sensuous and less fearful than the Medici Venus.

Odilon Redon

Pandora, c. 1914

Oil on canvas, 56 1/2 x 24 1/2 in

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 60.19.1

    Redon uses the contrapposto, tilted head, and arm across the chest from the Modest Venus pose in his painting of a different mythological woman, Pandora. Unlike Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, however, the painting isn’t primarily a narrative work. Redon isn’t interested in telling a rational, orderly story of Pandora’s box, but in conveying something much more subjective. In Symbolist fashion, Redon creates a dreamlike world that is hazy and highly stylized. But even as he breaks with the naturalism and narrative of the past, Redon uses the Modest Venus pose as a template to give the viewer an impression of femininity, nature, and freedom. Pandora’s peaceful pose and the idyllic setting are intentionally at odds with the ending of the myth, pushing the viewer to look beyond the title of the painting.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio)

Venus Rising from the Sea ('Venus Anadyomene'), c. 1520

Oil on canvas, 74.00 x 56.20 cm

Scottish National Gallery

    Created during the Italian Renaissance, this painting once again depicts Venus rising from the sea. The curve and crouch of Aphrodite’s body and the turn of her head to the right is highly reminiscent of the Medici Venus, but in this variation, Aphrodite wrings her hair as she steps out of the water. This motif of Venus wringing her hair has shown up in various depictions of the goddess since antiquity. Her dynamic yet balanced pose and the scallop shell referencing her journey to shore create a narratively focused painting like Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Both Titian and Botticelli likely drew from Pliny the Elder’s account of Apelles’s painting Venus Anadyomone made in the fourth century. Now lost, that painting marks the beginning of the tradition of the Venus Anadyomene painting.

Théodore Chassériau

Venus Anadyomene, c. 1841/1842

Lithograph, 41.8 x 31.6 cm

National Gallery of Art

    This lithograph by French artist Chasseriau continues the tradition of the Venus Anadyomene. She is depicted wringing out her hair like in Titian’s rendition, but the medium of lithography timestamps the piece as modern. Lithography became popular with Romantic and Symbolist painters as a way to make multiple copies of an artwork. It didn’t use carving or etching like earlier printmaking methods, but used a chemical process to affix images to a stone or plate and utilized the properties of oil and water to apply ink only to the desired marks. The figure is once again more sensuous as artists leave behind the Renaissance’s focus on logic, order and virtue. Chasseriau’s lithograph was inspired by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, who in one of his works describes a dawn seascape touched by a goddess.

Odilon Redon

Andromeda, 1912

Oil on unprimed canvas, 69 x 35 in

Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts

    Once again, Redon uses an existing pose and places it in an entirely new setting. The figure in this painting appears to be almost traced from Chasseriau’s lithograph, yet her surroundings and the way she is rendered is radically different. Redon brings the iconography associated with Aphrodite and intertwines it with the story of Andromeda chained to a rock, uniting the themes of fertility and femininity associated with Venus and the theme of reliance on a male rescuer from the story of Andromeda. 

    When comparing Pandora and Andromeda, one starts to understand how a pose affects a painting and the viewer. When observing Pandora, the viewer may initially anticipate the impending disaster, but the Edenic imagery and Pandora’s peaceful, contemplative pose invite the viewer to simply take in the beauty before them. But rather than looking down to contemplate, Andromeda’s head is bowed in defeat, and as a result, the viewer eagerly anticipates Perseus’s arrival to free her from her chains.