The Venus of Willendorf, now known in academia as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm (4.3 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was found in 1908 by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The “Venus of Willendorf” is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Several similar statuettes and other forms of art have been discovered, and they are collectively referred to as Venus figurines, although they pre-date the mythological figure of Venus by millennia.
The Baigneuse of 1757 was only the first of Falconet’s variations on the theme. It led to a whole range of figures, now standing, now seated, sometimes accompanied by a Cupid, but of which the main purpose always remains a study of the naked female body – a body which does not vary very much in type, being always youthful and slightly immature. Above all, the purpose and the appeal of such work lay in the sense of marble turned to flesh.
Venus of Willendorf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
The Venus of Willendorf, now known in academia as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm (4.3 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was found in 1908 by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The “Venus of Willendorf” is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Several similar statuettes and other forms of art have been discovered, and they are collectively referred to as Venus figurines, although they pre-date the mythological figure of Venus by millennia.
Baigneuse
par Etienne-Maurice Falconet
The Baigneuse of 1757 was only the first of Falconet’s variations on the theme. It led to a whole range of figures, now standing, now seated, sometimes accompanied by a Cupid, but of which the main purpose always remains a study of the naked female body – a body which does not vary very much in type, being always youthful and slightly immature. Above all, the purpose and the appeal of such work lay in the sense of marble turned to flesh.