The Birth of Venus (Cabanel)

The Birth of Venus
Artist	Alexandre Cabanel
Year	1863
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	150 cm × 250 cm (59 in × 98 in)
Location	Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Birth of Venus (French: Naissance de Venus) is a painting by the French artist Alexandre Cabanel. It was painted in 1863, and is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A second and smaller version (85 x 135.9 cm) from ca. 1864 is in Dahesh Museum of Art.^[1] A third (106 x 182.6 cm)^[2] version dates from 1875; it is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Shown to great success at the Paris Salon of 1863, The Birth of Venus was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his own personal collection.^[3] That same year Cabanel was made a professor of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Cabanel's combination of sensual and classical imagery appealed to the higher levels of society.^[3] Art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum wrote of Cabanel's The Birth of Venus that "This Venus hovers somewhere between an ancient deity and a modern dream"; he described "the ambiguity of her eyes, that seem to be closed but that a close look reveals that she is awake ... A nude who could be asleep or awake is specially formidable for a male viewer."^[4]