The Rokeby Venus
Venus at her Toilet, also known as
The Rokeby Venus, is a painting by
Diego Velázquez in the
National Gallery,
London. It dates from
1648 to
1651.
In the painting the goddess
Venus is depicted lying on a bed, looking into a
mirror held up by
Cupid. The face reflected in the dimmed mirror appears to be that of an older woman, which has long intrigued experts. Some think it is a commentary on the
vanity of
beauty which is transitory due to
aging. Some think the face in the mirror was over-painted by another artist at a later time. Another explanation is that the face is not aged, merely out focus, a sharper face would distract our immediate attention from the form of Venus, by seeing the nude first, and the face afterwards we are "caught" in voyeurism. The face in the mirror is also substantially larger than it should be, and the mirror is angled such that, in reality, it would reflect a different part of the goddess's body.
The painting is unique for being the only surviving female
nude by Velázquez, and one of only two such paintings in all of 17th-century
Spanish art, which was often censored by the
Spanish Inquisition. It was revolutionary for its depiction of the nude female form with its back facing the viewer. The composition has only three main colours: red, white and grey, which include the pigment of Venus's skin.
Venus at her Toilet is first recorded in an inventory in
1651, belonging to Gaspar Méndez de Haro (
1629-
1687). It was intended as a pendant piece to a 16th-century
Venetian painting of a recumbent
nymph in a landscape, reversing the pose and moving the setting indoors. In
1800 the painting passed into the hands of
Manuel de Godoy, the chief minister of
Charles IV of Spain. He hung it alongside two masterpieces by
Goya he appears to have commissioned himself,
The Nude Maja and
The Clothed Maja. These bear obvious compositional similarities with Velázquez's Venus.
In
1813 the painting came to
England and was bought by John Morritt, MP, who hung it in his house at
Rokeby Park,
Yorkshire, which gave it its popular name. In
1906 it was acquired for the National Gallery by the newly-created
National Art Collections Fund, its first campaigning triumph. King
Edward VII is thought to have given £8,000 towards the cost of the painting, which he greatly admired, and became patron of the Fund thereafter.
On
March 10 1914 the militant
suffragette Mary "Slasher" Richardson walked into the National Gallery and attacked the canvas with a meat cleaver, provoked by the arrest of
Emmeline Pankhurst the previous day. In a statement that she gave to the Women's Social and Political Union shortly afterwards Richardson explained her actions thus: 'I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history', adding in a 1952 interview that she 'didn't like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long'.
*
Venus effect*
National Gallery: The Rokeby Venus *
More info on the painting*
Biography of Mary Richardson*
Political vandaism, art and gender â€" Mary Richardson
