Image: ‘The Birth of Venus’ (Naissance de Venus), oil on canvas, 130 cm x 225 cm, 1863 painting by the French artist Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A second painting, slightly smaller version painted in 1875, is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, USA.
When exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1863, ‘The Birth of Venus’ greatly impressed Napoleon III, who purchased it for his personal collection. The famous art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum wrote of Cabanel's ‘The Birth of Venus’, "This Venus hovers somewhere between an ancient deity and a modern dream… 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 especially formidable for a male viewer."
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