The Newsletter Behind the Paintings

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The Birth of Venus by Cabanel: The Nude That Charmed an Emperor (1863)

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In the spring of 1863, two paintings of nude women divided Paris — and only one of them made an emperor fall in love. At the official Paris Salon, Alexandre Cabanel's The Birth of Venus stopped visitors in their tracks: a goddess reclining on a bed of sea-foam, luminous and weightless. Napoleon III liked it so much that he bought it on the spot for his own private collection. Today the painting is one of the most visited works at the Musée d'Orsay — and one of the clearest examples of how 19th-century France decided which nudity was art, and which was scandal. Quick facts Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) Date: 1863 Medium: Oil on canvas, 130 × 225 cm (51.1 × 88.5 in) Collection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris Notable owner: Napoleon III, who bought it at the 1863 Salon Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus , 1863. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Goddess Born From Sea-Foam Cabanel took his subject f...
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Allegory of Satan by Ludwik Stasiak: The Devil Who Smiles Instead of Snarls (c. 1900)

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He has no horns, no tail, and no fire at his feet. Ludwik Stasiak's Satan wears a crown-like cap, drapes himself in a bishop's red and a monarch's green, and smiles the unbothered smile of someone who has never once been told no. Painted around 1900 in Austrian-ruled Kraków, Alegoria szatana (Allegory of Satan) has spent the last several years resurfacing again and again on social media, usually shared with some version of the same question: why does this look less like a monster, and more like somebody we'd recognize? Quick facts Artist: Ludwik Stasiak (1858–1924) Date: c. 1900 Medium: Oil on canvas, 200 × 145 cm Collection: National Museum in Kraków (inv. MNK II-b-3252) Notable fact: Held by the same museum as Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine Ludwik Stasiak, Allegory of Satan (Lord of the World), c. 1900. Oil on canvas, National Museum in Kraków. Public domain (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons. Who Was Ludwik Stasiak? Stasiak was never just a painter. Born in 1858...
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Isle of the Dead by Böcklin: The Painting Hitler Owned, Dalí Reimagined (1883)

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In 1880, a grieving widow asked Arnold Böcklin for "a picture to dream by." What she got back was so quietly unsettling that it went on to haunt the next century: hung in cheap reproduction over the desks of Vladimir Lenin and Sigmund Freud, bought for a private collection by Adolf Hitler, reworked by Salvador Dalí, and set to music by Sergei Rachmaninoff — who later admitted he might never have composed a note of it had he seen the original in color. Böcklin painted the same silent island six times. Only five of those paintings still exist. Quick facts Artist: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) Date: 1883 (third of six painted versions, 1880–1901) Medium: Oil on panel, 80 × 150 cm (31.5 × 59 in) Collection: Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin Notable owner: Adolf Hitler, who bought this version in 1933 Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead (third version), 1883. Oil on panel, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Picture to Dream By In Florence in 1880, Bö...
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