Vénus Astarté (Semitic goddess of fertility and love) (c. 1900): Art, History and Details

Vénus Astarté (Semitic goddess of fertility and love) (c. 1900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This relief of a female nude standing in water may represent the only time the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin provided an ornament for a precious object: a gold and enamel hand mirror designed by Felix Bracquemond (1833–1914). The mirror—acquired by the museum in 1978—was made for Baron Joseph Vitta, one of Rodin's most important patrons during the years around 1900, and it was probably for this reason that the artist agreed to the commission. This plaster cast of Rodin's nude was an intermediate version of the subject. Although the images on the mirror and the plaster cast were clearly derived from the same mold, there are significant differences in the figure's hair. Rodin probably changed the wax version (from which the gold relief of the mirror was made by lost-wax casting) before he used it.

Object facts

• Title: Vénus Astarté (Semitic goddess of fertility and love)
• Date: c. 1900
• Creator attribution: Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917)
• Culture: France, early 20th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: plaster
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.2 x 9.5 x 1.6 cm (5 9/16 x 3 3/4 x 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Sculpture 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2000.22

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” June 19, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.