Formal Analysis: The Venus of Willendorf
The Venus of Willendorf was believed to be created 25,000 years ago, is none-freestanding sculpture and is sculpted out of oolitic limestone. The subject matter, I believe it to convey a fertility figure for men and woman to gaze upon. The Venus of Willendorf is a none-freestanding female nude stature, which is an 11 centimeters high, made out of oolitic limestone and now resides in Naturhistorisches Museum. She was found in 1908 in Austria in a village called Willendorf. The stature has been carved out of oolitic limestone and has been given a red ochre tint. This small oolitic limestone figure representing a woman in the nude has no known artist and no information on why it was created. I believe that
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Certain parts of her body are heavily exaggerated; she has overly huge breast, her stomach is large and as well as her butt. She appears to be smooth and her parts of her body I would consider to be very symmetrical. The artist that created her has chosen to exaggerate her breast and make them appear large and full. As well as they have done with her stomach, by making it appear overly large and to symbolize fertility or a late stage of pregnancy for women. The artist carriers, this plumpness and roundness of the female figure throughout out the stature. The artist has demonstrated plumpness of the female figure through her legs and carries it to her back side as well. The one aspect of this figure the artist had heavily rendered in detail, is the figures female genitalia. The genitalia is heavily rendered to show a female reproductive organs. It’s this aspect of the sculptural nature that makes me think that the artist had created her for fertility reasons. Not only does the artist, the artist heavily renders Venus of Willendorf female genitalia, and exaggerated certain body parts. The artist has created her with no face, but sculpting a type of textile or hair style on top of her head. They have sculpted this textile or hair style half way onto the Venus of Willendorf head. It almost covers her whole face and leaves a little space, where you would expect to see a mouth. The …show more content…
The artist wanted to draw you in by giving you a place to look at imminently upon looking at her and after looking at her your eyes is drawn down to her genitalia. This leads me to believe that she was created to represent fertility in woman, because certain exaggerated parts of her body and very detailed female reproductive organs. Knowing Venus of Willendorf is a sculpture, she has very nice defined lines. She has a nice combination of vertical, horizontal and curved lines. The artist has given her a nice horizontal line crossing across her breast that her arms create that draw you in. From the horizontal line to the vertical line that draws your eye down to look at her genitalia. She also has nice curved lines that form all around her. From the top of her head, to her breast, to the middle of her stomach, that bring your eye to her behind and back to the front of her legs. The artist has created a nice curved lines that surrounds her breast, as well as her stomach and rear hind. Another way to view her is from the side, which gives you a nice sense of her curved lines that you eye follows down in a flow. Another aspect of Venus of Willendorf would be the
It offers and understanding that women were held at a different standard then than they are now. This figurine shows that women had a larger mid-section but was because they either needed the body fat for long, cold winters or the better idea was because it showed they were fertile and they were able to produce babies and keep the legacy going on. It also provides a better image of what the men and women had to go through in order to survive, like the long hard winters, the needing to hunt for food and could mean sometimes not having food. Venus of Willendorf was not considered an obese women, “where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable”, (PBS, 2006). I can use this article because it explains the whole point about a women’s image. Women were not looked at how skinny and “good looking” they were in a pair of jeans. Women, in this time, were looked at as if they can be fertile or not. Being able to have children was a huge thing in this time since it was one of the point of living, to have a
...e of Knidos, created by Praxiteles, can only be found in copies today, but at the time was the first sculpture of a goddess nude. He had transformed marble into the soft and radiant flesh of the goddess of love and taking on a worldly sensuousness. Originally located in a rotunda where it could be seen from all angles. Female nudity was very rare to the Greeks, especially that of a goddess. The sculptor made it look like Aphrodite’s nudity was nonchalant, which made it more sensuous with a welcoming look on her face. With several copies, all being found to be slightly different, all still capture the goddess’s womanly beauty that is not too sexually aggressive. With he hourglass torso, sloped shoulders, large hips and thighs, slim calves and ankles, and small feet and hands, this statue is the polar opposite of any manly figure, which is why it is known to be luring.
Although, both the Aphrodite of Knidos and the Birth of Venus have like traits such as nude female body, contrapposto stance, and iconography, they also can be easily contrasted by period of creation, technique, and artist. The human body has always been a popular choice among artists, but it seems the nude female body is quite controversial. The Aphrodite of Knidos, sculpted by Praxiteles about 350 – 340 B.C., or during the Greek Late Classical period, was a nude female modestly covering her genitalia. The Aphrodite was what made the small island of Knidos known to people around the world. Some 1,000 years later, the Birth of Venus arrived. Artist Sandro Botticelli, during the Italian Renaissance (ca. 1482,) defied odds with a similar interpretation of the Aphrodite despite stricter views on nude women. Both pieces share similar traits, yet can be easily identifiable apart from each other.
It is determined the Antonine Woman as Venus is a woman of aristocratic status. The portrait is made of fine-grain marble, a medium only upper-class persons could afford. Also, only persons of wealth could afford to have such a protrait made. The woman is portrayed as Venus, a goddess who is connected to the imperial family, and members of a royal family would often have themselves depicted as a deity. (De Puma 26) We know she is being portrayed as Venus because of her bare breast and the upper-arm ring. The bare breast is a key to Venus because she is the goddess of sexuality and desirability. The upper arm ring can be an attribute of Venus as the Statue of Aphrodite (Venus) by Praxiletels displays the same jewelry on a nude body. (Fantham 175)
Venus in Botticelli's painting is a Renaissance beauty. During the Renaissance women were believed to look more attractive if they had some weight to them. It was believed that this weight make them more prepared for child birth, and basically healthier. Venus has weight in the painting. Without this weight I do not feel that she would have such a strong impact on her viewers. Another strong point of Venus's presence is her wonderful long and flowing red-orange hair. It flows around her body keeping her pose modest, yet revealing. In all of this beauty it can be easy to overlook the unnatural length of Venus's neck, and the steep fall of her shoulders. Venus's outline is wonderfully graceful, and it is the grace that makes the print so wholesome and beautiful. If Botticelli would have chosen a slimmer or less natural Venus the harmony of the picture would have been destroyed.
...der is that its varying messages from the sculpture have puzzled its viewers as to what its meaning can be. “For the myths tell us that from the mystical perspective the distinctions between male and female…-as between time and eternity, pluralism, and monism- are meaningless”(TECHNIQUES OF THE WORLD SAVIORS: Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, part two from The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell [Celestial Arts, 1990], Toby Johnson). Although both influences of a male and female have crossed together, the mythical stories of the goddess or god have represented the need for a stronger female aspect. To hold it as high of a position as a goddess can have and make its display for the entire world to see, this piece of evidence not only tells the tale of the Chinese woman’s adversity, but of the adversity of women everywhere.
The Woman from Willendorf, just as the name suggest was discovered in Willendorf, Austria in 1908 during an archeological excavation of the area. The small figurine is heavily regarded as one of the most important Paleolithic discoveries. Carved in the round from limestone the figure the figure is undeniably female with it’s exaggerated features. Some of the most recognizable features of the rounded figure include the large pendulous breast, the
Her beauty is very non-traditional: "features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen".
The most attractive women are found in books, posters, on tv, and on advertisement boards to send out the message of what an ideal woman should look like. No matter how much time goes by, there will always be that ideal woman that every man wants. Thus, we make sculptures and images to represent the kind of women we want and what every woman should look like. Over the ages, there have been different sculptures formed of the perfect women, such as overweight and short then transitioning to tall and thin. This paper will discuss one of the most ideal woman sculptures are the “Venus of Willendorf” and over the time the ideal woman transitioned to “Peplos Kore.” Also, it will be about these two sculptures have a significant turning point in social or cultural development and what ways have these sculptures impacted the 21st century society.
A Florentine lady before Venus and the Graces, a woman stands on the far left side of the painting being held by one of the Graces. Her look is confusing as if she does not know what is going on. Someone that to me looks like a statue is holding the grace that is holding her. The statue is holding his breath and is a grayish blue color. Up above all the characters in the painting is cupid and he is shooting his arrow toward three of the graces. The three graces are dancing. A gentle man stands on the right side of the picture picking a peach from the tree. Venus seems to be the center of attention. She is in the far back on her own. The lighting seems to shine more her way. Botticelli uses Venus a lot in his paintings. I think he uses her because she is a strong goddess.
Vivid details in the animals and the bare woman’s body are powerful and the realistic features mixed in with the surreal qualities make the experience of viewing the artwork inviting and quite entertaining.
In the scene of her art work it shows Venus arriving at the shore after her birth a fully grown adult. In the center of the artwork is the newly-born goddess Venus who is standing in the bare atop a giant scallop shell. In the story of her birth, Venus’s scallop is there but it’s size is not described however in the artwork the scallop is huge as anything a human-like being can ride on must be. Hovering above the waves to the left of Venus is a wind god, called a Zephyr who is blowing air along with a young female who the Zephyr is carrying even though they both have wings. The Zephyr is blowing a strong stream of air radiating from his mouth while his female companion is blowing less forcefully helping the Zephyr propel Venus across the waves towards the shore. The original artist Vasari was most likely trying to the women as Venus’s aura, personifying it as a light breeze which is pushing her hair and flowers while the Zephyr’s stronger stream blows the scallop shell. Since the piece was made during the Renaissance era, Venus couldn’t be drawn completely showing herself off to the world, which forced Botticelli paint Venus covering her lower genitalia with her hand which is holding her hair. Unlike Venus, the female painted off to the right is clothed in a flowing dress. The female, who is one of the three Horae or
Venus is a term that has long been associated with artwork, most specifically the classical forms of beautiful women. The term Venus has also come to represent female sculptures of the Paleolithic era. The most notable of these female sculptures is the Venus of Willendorf, 24,000-22,000 BCE. The age of the figurine has been changed several times. Originally when found the date was estimated to be 15,000 to 10,000 BCE. During the 1970’s the time period was adjusted to 25,000 to 20,000 BCE; the date was again recalculated in the 1980’s to 30,000 to 25,000 BCE; the most recent estimate of age was in the 1990’s and was placed at 24,000 to 22,000 BCE after scientific research was performed on the rock stratification. This statuette was discovered by Josef Szombathy in 1908 near the town of Willendorf, Austria, in an Aurignacian loess deposit, which loosely defined is a yellow brown loamy geological deposit dating to the Paleolithic period. The name Venus was first associated with the figurine as a joke. The small, crudely carved statuette of an obese woman contrasts heavily from the graceful classical forms of sculpture such as Aphrodite of Cnidos, Praxiteles, 350 BCE. Although it would be difficult to associate the word beautiful with this statuette, there can be no doubt that it reflects the female form. The statuette has also been known as “la poire” or “the pear” due to its size and shape and more recently was donned the Woman from Willendorf. The removal of the title Venus served to take away the figurine’s status of goddess and lower it to the human level, therefore allowing more consideration of the figurine’s purpose (Witcombe, sec. 3).
Botticelli depicts Venus standing a relaxing pose with long golden wavy hair that falls to her knees skin blemish free and pale as the seafoam she’s born from with one hand (right) gently placed over her right breast she uses the other (left) grasping for
The form does take on specific significance when viewed in the context of history and culture. The Venus of Willendorf is the earliest officially dated sculpture know to the modern western world yet she is...