Camille Corot

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Willibald Sauerländer reviews the exhibition

L’Armoire secrète: Eine Leserin im Kontext (The Secret Cabinet: A Reader in Context),  an 

exhibition at the Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur, Switzerland, February 4–May 15, 2011.

                                              

in New York Review of Books, April 28 2011 issue, in an article titled Quiet 

Genius - here's an excerpt:

"The high point of the show is La Femme à la perle from the Louvre. The title is eloquently 

misleading, for what gleams on the sitter’s chaste brow is not a pearl but only a leaf. Again we 

have a picture of a Parisienne—we even know the model’s name—dressed as an Italian peasant, 

but above all, it is a daring metamorphosis of the most famous portrait of the Italian Renaissance, 

Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. We know Leonardo’s portrait as a work shrouded in legend, inviting 

travesty, mystified by exegetes. Corot’s portrait is the purest echo of that masterpiece.

His circumspect approach does not subvert Leonardo’s greatness. Here too, he remained the lark 

next to the eagle. He has adopted everything from his predecessor—the shadows playing about the 

eyes, mouth, and cheeks, the hands laid one upon the other—but the appearance of La Femme à la 

perle seems suffused with the naturalness of Corot’s landscapes. She is a Mona Lisa who has read 

Rousseau."

Here are the two portraits discussed side by side:

     

     

Left: Jean-Baptiste-Camille COROT: La Femme à la perle, circa 1858–1868, 

Musée du Louvre, Paris

Right: Leonardo di ser Pietro DA VINCI, known as Leonardo da Vinci: Portrait of 

Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, between 1503 and 1506, Musée 

du Louvre, Paris

Jean-Antoine Houdon - The Seasons

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After reading 'The New York Review of Books' review of an exhibition at the Liebieghaus, Frankfurt, and at the Musée 

Fabre, Montpellier, Jean-Antoine Houdon: Die Sinnliche Skulptur (Sensuous Sculpture), I wanted to see an image of 

Houdon's sculpture Summer that wasn't reproduced in the article (by Willibald Sauerländer). There seem to be quite a few 

of them of the related work, Winter (below right), which was also reproduced in the magazine, but it took quite a while to 

come across Summer (below left).

I was prompted to do this post because of my current mixed feelings about the change of seasons: having grown up in 

Finland the seasons there used to have such a profound effect on people - as these two sculptures attest (well, Houdon was 

of course of the Mediterranean stock; the effect in the Nordic countries was in theory much more severe, but he was on the 

money regardless). Here in Sydney, we're gradually shifting from a nine month summer towards our three month winter. 

Houdon's Winter could actually portray ours: we do need something to wrap ourselves with at night, but during the day, 

when the sun's up, Venus could indeed cope without clothes.

From The Best Faces of the Enlightenment, The New York Review of Books, Vol LVII, Number 6, Willibald Sauerländer, 

translated from German by David Dollenmayer:

"For the library of a wealthy royal counselor’s town house in the fashionable Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Houdon created two 

statues personifying Summer and Winter. The seasons were still a popular motif for eighteenth-century painters, sculptors, 

writers, and composers—one that gained erotic charge in France during the time of the Marquise de Pompadour. Yet here 

that motif was as good as reinvented by Houdon.

In his enchanting depiction of Summer, the Ceres of antiquity is transformed into a lovely gardener. A wreath of flowers and 

wheat adorns her hair. In her right hand she carries a sickle, a sheaf of grain, and poppies; in her left a prosaic watering 

can. Instead of neoclassical personification, Houdon gives us a slice of nature. The charming face of the young woman 

resembles the artist’s new bride, Marie-Ange Cécile Langlois.

Houdon did not portray all four seasons, just Summer and Winter; his challenge was to contrast warmth and cold, flowers 

and frost. Ceres transformed into a gardener is followed by Venus shivering in the winter cold. Her lovely young body—is it 

Marie-Ange Cécile once again?—is unclothed except for the wrap thrown over her head and shoulders. On the ground at 

her feet is a cracked vase whose exterior is covered with spilled water, turned to ice. Perhaps the exhibition catalog is 

overly learned in its discussion of this bewitching statue. Shivering figures are included in images of winter since antiquity, 

and Houdon’s statue evokes a phrase that goes back to Terence: “Venus freezes without Ceres and Bacchus.” 

Mademoiselle Winter is not mourning her lost innocence, she’s just cold!"