I use this Velazquez painting, humorously, in the first few pages of my book, However, the painting has had a tumultuous past.
What is it about this Velazquez nude that made it so provocative?
The painting took at least five slashes with a meat chopper in 1914. Its attacker was Mary Richardson, a Canadiansuffragette active in the women’s suffragette movement in the United Kingdom. She was protesting the arrest of political activist Emmeline Pankhurst. The press dubbed her “Slasher Mary.” Richardson later admitted that it wasn’t just the picture’s value, of £45,000 in 1906, (almost $1½ million today) that made it a target.
It was “the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.”
She stated, “Justice is an element of beauty as much as color and outline on canvas. “
Mary Raleigh Richardson (1882-1961), a noted novelist and poet, was a suffragette, a socialist parliamentary candidate, and later head of the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists. She committed a number of acts of arson, smashed windows at the Home Office, and bombed a railway station. She was arrested nine times, receiving prison terms totaling more than three years.
Valazquez’ Venus, “is seen as the paradigm of female beauty,” says (British) Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston. An unknown model reclines on a bed with her back to the painter. Cupid’s mirror gives the viewer a sense that she is looking back at them. The face appears much older than her body.
“It’s a warning about beauty being ephemeral, nothing lasts forever.”
Venus was faithfully restored after the slashing.
To this day you can still see people having a close look at the painting to see if the damage is still visible.
It is.
