Venus At Her Mirror
When making a statement or protesting something you feel is unjust most people would take to the streets (or to the internet) but for one suffragette the solution was clear, slash the most famous female nude painting she could get her hands on.
The Painting in Question
Diego Velázquez painted this ~taboo~ nude, Venus At Her Mirror (it’s also known by a bunch of other names but this is the one I’ll be using), between 1647 - 1651. The painting shows a nude Venus reclining on a couch looking at herself in the mirror*, allowing the viewer to see her face. There are a few paintings that Velázquez clearly drew inspiration from (and they’re also controversial for their time) like Giorgione's Sleeping Venus and Titian's Venus of Urbino. Even though both of these ladies are facing the viewer and Velázquez’s is facing away the similarities are clear.
Venus At Her Mirror is his only surviving female nude because it was painted during the Spanish Inquisition when this subject matter was heavily policed (some things never change). So Spanish artists couldn’t paint nudes and if they did they were thrown in jail or fined. Thankfully there was nothing wrong with a female nude as long as it was by a foreign painter, they were a hot collector’s item, filling the houses of the rich and powerful. All men, duh.
So at this point you’re saying what’s the big deal here, we have a nude painting of a woman who symbolizes sexuality and beauty AND ALSO she is a fictional person. It’s clearly not a depiction of a real woman, what is the issue? Well, there are a couple things…
Venus is painted facing away from us with her body completely on show, at first, it might seem like Velázquez painted her this way to protect her modesty a little. However, when you consider that her derrière is in the middle of the painting instead of her face or even the back of her head, things seem sketchier.
In Spain, at the time of this painting being created, there was a real culture of machismo (translation: men are better than women, women are easy and weak prey). Some argue that this painting is capitalizing on that thinking about women and reduces Venus to just her body. This seems especially bad when you realize that you can’t even see her face, the ONE area of potential individuality in this painting, it’s blurred and indistinct in the mirror.
This last one is a little bit of a stretch for me but it’s also said that on the black sheets Venus’ body is offset perfectly and she looks like a dish being served up to the viewer. (Gross but I guess?)
The Slashing
Now back to the actual crime at hand. On March 10, 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery in London with a meat cleaver up her sleeve. Those were the days when you could just prance around with a CLEAVER and no one noticed. She walked right up to Venus At Her Mirror, which was on an easel on the floor and very accessible, and smashed the protective glass before getting seven slashes to the canvas in. At first, people thought the breaking glass sound was the skylight breaking (sorry what?) and Richardson had some extra time to attack the painting. Eventually people clued in to what the sound was and she was taken into custody and given the maximum sentence for the destruction of artwork, six months in jail. Clearly they took art crime very seriously with that kind of sentence.
She was obviously asked why she attacked this painting and here is what she had to say: “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history” (McCouat, 2014). Basically, what had happened is that Mrs Pankhurst, another suffragette, had been violently arrested the day before and Richardson wanted to protest the arrest. She decided to attack a painting known for its’ beauty thinking that if people were outraged about the attack on a symbol of physical beauty they should be even more outraged about an attack on Pankhurst, which she was also drawing attention to, the embodiment of moral beauty and justice.
How Did People React?
Predictably, Richardson’s reasons for the attack went RIGHT over peoples’ heads. Venus was referred to everywhere as a victim and the slashes were called “wounds” or “bruises” and no Pankhurst wasn’t part of the conversation at all. Everyone treated this slashing like it was an attack to a real woman, which is ironic because that’s the exact opposite of Richardson’s point, must have been the most frustrating for her. She was also totally vilified, with people comparing her to Jack the Ripper (they even called her The Ripper and Slasher Mary). That must have totally sucked because she said in many interviews that she loved art and this piece in particular so it took a lot to push her to actually damage it.
I have to say that I kind of agree with and sympathize with Richardson’s thoughts and her reasons behind what she did. Let me make it clear, I’m not saying to go and vandalize priceless, old works of art when you want to make a point, but she did shed light on some very interesting things about this painting (and other female nudes from this period) that many people probably hadn’t thought about before. Honestly, the conversation she was trying to spark about feminism and the female body in art in is still super relevant (and without slashing any paintings) we should keep having it.
Also, just a note, the painting is fine now and was actually restored to almost perfection. There is some slight discolouration if you look super super closely but they actually did a really good job with this one. 10/10.
*Fun Fact: while researching this I learned about something called “The Venus Effect”. In many paintings of Venus where she is facing away from the viewer the artist will use a mirror to let the viewer see her face. What I didn’t know is that because of the angle of the mirror in these paintings, Venus wouldn’t actually have been able to see herself at all.
Works Cited
McCouat, Philip. “From The Rokeby Venus To Fascism Pt.1: Why Did Suffragettes Attack Artworks?” Journal of Art in Society. 2014. http://www.artinsociety.com/from-the-rokeby-venus-to-fascism-pt-1-why-did-suffragettes-attack-artworks.html