''Woman Bitten by a Serpent'' is an 1847 marble sculpture by

Auguste Clésinger Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clésinger (22 October 1814 – 5 January 1883) was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter. Life Auguste Clésinger was born in Besançon, in the Doubs department of France. His father, Georges-Philippe, was a scu ...

(1814–1883), now in the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...

in Paris. It was commissioned by the industrialist Alfred Mosselman and first exhibited in the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

in 1847, where it and Thomas Couture's '' The Romans in their Decadence'' were the most commented-upon works. Clésinger had modelled his work on a life-cast of Mossellman's mistress, the

demi-mondaine is French for "half-world". The term derives from a play called , by Alexandre Dumas fils, Alexandre Dumas , published in 1855. The play dealt with the way that prostitution at that time threatened the institution of marriage. The was the world ...

Apollonie Sabatier (1822–1890), later

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...

's muse. The direct use of a life cast as the basis for a sculpture was highly controversial in the 19th century, particularly in its realism, such as the reproduction of the model's cellulite. Clésinger's friend Théophile Gautier orchestrated a response to the art critics' scandalised reviews, ensuring the sculpture's great success. At the end of 1847 Clésinger also produced a ''Reclining Bacchante'', slightly larger than ''Woman'' so as to confute criticisms of his technical skills with marble. This was exhibited in room 4 of the Petit Palais in the 1848 Salon – Théophile Gautier wrote that it showed "pure orgiastic delirium, the disheveled Maenad tumbled at the feet of Bacchus, father of liberty and joy ... A powerful spasm of happiness contracts and raises the young woman's opulent bosom and in fact makes the sparkling breasts spring up.". He concluded by calling the work "one of the most beautiful pieces of modern sculpture". It was a major inspiration for the American painter

Kehinde Wiley Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977)"Kehinde Wiley"
''Artnet''. Retrieved October 13, 2010. i ...

's 2008 ''Woman bitten by a serpent''.

References

{{Authority control Marble sculptures Sculptures in the Musée d'Orsay 1847 sculptures