Venus Nursing Cupid c. 1759

Etienne-Maurice Falconet sculpted Venus Nursing Cupid out of unglazed porcelain, sometime in the 18th century. Porcelain was the wonder material of its day, the closest thing to alchemy that Europe had. It was produced through painstaking labor: compounded from kaolin clay and petuntse, high-fired, and then carefully decorated. This one dispenses with the decoration to enhance the sculptural forms. Here, the smooth, pale biscuit porcelain is ideally suited to the smooth skin of the figures, Venus and Cupid. The milky color and matte texture adds to the intimacy of the scene. The fashion for porcelain was tied to consumer capitalism. Aristocrats clamored for porcelain figurines to display on mantlepieces as symbols of their refined taste and wealth. Falconet's Venus invites us to consider porcelain not just as a luxury product, but as a medium with its own intrinsic qualities, capable of embodying both classical ideals and contemporary social values.