Focus on this artwork and discuss the Analysis and reception.
This was the fourth painting titled Sleeping Venus made by Paul Delvaux; the previous were made in 1932, 1943 and earlier in 1944. The subject had engaged Delvaux since a visit in 1929 or 1930 to the Spitzner Museum, a cabinet of curiosities that was part of the Foire du Midi, which is a yearly fair in Brussels. He was fascinated by the contrast between the fair, the monstrosities of the museum, and a wax sculpture of a sleeping Venus that was part of the museum's exhibition. This wax figure became the model for all his paintings of Venus. Delvaux made the fourth Sleeping Venus in Brussels while the city was bombed during World War II. He said he wanted to express the psychological "drama and anguish" of the moment and contrast it with "the calm of Venus".The art historian Virginie Devillers says all of Delvaux's Venus paintings portray a state between sleep and wakefulness and share their contrast between calm and violence. The paintings from 1944 stand out due to their involvement of other characters, and the second of them differs from the first with its outdoors setting and more dramatic staging, expressing the tension of a particular time and place. The historian of politics Jill Locke uses the painting as a meditation on shame and politics, and says its images of the calm, shamelessly nude Venus, the upset mourners and the seemingly abandoned political buildings can be viewed as an ambivalent depiction of "threat, stasis, and possibility".
Foire du Midi Paul Delvaux Spitzner Museum World War II