Skip to Content
Today Open today 10–11 members | 11–8 public

  • Mon 11–5
  • Tue–Wed Closed
  • Thu 11–8
  • Fri–Sun 11–5
  • The first hour of every day, 10–11 a.m., is reserved for member-only viewing.

Untitled (Still life with a statuette of the Venus de Milo)

A work made of waxed paper negative.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • A work made of waxed paper negative.

Date:

1852-53

Artist:

John Beasley Greene
American, born France, 1832–1856

About this artwork

This work may have served as a training exercise for its photographer, John Beasley Greene, who learned the waxed-paper negative technique in Paris before traveling to Egypt to document archaeological discoveries. Statues were ideal subjects for students in the early days of the art: immobile, they were easy to capture even with the lengthy exposure times then required. In Greene’s time and place, Greek and Roman sculpture were held up as a model of aesthetic perfection, and the Venus de Milo was its exemplar. But this sculpture also attested to France’s rapacious collecting of ancient artifacts in the name of national glory. Greene’s modest study prompts thoughts on originality and reproduction; the sculpture pictured is not the marble one housed in the Musée du Louvre, but a miniature plaster copy, removed one step further from the original by Greene’s photographing it.

For more on John Beasley Greene, see this blog post..

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

John Beasley Greene

Title

Untitled (Still life with a statuette of the Venus de Milo)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1852–1853

Medium

Waxed paper negative

Dimensions

31.4 × 24.3 cm (12 3/8 × 9 5/8 in.); frame: 52.8 × 42.6 × 3.9 cm (20 13/16 × 16 13/16 × 1 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by the Leonian Charitable Trust

Reference Number

2020.2

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/249723/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.
Learn more

Image actions

Share

Suggested Terms