Toilet of Venus Francois Boucher's Thesis

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Though this effect is illusive as there is no parallelism in the curtains or the rest of the painting, and therefore no real vanishing point, it is perhaps enough reminiscent of one to suggest to the eye and brain of the viewer that such a point does exist, and that this painting has a very definite and defined space from which the scene is being viewed. Various shadows and other elements of scale are used to suggest distance, as well, but main perspective is a linear one.

Perhaps the most prominent singles aspect of the Toilet of Venus painting is Boucher's use of color. There is nothing truly vibrant in the painting, and yet there is nothing dull, either. Even the greys used for the stone underneath the bed and the pillar visible between the curtains has a richness and texture to it. Even more textured are the blue curtains themselves; the well-wrought folds of fabric pick up the light and reflect it out at the viewer in innumerable shades of the same deep blue. Te reds and golds of the bedclothes are similarly textured, and contrast nicely with the pale shallowness of the goddess' skin. This is perhaps the biggest oddity of the painting -- with so much richness and well-rendered beauty, the goddess of beauty herself seems somehow diminished and everyday. It is possible that Boucher was reflecting in the diminished state of the goddess in his time, but a more likely -- or at least more interesting -- interpretation is that Boucher was commenting on the people of his time's change in focus from the beauty of divinity, or of femininity, or even of humanity in general, to the external trappings of wealth, fortune, and luxury.

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This could also explain his depiction of disparate elements and his hard-to-pin-down style, which looks back to the Renaissance and forward to the darker themes of naturalism at the same time.

The painting's subjects and the way in which they are depicted bear this theory up as well. Though rendered realistically, the scene is also fantastical in the amount of wealth displayed and in the perhaps too obvious fact that the viewer is staring at a naked goddess and her attendants. Now, this subject is common enough in paintings that it can hardly be suggested that Boucher was attempting some sort of shock value with this, but that does not mean it was not part of his intended meaning. The viewer is catching the goddess before she is actually ready for public viewing, as she is still performing her toilet. Meanwhile, this same goddess is completely overshadowed in beauty, richness, and opulence by the trappings she surrounds herself in. The goddess herself, Boucher seems to be saying, has fallen into the trap of external vanity, and has become more concerned with the beauty of her possessions than with herself. Of course, Boucher's true meaning in the painting can never really be known, but given the events that followed a generation after this painting is completed, it really could have been….....

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