Woman Bitten by a Serpent

Common card · No. 361351

Woman Bitten by a Serpent (French: Femme piquée par un serpent) is an 1847 marble sculpture by Auguste Clésinger (1814–1883), now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It depicts a violently contorted nude among a bed of flowers, with a small snake latched onto her left arm. It was commissioned by the industrialist Alfred Mosselman and first exhibited in the Paris Salon of 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 Mosselman's mistress, the demi-mondaine Apollonie Sabatier (1822–1890), later Charles Baudelaire'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...

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