Sculpture of the Day: The Vénus Africaine, 1852

The Vénus Africaine
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
Bronze, 1852
Purchased by Queen Victoria
The Royal Collection

By the 1840’s, with the rise of photography and the increasing number of archeological excavations and anthropological studies, English-speaking people were becoming more familiar with images of people from faraway lands.


Sculptor Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier was fascinated with ideal beauty and desired to create busts showing “ideal heads.” Here, we see his representation of the feminine ideal in a bust of an anonymous female, African sitter. Cordier sculpted from life, often taking casts of the features of his sitters. In this case, admittedly, he “ironed out” any flaws in the woman’s face so that she would approximate his vision of the ideal.

Queen Victoria was quite taken with this sculpture as well as its companion piece, purchasing both in September of 1852. The sculpture was considered so unusually attractive that many reproductions were created of it.