UC Davis

The Toilette of Venus by François Boucher, 1751, depicts the mythical goddess, Venus. The painting was commissioned by Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour, chief mistress to King Louis XV of France and Boucher’s best patron. Featuring a nude woman perched on a luxurious sofa, surrounded by winged putti and exotic metal ornament, Boucher’s Venus turned heads in the eighteenth-century and her popularity persists in the twenty-first. She inhabits the apex of fantasy — sensual, available, and just out of reach.Upon first glance The Toilette of Venus appears to be in a setting appropriate to its mythological origin. However, when observed more closely it is evident that something new is happening. Boucher’s Venus broke with the canonical representation of a mythological nude by integrating the popular style of turquerie, then the height of fashion due to shifting cultural and economic conditions. By applying twentieth-century visual theory to the image it is clear that Boucher took layers of both genres and wove them together into a new type of fantasy image, appropriate only for Madame de Pompadour’s new space in the Château de Bellevue. In order to understand why Boucher employed these techniques and their intended effect we must detangle the layers of objects and style by exploring the cultural, economic, and sociological conditions in which Boucher produced The Toilette of Venus.