This statue, along with Thomas Couture’s painting The Romans of the Decadence, was the cynosure of the 1847 Salon, scandalising the public and the critics alike. ClĂ©singer produced a suggestive image of a naked woman writhing from the pain of a bite inflicted by the symbolic snake twisted around her wrist. As the dimpled flesh at the top of her thighs reveals, he used a plaster cast moulded from life. His model was Baudelaire’s muse, Apollonie Sabatier (1822-1890), a Parisian beauty who held a salon in Paris and was familiarly known as “La PrĂ©sidente”; in lending her body to ClĂ©singer she brought him unhoped-for success.
The practice of moulding a sculpture directly from life was violently criticised in the 19th century, on the grounds that it induced laziness and lack of integrity in the artist. ClĂ©singer kept up excellent relations with ThĂ©ophile Gautier, who orchestrated the scandal. For Delacroix it was just a “sculpted daguerreotype.”
Yet the generous curves that offended visitors to the Salon with their realism were combined with more conventional elements: the less expressive idealised face and the ornate pedestal covered with flowers like a bronze clock, making Woman Bitten by a Snake a perfect example of eclecticism in sculpture. The motif of the abandoned body was frequently copied until the end of the century, as is shown by Schoenewerk’s sculpture, The Young Tarantine.
