Obelisk

Very rarely, two artworks will enter the world at the same time and become inextricable twins, or in the case of Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus and Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, opposite sides of the same coin. Let’s set the scene. While Abraham Lincoln was signing the Emancipation Proclamation and sparking the U.S. Civil War, a different kind of revolution was beginning in France—the overthrow of the Paris Salon. read more