Jago’s sculpture of Venus: a reflection on fleeting beauty, Jago Museum, Naples

Jago “Venus”

Sculpture – Lasa Covelano marble (193 x 70 x 70 cm) 2018

Jago, Venus The Venus of Jago depicts the body of an old woman who was once the embodiment of ideal feminine beauty.

This naked old woman is depicted in a pose identical to that of Botticelli’s Venus, which is housed in the Ufizzi Gallery in Florence.

Her nudity shows us a female body that has lost its power of seduction, whose sagging flesh is marred by cellulite beneath the folds of skin.

Jago’s Venus is bald, lacking the magnificent hair of Botticelli’s Venus with which she modestly concealed her genitals whilst emphasising the beauty of her body.

The extreme withering of her skin is superbly rendered by Jago.

Jago, Venus Her advancing age is evident above all in the loss of that natural adornment which once highlighted her feminine charm : long hair framing a gentle face and falling to her shoulders to partially cover a smooth, perfectly shaped body.

She stands posing with dignity before us, as if we were the mirror in which she sadly gazes upon her bald head and her withered body whilst recalling her former beauty.

Venus’s bald head, whose wrinkled face has lost its delicacy, gives her this masculine appearance, which is contradicted only by the width of her hips and by the breasts she conceals in a gesture of modesty.

The expression on her face and the intensity of her gaze convey resignation in the face of the ravages of time, and invite us to reflect on the transience of human life at a time when the cult of the body and the narcissism of selfies have taken on considerable importance.

Jago, Venus