Pygmalion1.0118

Honoré Daumier, 1808-1879, "Pygmalion," comic lithograph, in Histoire Ancienne series, 1842, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 1978.656.5

For the Metropolitan Museum's page, click here.

Daumier's motif of the sculpture's calcific/ivory lower half and vivified upper half goes back to Raoux (1717) and culminates in Gérôme's (1890) Pygmalion. Nor was Daumier among the first iconoclasts (cf. Rowlandson) to undercut the solemnity of the moment. Here Pygmalion's girl begins her new existence by taking a snort from the sculptor's snuff box.

Daumier's caption reads in translation RTM:

"O Triumph of the arts! How very surprised you were, great sculptor, when you saw that your marble was animated and, in an attitude of chaste sweetness, she gently leaned down ... to ask for a pinch."

For an interesting exploration of the myth's potentially weird erotic psychology, see Michael Longley's poem "Ivory and Water" (1994).

J. Elsner and A. Sharrock, "Re-viewing Pygmalion," Ramus 20 (1991):149-82; A.R.Sharrock, "Womanufacture," JRS 81 (1991):36-49. Both on JSTOR.