The Nymph Salmacis
Francois-Joseph Bosio (1768-1845) · 1836
A young woman sits on the ground, one leg folded beneath her, holding her foot with one hand as she leans forward, a crown of flowers in her hair and a light cloth over her legs. She is Salmacis, the nymph of a pool in Ovid's Metamorphoses who fell in love with the youth Hermaphroditus and prayed to be united with him forever, so that the two became a single body. Bosio shows her stepping out of her bath, a pretext for a nude of exquisite smoothness. Notice how the polished marble of the skin contrasts with the matt folds of the drapery, and how the tilted head gives the figure a knowing, sidelong glance.
Bosio, born in Monaco and the favourite sculptor of the Bourbon Restoration, had already shown a plaster of this subject at the Salon of 1824; the royal household ordered the marble in 1826. Delivered to the Louvre stores in 1836 and shown at the Salon of 1837, it hung in the Luxembourg museum, the gallery of living artists, from 1840 to 1849 before entering the Louvre. The signature on the base gives him his title: the Baron Bosio.
Did You Know? The sculptor signed the base with his baronial title, a reward from the restored Bourbon kings.
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