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| Paul Cézanne Still Life with Plaster Cupid ca. 1894 oil on paper, mounted on panel Courtauld Gallery, London |
Wounded Cupid
At the center of the still life, seen from above, stands a plaster Cupid (reproducing a statue by Pierre Puget). The figurine is off-kilter, perhaps damaged. In the background is another statue down on one knee and only half visible, or more likely a canvas depicting another statue. The motif of the artist's studio commonly involves pictures within pictures. The mise en abyme here is more precise, since within a canvas representing a statue we see another canvas representing another statue.
Echo of Antiquity
Throughout the composition we recognize the typical still-life elements of a late Cézanne, particularly fruit. Also a plate, a blue cloth draped over a piece of furniture, and nestled in its folds a pair of spherical objects – two perfect apples.
The young Cézanne had taken up the classical theme of the Judgement of Paris, where the hero offers an apple to the goddess he considers most beautiful among Juno, Minerva, and Venus. Having chosen Venus, he becomes the object of Juno's jealousy – one of the origins of the Trojan War.
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| Paul Cézanne The Judgment of Paris 1864 oil on canvas private collection |
Echo of Christianity
In the narrow view of critics early in the 20th century, Cézanne was an artist wedded to realism who painted apples simply because they were readily available. Gradually, iconographic studies established that these apples were more than apples, possessing an important symbolic charge, not only in antiquity but in Christianity, since they were the fruit of temptation in the Garden of Eden, from which we have all been banished along with Adam.
Onions
Green sprouts already emerge from Cézanne's red onions – their lives recommence. They must quite shortly be used in cooking; otherwise they will have to be put back into the earth and allowed to grow. The onion is, in structure, a container of petals, or layers, one inside another, like a picture inside a picture. The onion is the bulb of mise en abyme and of rebirth.
Cézanne never paints apples cut in half, ready for eating. Inside the apple are seeds one can plant and that much later will produce more apples, but he always prefers to show us apples ready for offering, in their geometric perfection, as a gift to a goddess.
For this artist, the onion and the apple complement each other: on one hand, the quintessential fruit of seduction but also the origin of catastrophes; and on the other, the humble onion triggering our tears, but also leading us toward rebirth and redemption.
For this artist, the onion and the apple complement each other: on one hand, the quintessential fruit of seduction but also the origin of catastrophes; and on the other, the humble onion triggering our tears, but also leading us toward rebirth and redemption.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)