The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (307 page)

 
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Medici Venus
.

Marble statue of naked Venus (Uffizi, Florence), first recorded for certain in 1638 in the Villa Medici in Rome. It is signed by ‘Cleomenes son of Apollodorus’, but in the 18th cent. its fame as a model of female beauty was so great that the signature's authenticity was doubted and the statue was attributed to such illustrious names as
Phidias
and
Praxiteles
(to whose
Aphrodite of Cnidus
it bears some resemblance in pose). Several other statues of similar type exist, but in spite of the
Medici Venus's
quite severe restorations, it far outdid its rivals in fame, and it was one of the greatest prizes that Napoleon caused to be brought to France when Italy was under his dominion (it was in Paris between 1803 and 1815). As late as 1840 it was described by
Ruskin
as ‘one of the purest and most elevated incarnations of woman conceivable’, but its reputation has since crumbled, Martin Robertson (
A History of Greek Art
, 1975) describing it as being ‘among the most charmless remnants of antiquity’. It is now considered to be a copy of
c.
100 BC deriving from an original of the time of Praxiteles.

 
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medium
.

Term used in its broadest sense to describe the various methods and materials of the artist; thus painting, sculpture, and drawing are three different media, and bronze, marble, and wood are three of the media of sculpture. In a more restricted sense the term refers to the substance with which
pigment
is mixed to make paint; for example, water in
watercolour
, egg yolk in
tempera
,
linseed oil
(most usually) in
oil painting
.

 
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Meegeren , Han van
.

See
BREDIUS
.

 
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megilp
.

A painting
medium
consisting of mastic varnish mixed with
linseed oil
. It makes paint glossy and easy to work, but it is a dangerous aid, in time rendering the paint yellow and brittle.

 
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(1815–91).
French painter, etcher, lithographer, and sculptor. He was immensely successful with his trite and nigglingly detailed historical paintings and historical
genre
pieces (particularly scenes from the Napoleonic campaigns) and from the 1840s received the highest official honours, including the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour—he was the first painter to win this award. Astonishingly conceited as well as mean-spirited, he cultivated a huge white beard and liked to be photographed or painted in attitudes of fiercely profound thought, as in his self-portrait of 1889 in the Musée d'Orsay. He had a personal enmity for
Courbet
and may have been instrumental in inducing the government to impose a fine on him after the suppression of the Commune. Meissonier did his best work when he was at his least pretentious. His landscapes are attractive descriptive exercises and his
Rue de la Martellerie
(Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1848), which shows a corpse-strewn street during the revolutionary events of 1848, has genuine pathos and impressed
Delacroix
. There are large collections of Meissonier's work in the Musée d'Orsay and in the Wallace Collection, London.

 
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