Venus and the Sphinx (detail)

French Mannerist art may have guided Pr�ault’s approach, but a drawing he made earlier in Rome shows that it was Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the Sistine Ceiling that directly inspired the pose of Venus here.

In placing the figures of deities on the backs of fabled creatures, Pr�ault was following antique and Renaissance precedents - like other late nineteenth-century artists - but his manner of doing so broke all rules. The figures’ poses are tense and awkward, and their musculature exaggerated.