Card Number 40, Sommerville, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

This is card number 40, Sommerville, from the Actors and Actresses series, printed by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes. The actress, posed in a corseted outfit and feathered hat, rests nonchalantly against a plinth displaying the cigarette brand. Her languid pose, hand gently touching her head, echoes the classical Venus Pudica, a motif that emerged in ancient Greece to symbolize modesty and beauty. The gesture, charged with a complex mix of allure and restraint, reappears across centuries, each time subtly altered by cultural context. Think of Botticelli's Venus, a Renaissance interpretation, where the gesture conveys a spiritual, almost ethereal purity. Here, though, it is further transformed. Placed in the service of commerce, it speaks to a burgeoning consumer culture where the female form becomes a tool for enticement. The collective memory of classical beauty, once revered, is here employed to sell cigarettes, demonstrating the symbol's dynamic, cyclical journey through art and culture. It reveals how symbols evolve, their emotional power shifting across the ages, engaging our subconscious in unexpected ways.