The seated Voltaire became public monument. The aim, according to the new moralizing attitude of Luis XVI’s reign, was reviving virtue and patriotism of the public. The idea had its origin in France, but the British were the first to carry it out with the Temple of British glories. In 1778, when Houdon became a Freemason, had the opportunity to know and to portray Benjamin Franklin and replicas of the bust they spread the fame of the artist by the new world. Thus, when Congress of Virginia decided to Commission a statue in marble of George Washington, the more natural choice was Houdon. The statue does not rise in the Rotunda of the Capitol of the State of Virginia until 1796.

But I’m not writing this entry by busts and portraits of great men or illustrated. My attention is completely dedicated to his work allegory of winter, ended in 1783. I see a young woman, slightly covered by a veil. This garment hides his head, slips by his shoulders, without to completely cover arms and crossing between his legs bare, falls towards the ground, returning to elevate to ultimately settle in the mouth of a vase, classic look, located just behind the woman. His stance, slightly shrunk and with arms crossed over the lap providing heat, is the only note of warmth that conveys the whole. If I do honor to the title of this work I think, initially, that Houdon wanted to represent winter metamorfoseando on a goddess, giving it with the attributes of a woman to bring it closer to us, to mortals. But setting me further I can not stop feeling concern merely by attempting to cover her body with her own arms, without apparent help from anyone that may be near, accentuates the solitude of the image.

Under the view and I look at his feet that tread the veil slightly and soar silently supported at the base of the slightly broken vase. This whole: her loneliness, her nakedness, her face tilted with the appearance of not wanting to look at the front, the proximity of this damaged vase of classic look all this, I repeat, makes me think of a woman trapped, cornered if me chanting the expression, scared face of a recent tragedy; I think of a woman who has lost everything in the devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius, Pompeii having a veil as only refuge and as single support a damaged vase. Or perhaps it is the victim of a Greek tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles in the end, I prefer to think that you it’s a homage to winter.