Abstract Goethe's and Lessing's analyses of antique statues of Venus illustrate the classical concept of representation in art. The Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895) deconstructs this concept. In his novella ‘Venus in Furs’ (1870), in which the Medici Venus statue plays a prominent role, Masoch changes the relation of signifier and the signified: not the statue but Vanda, the beautiful beloved of the protagonist, incarnates perfect beauty and serves as an analogue of the statue. Masoch's novel reverses the common process of creating a picture: the picture is staged first, and only afterwards is it projected on the canvas. The procedure imitates the phenomenology of photography.