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.Bathing

The bath in mythology

The bath in mythology

Susanna and the Elders

Susanna and the Elders

The bath in the Latin world

The bath in the Latin world

Bathing in the Middle Ages

Bathing in the Middle Ages

The "dry wash"

The "dry wash"

Louis XIV's bathtub

Louis XIV's bathtub

The bath's return to favor

The bath's return to favor

Healthy body, healthy mind

Healthy body, healthy mind

The principles of hygiene

The principles of hygiene

The "bathing hit"

The "bathing hit"

Bathing is a pleasure

Bathing is a pleasure

Medieval steam rooms

Medieval steam rooms

The Garden of Delights

The Garden of Delights

Cover this breast which I cannot behold

Cover this breast which I cannot behold

Pleasure hidden beneath morality

Pleasure hidden beneath morality

The relaxation of moral standards

The relaxation of moral standards

The nude in the bath becomes realistic

The nude in the bath becomes realistic

The 20th century: La Dolce Vita

The 20th century: La Dolce Vita

The suicide of Seneca or the fatal bath

The suicide of Seneca or the fatal bath

The Assassination of Marat

The Assassination of Marat

"Enter now, Jean Moulin!"

"Enter now, Jean Moulin!"

The Masters of Suspense

The Masters of Suspense

The relaxation of moral standards: artists in the vanguard

It became possible again to portray nudity on condition that it evoked mythological, classical or exotic themes. Painters of the various schools of the 19th century rushed to take advantage of this opportunity and started to paint licentious and therefore lucrative subjects.

The Turkish Bath - Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres
The Turkish Bath

As a young man, Picasso had almost dismissed Ingres as a vieux pompier, an aged exponent of the group of traditionalist academic painters known as Les Pompiers. Then he saw a retrospective of his work at the 1915 Salon d'Automne when he discovered the splendid portrayals of women, especially in The Turkish Bath. He was to remain an admirer of Ingres for the rest of his life. The light, the placing of the shadows, the rhythm of the areas of color, the abandoning of perspective in favor of space defined by the bodies... all this seemed to him astonishingly modern. Indeed, the art of Ingres is both modern and classical. He structures space in an unusual way, distorts the human form, cheats and constantly deceives the eye. And his drawing skill is one of the finest in the history of painting - pure, rounded and with an extraordinary sensuality that seems almost to clothe the nakedness of the women he paints - here odalisques in the bath.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Born in Montauban in 1780, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was the son of a painter, entered the art academy in Toulouse at the age of eleven and the studio of David in Paris at fifteen. He won the Prix de Rome in 1801 and left for Italy where he was influenced by the art of the Renaissance, particularly the painting of Raphael. He remained in Rome from 1806 to 1820, then spent four years in Florence. He sent his paintings to Paris but they were not well received by the public. It was not until a commission from the French government (Vow of Louis XIII, 1820) met with huge success at the Salon of 1824 that Ingres was finally acclaimed by the critics. Unfortunately, they recognized in him a master of Neoclassicism and compared him to young Romantic painters like Géricault and Delacroix. This bad reputation was hard to shake off and many still see Ingres only as an official artist, director of the Villa Medici in Rome from 1835 to 1842, a Commander of the Légion d'Honneur in 1845, who died in 1867 at the height of his fame, and do not look at his painting, which they wrongly judge as academic.

© RMN / Gérard Blot