The delicate depiction of The Woman in the Warm Bath in Rome has a strong erotic impact and is very rare for Victorian nude paintings, Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836-1912) was born in the Netherlands, but in London he established a reputation for his fantasy paintings of ancient Roman luxury, and "The Woman in the Bath in Rome" was created by him.
For wealthy Victorian merchants, the paintings were an escape from london's tedious life (London's gray and foggy weather, strict social norms, and limited dress), and Tadema's work had a vast knowledge of Roman art and archaeology, and he collected photographs of ancient sites and excavated artifacts, which were the source of material for his paintings.
The woman in this painting of the Roman Bathing Woman reclines in a listless position on a marble recliner outside the warm bathroom, perhaps she has just taken a hot bath, and the position of the ostrich feather fan held by the woman in one hand is also arranged in a unique way, just to cover the woman's private parts, and she holds the fan in a tiaodou, as if the fan is about to slide down her hand.
Her other hand also caressed the skin-scratching device, a copper tool used to scrape away the grease and sweat from her body, and found a large number of such tools in Pompey's bathroom, which combines the archaeological real shape and the explicit shape of the yang, and the overall fleshy atmosphere is also strengthened by the contrast between the fur blanket, the silk pad and the nude.
Tadema's master technique comes from the Dutch interior painter of the 17th century, who was able to paint surfaces such as lustrous marble with extraordinary illusions. Although the Impressionism depicting landscape plants was born in the second half of the 19th century, "nude painting" was still favored by some painters of other schools, although the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had a short lifespan, entering the art stage in 1848 and collapsing in 1853, but its concept was very lasting, influencing British artists after this century.
Edward Bern Jones (1833-1898), who completed his signature work in the 1870s during the Second Pre-Boraphae movement, studied with Rossetti for a time and shared Rossetti's interest in early Italian art, which was evident in the nude painting "The Garden of the Gods of Pan", which was evident in the nude painting of two men and one woman, who visited Italy in 1871 and proposed new ideas for painting, one of which was to create "a painting about the beginning of the world".
Tadema's "The Woman in the Warm Water of Rome"
He soon realized that the plan was too ambitious, so he only painted the garden. The atmosphere and style of the work "The Garden of the God of Pan" is reminiscent of two early Italian masters, Cosimo and Dorsey, who may have been influenced by the works of one of his patrons, William Green, and as a habit, Bern Jones added his new perspective to the classical legend.
Bern Jones' Garden of the Gods of Pan
The appearance of the general pan god is shaped into the shape of a ram, but Bern Jones presents him as a young boy (he himself named the painting "Pan's Youth Age"), the background is Arcadia, this idyllic paradise is the pagan counterpart of the Garden of Eden, Bern Jones admits that the composition of 2 men and 1 woman, a little absurd, declaring that "the painting is deliberately a little silly, and the complacency about stupidity ... It was a revolt against London's culture of humor and wit."