''Woman Bathing'' (or ''Woman at Her Toilet'', sometimes ''Bathsheba at Her Toilet'') is a lost panel painting by the

Early Netherlandish Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especiall ...

artist

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( , ; – July 9, 1441) was a painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. Ac ...

. The work is today known through two copies which diverge in important aspects;Seidel, 38 one in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

and a more successful but small c 1500 panel in

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Fogg Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, which is in poor condition.Schabacker; Jones, 56 It is unique in van Eyck's known oeuvre for portraying a nude in secular setting, although there is mention in two 17th-century literary sources of other now lost but equally erotic van Eyck panels.Schabacker; Jones, 59 The attribution of either panel to an original by van Eyck is usually not contested; while it may be doubted whether either copy was completed until one or two generations after his early death c. 1441, it is accepted that neither is a forgery or wishful thinking. Art historians broadly consider it likely that both were copied from a single source, that is, one is not a copy of the other, and that both originate from roughly the same period. Van Eyck's original was atypically daring and unusually erotic for a painting of the 1420s – early 1430s when it was presumably completed. Apart from its own qualities, it is interesting to art historians due to the many similarities of the Harvard panel to his famous 1434 London ''

Arnolfini Portrait ''The Arnolfini Portrait'' (or ''The Arnolfini Wedding'', ''The Arnolfini Marriage'', the ''Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife'', or other titles) is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It fo ...

''. Until the emergence of the Fogg copy around 1969, it was known mostly through its appearance in

Willem van Haecht Willem van Haecht (1593 – 12 July 1637) was a Flemish painter best known for his pictures of art galleries and collections. Life Willem van Haecht was born in Antwerp as the son of the landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht. Tobias Verhaecht wa ...

's expansive 1628 painting '' The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest'', a view of a collector's gallery which contains many other identifiable old masters. Art historians have sought in vain to attach to either a biblical or classical source; the rapes of

Bathsheba Bathsheba ( or ; he, בַּת־שֶׁבַע, ''Baṯ-šeḇaʿ'', Bat-Sheva or Batsheva, "daughter of Sheba" or "daughter of the oath") was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, according to the Hebrew Bible. She was the mother of ...

or Susanna have been suggested, although Judith is sometimes seen a more likely source, but the clues apply only to the Antwerp panel,Schabacker; Jones, 65 traditionally known as "Judith Beautifying Herself".

Description

Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest detail

It shows a nude woman taking a sponge bath in an interior setting accompanied by a maid in a red gown. The woman preserves her modesty with a wash cloth held in her left hand as she reaches with her right towards a basin placed on a side-table. A convex mirror hangs from a central bar in the shuttered window above the basin, and shows the reflection of both figures.Bohn, Saslow, 35 In the tradition of such scenes, the mirror symbolises virtue and purity, while the dog in the lower center at the woman's feet – barely visible in the Fogg panel due to loss of paint, but more distinguishable in van der Geest's work – represents her fidelity.Schabacker; Jones, 66 Her bedchamber is richly detailed; there is a wooden bed to the right, a tall folding chair against the back wall, and wooden beams running across the ceiling. An orange rests on the windowsill and there are discarded

pattens Pattens are protective overshoes that were worn in Europe from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century. Pattens were worn outdoors over a normal shoe, had a wooden or later wood and metal sole, and were held in place by leather or cloth ba ...

on the floor in the lower left corner.Ridderbos et al, 68 Two other possible works by van Eyck of this style are known from descriptions only. In 1456, the Italian humanist

Bartolomeo Facio Bartolomeo Facio (c. before 1410 – 1457), Latinized as Bartholomaus Facius, was an Italian historian, writer and humanist.ometimes "Fazio'"> ''Dictionary of Art Historians'': "Facio, Bartolomeo

_described_a_panel_in_the_collection_of_Ottaviano_della_Carda,_a_nephew_of_Federico_da_Montefeltro.html" ;"title="ometimes "Fazio' latinized as, Facius, Bartho ...

Arnolfini portrait

Schabacker; Jones, 60

Both the Fogg and London panels show an interior containing a bed and a small dog (probably an early form of the breed now known as the Brussels griffon), a mirror and its reflection, a chest of drawers and clogs on the floor, while the angle the attendant woman faces from, and her dress and the outline of her figure, are broadly similar. Art historian Linda Seidel speculates that it was created as an accompanying panel, and that the pair were intended as

betrothal An engagement or betrothal is the period of time between the declaration of acceptance of a marriage proposal and the marriage itself (which is typically but not always commenced with a wedding). During this period, a couple is said to be ''fi ...

paintings. The London panel, she observes, may have been "painted for the wall of Giovanna Cenami's father's house where she would have seen it in the years between her betrothal and her marriage ... perhaps ... the erotic half may have been given to her future husband as guarantee of what he was promised". Seidel believes that the pattens at the lower left hand corner of the panel, as well as the fact that the mirror is angled towards the viewer's point of view, reinforce the idea that a future husband was the intended audience. She notes the work's unusually steep perspective, and concludes that the "panel's controlling gaze align dit with the mirror's reflection of the woman's naked body". Although variants of this view have been long maintained, they are complicated by the fact that the similarities apply to the Harvard panel only. Lorne Campbell of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

is not convinced by the functional connection. While he acknowledges the similarities between the works, he points out that the Arnolfini has not conclusively been established as a wedding portrait, and that even if this was the case, it is more likely that the London panel was originally covered by wings rather than by a single panel. He reinforces his view with the fact the lost work differs in two important aspects; that the bed curtains are not red and that the mirror is not decorated. Campbell rejects the similarities as "coincidental",Campbell, 201 although it might be better argued that the lost work was a prototype or study. Julius S. Held believed that the Fogg panel was created as a cover for the London painting, an idea that held traction until rejected by Campbell in 1988, when he argued that such a painting was more likely to be covered by wings than a single piece, and that further the London panel in probability does not depict or commemorate either a marriage or betrothal.Ridderbos et al, 412

References

Notes

Sources

* Bohn, Babette; Saslow, James M. ''A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art''. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. * Campbell, Lorne. ''The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings'', London: National Gallery, 1998. * Harbison, Craig. ''Jan van Eyck, The Play of Realism''. London: Reaktion Books, 1991. * Held, Julius. "Artis Pictoriae Amator. An Antwerp Art Patron and His Collection". ''Gazette des Beaux-Arts'', Volume 6, 1957. * Ridderbos, Bernhard; Van Buren, Anne; Van Veen, Henk. ''Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research''. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. * Schabacker, Peter; Jones, Elizabeth. "Jan van Eyck's ''Woman at Her Toilet''; Proposals concerning Its Subject and Context". Annual Report, Fogg Art Museum, 1974/1976. * Seidel, Linda. "The Value of Verisimilitude in the Art of Jan Van Eyck". "Yale French Studies"; ''Contexts: Style and Values in Medieval Art and Literature'', 1991.

External links

Fogg Museum
{{van Eyck Paintings by Jan van Eyck Lost paintings Nude art Paintings in the Harvard Art Museums Bathing in art