I dimly recall my Art Appreciation class in college.
There was a painter that was known as a ladys man. The story is he painted a nude of a Spanish Countess. Presumably he knew the subject well. Word comes that the husband is returning from a trip and the artist quickly adds clothing to the painting.
I’ve been trying to recall the painting. I think it was one of the Impressionists.
Anyone recall the painting? Is the story about the clothing myth or true?
I’ve tried Google. Nude clothing art brings up too many hits.
Well, Goya painted The Naked Maja, a nude woman, and also The Clothed Maja, a clothed portrait of the same woman in the same setting and the same pose. That could be the foundation of the story. However SFAIK the identify of the model is unknown, so we can’t say that she is a countess.
If a painter painted a nude and later added clothing to the same painting with a view to concealing the fact that a nude portait had been painted, how would we know? The nude painting would not survive. If the husband never heard about it, how would we?
We know a LOT of paintings which have been painted over the years by X-Ray. Many of Michelangelo’s and other Renaissance artists’ nudes has “fig leaves” painted over the private bits by the Catholic Church. This has all been well-documented and has enabled restorative efforts to remove the travesties.
Sure, and I recall that X-rays were also used to authenticate the original of Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ when it turned up about fifteen years ago. (The X-rays showed that it had intially been painted differently, before the artist settled on its final form, which excluded the possiblty that it was yet another copy of the lost orginal.)
My point is that we’d have no reason to investigate by X-ray or otherwise whether the painting referenced in the OP had been altered by having clothing added unless we already knew the story about the husband returning and the hasty adjustment. And how is it plausible that we would have known of it, and yet the husband not have known of it?
Goya’s Nude Maja and Clothed Maja were probably the ones I remember.
Our teacher did his best to keep the class interesting with stories. We were all forced into the class by the college’s fine art requirement for degrees. I was lucky to get this teacher. I still remember a lot that he taught us.
Who knows, maybe Goya did two versions by plan. The clothed version goes to the husband. The nude into Goya’s collection.
At least it wasn’t one of those fat Rubenesque nudes. Goya’s nude is actually attractive.
While the identity of the model is not known, rumor has it it was the Duchess of Alba. Also, and I understand this is not rumorology, that the naked version was owned by the King’s Privado, the guy who actually ruled the country.
One thing I was taught (by my father, of all unexpected sources) and been wondering about lately is that the naked Maja was the first painting to depict pubic hair and this was considered extremely shocking. Do any of you have any information on this? Dad loved History and any Arts with a visual aspect, but well, he was an accountant not an art historian.
Sounds like something made up by a teacher to try to keep his class entertained.
Many points about this don’t seem logical:[ul]
[li]For most of history, there wasn’t much of a nudity taboo like now. So a husband would not have been upset by this.[/li][li]It takes days, maybe even weeks, to sit for an oil portrait. Hardly likely that the husband wouldn’t have known about this.[/li][li]How was the painter going to be paid? Women usually didn’t have much access to money. So it’s likely the husband had commissioned the painting, and specified what he wanted.[/li][li]“husband returning from a trip …” – had he been expected to be gone forever? Surely the painter expected that he would be back someday, and would want to see the painting.[/li][li]Painting more oil paint on top of existing oil paint is not something to be done quickly. It would probably be easier to just paint another, clothed version.[/li][li]Impressionist painting aim to create an artistic impression or emotion, as opposed to the previous realistic painting styles. Many were far from realistic, or even recognizable. How would the husband even know it was a nude woman unless someone told him?[/li][/ul]
If you see the Majas side by side, it’s clear that Goya spent more time in the clothed version than the naked one, which looks like it was painted in a rush (fewer details, less precise brushwork). I got the impression that he first painted her clothed, and someone said, “Man, she’d look good naked. I’ll give you a commission if you paint that.”
I know a good number of art historians and conservators who do technical analysis and it’s pretty de rigeur now to include the basics on any reasonably important or old painting as part of its record-- casual x-ray exams, infrared reflectography, and dendrochronology (when cromulent) have shown up lots of interesting information.
I remember a sort of similar story where a noble woman commissioned a portrait when she was young and had an artist update the clothing to the latest fashion every year. But the face was left young, of course, even as the layers of paint built up around it on the clothes.
The Naked Maja was painted in 1800 and the clothed Maja a full two three later, in 1803. It was shocking for the time to be the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art. Up until that point, nudes were representation or situational. The first Maja was confiscated by the Spanish Inquisition after Goya refused to paint clothes on his nude version, hence the creation of the second, clothed Maja.
The Naked Maja is the second most famous nude in Spain after Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus, and the first with pubic hair. She was not, by the way, the Duchess of Alba, with whom — contrary to legend — Goya almost certainly had no sexual affair. She, like her companion piece The Clothed Maja, 1800-05, was most probably a Malagan cutie named Pepita Tudo, the mistress of Prime Minister Manuel Godoy.
“Profane” only in the meaning of “not sacred/mythological” in that there were scads of Venetian 16th-century full-on frontal nudes that were given the title “Venus” as veneer (but any number of which very well may be in fact various gentlemens’ particular favorite local professional gals, of which there were many many many in Venice. Lots of “mythological” nudes apparently named Flora and Genevra and Petunia and such, the “Trixie” and Bambi"s of their time)
That was exactly what I meant by “situational” and should have expanded as such; these earlier nudes were representational in the mythological sense, but were rarely displayed as pure nudes, but within their context of their mythological account.
I believe there is a Roald Dahl short story that touches upon this same theme, of an artist painting a ‘clothed’ version of a beautiful but underneath there is a ‘nude’ layer that is supposedly a secret. My apologies, I don’t know the name of the story and can’t provide any reliable cite, this is just dredged from very old memories.
Word comes that the husband is returning from a trip and the artist quickly adds clothing to the painting.