Saw this in the NY Times, used as the cover of a record - Amazon Link
Appears to be another in the long line of “Artist does religious painting and charges it with sexuality.”
Anyone know this painting? Was it well-known, and meant to be a religious scene? If so, how the heck was the painting received, since it basically appears to show a young, nubile, nude Germanic blonde throwing herself at a guy…
I’m guessing it’s supposed to be Salome and John the Baptist, although my cursory Google search hasn’t turned anything up.
Anyway, these types of paintings were very common. I doubt it was considered scandalous at the time, whenever that was.
Rach Religious paintings generally don’t do well, essentially because they’re racy. I don’t know anything about this particular case, but I recall reading about one many years ago, supposedly painted by a nun. She wanted to show God’s Gift of Sexuality in a positive light, but apparently to a lot of people, such a thing is, to the untutored eye, indistinguishable from porn.
I don’t mean to be snarky, or to put down such things, but there is a fundamental problem here – if you’re a sincerely religious person, you ought to believe that sex really is a Good Thing instituted by God. But depicting it and celebrating it looks exavctly like the Empty ssex that other people are revelling in. Worse, your own followers could as easily perceive the works as titllating, non-god-aware sensuality. This is the way the Song of Solomon ends up interpreted as religious allegory instead of being a love poem.
I ran it through TinEye and came up with this which should be a good starting point.
A bit of Googling led me to the record label’s website, where the painting is revealed to be “The Fisherman and the Syren: From a ballad by Goethe (1857) by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896).”
So, not a religious painting after all. The only thing in the painting itself that makes me think it might be religious is the yarmulke (??) on the man’s head, which made me think it might be supposed to depict David & Bathsheba; but no.
ETA: Ninja’ed by Joey P.
Ah - more pre-Raphaelite and intentionally sexy - kinda Odysseus tied to the mast while the sirens are trying to seduce him…that works.
ETA: and yeah, the cap on and sorta-crucifixy posture of the man is what led me to think religious…ignorance fought. Hmm, I will see if I can get “religious” edited out of the thread title…
It’s not religious, it’s The Fisherman and the Siren by Frederic Leighton.
In the full picture you can see she’s a kind of mermaid. I heard a documentary where in prudish times, humanoid animals could be portrayed as sexy and used as semi-pornography, but their non-human nature gave the artist plausible deniability. Hence the Starbuck’s logo-style mermaid who has two tails, in order that she can be shown with a pseudo-vagina.
Ninjad by everyone. Wow am I slow.
At the request of the OP, I’ve changed the thread title to “Racy Classical Painting - know this one?” from “Racy Religious Painting - know this one?”
Frederic Leighton painted one of my favorite pictures of all time, Flaming June. I had never seen this one before. Thanks!
I love how that is still really sexual, without showing a ton of skin or anything. I’ve always marveled at the way artists can do that.
Edgar Degas was one of the pioneers of doing nudes of people. There was plenty of nudity but the women were goddesses or religious figures. And it was very classy.
But a painting of a modern woman bathing was considered shocking and outrageous at the time. 1886 But there were plenty of racy pictures done before that.
