# What is the meaning of this painting? Why is one sister pinching the other's nipple? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 31, 2004, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462 "2004-03-31T03:32:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kjbrasda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/74df32/32.png) [@kjbrasda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kjbrasda)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/21 "2004-03-31T07:53:22Z")
> [@mrunlucky](#): > > I’ve read that the sister getting pinched is pregnant, as implied by the pinching. However I don’t know why that is. It could signify stimulating lactation. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/22 "2004-03-31T11:37:27Z")
It’s a little known fact that “Hands Across America,” that much-loved '80s fund-raiser, was inspired by an event hundreds of years earlier entitled “Nipples Across France.” You know, it makes perfect sense that the sister whose nipple is being pinched has the Jack “Eraserhead” Nance hairdo, as if she’s saying, “Holy shit, what’s with the pinching?” ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/23 "2004-03-31T12:35:34Z")
Remember the scene in _Road Trip_ where the tourist girl tells Tom Greene that “Women don’t lounge around topless like that!” and Tom Greene replies “Oh yes, they do!”? I figure the artist was a Tom Greene type. ---
**Author:** ![BeerDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9d8465/32.png) [@BeerDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeerDog)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/24 "2004-03-31T12:39:19Z")
Heh, I knew what painting this would be about before I even opened the thread. 🙂 I saw this painting in person a few years ago when I was at the Louvre. I even have a picture of it with my buddy standing in front of it and pretending to pinch the other nipple. I have no idea what it means, but it sure is memorable! And isn’t that kind of the point of art? To make an impact on the viewer? Seems like this one worked. Just my uninformed opinion. YMMV ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/25 "2004-03-31T13:11:57Z")
It helps a little bit to realise that the painting was probably inspired by [this earlier portrait of Diane de Poitiers](http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/c/clouet/francois/diane.html), the mistress of Henri II, by François Clouet. It is also interesting to compare it to [another portrait](http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/m/master/fontaine/diane.html) of de Poitiers. Note that she is touching her breasts and holding a ring. D’Estrées may have been deliberately appropriating iconography previously associated with de Poiters. (That it shows d’Estrées is uncertain - the Louvre calls it only _Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa soeur la duchesse de Villars_.) **kjbrasda** may well be right to suggest that the nipple-pinching signifies lactation. Pregnancy was a major career step for any royal mistress as it usually consolidated her position at court. It was just the sort of event that a mistress - or her lover - might want to use art to celebrate. ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/26 "2004-03-31T13:14:09Z")
All you need to know is that the subjects, the painter and the location of the painting are all **French**! Damned cheese eating, wine swilling, nipple pinching surrender monkeys. Harumph! ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/27 "2004-03-31T15:23:50Z")
> [@APB](#): > > It helps a little bit to realise that the painting was probably inspired by [this earlier portrait of Diane de Poitiers](http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/c/clouet/francois/diane.html), the mistress of Henri II, by François Clouet. Yes I have read this too, that this painting was inspired by the Clouet painting. There are several paintings from this time picturing a nude woman in her bath, with curtains surrounding the bath, and a servant in the background. So maybe this was a popular subject at the time. Although I have a hard time understanding why these women wanted their portraits painted in the bath! I know I wouldn’t 😉 > [@DocCathode](#): > > I can’t quite see enough detail to see what the clothed woman is doing. As far as I can tell, she is either sewing, or reading a message written on a strip of cloth or paper. As in the other aforementioned paintings, there is also a figure in the background, I think I have read that it is a servant or maid going about her work. > [@APB](#): > > **kjbrasda** may well be right to suggest that the nipple-pinching signifies lactation. Pregnancy was a major career step for any royal mistress as it usually consolidated her position at court. It was just the sort of event that a mistress - or her lover - might want to use art to celebrate. > [@mrunlucky](#): > > I’ve read that the sister getting pinched is pregnant, as implied by the pinching. These ideas support a quote I found out in cyberspace: “It is assumed to be an allusion to the birth of César, son of Henry IV and his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées.” However, it sure is a weird way to signify pregnancy! ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/28 "2004-03-31T15:48:25Z")
[360 of gallery where it hangs](http://www.louvre.fr/anglais/visite/peint/petits/24n241.htm) [7 page analysis article re this painting in “Art History”](http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/abstract.asp?ref=0141-6790&vid=24&iid=2&aid=260&s=&site=1) for purchase. Oh and this, courtesy of google translations 😛 [The embrasure makes the spectacle by Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle](http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/fontainebleau.html) > [@](#): > > Dominées by the carmine hem of the curtain which opened, Gabrielle and his/her sister the such protagonists of a strange ceremony appear. In their bath-tub, the two women are laid out so that the nipple gripped of the one is put in correspondence with the kitten of the ring of the other: play mannerist of the arms and the hands which form a circuit of exchanges all the more sophisticated since the faces have the frozen reserve of the portraits of pageantry. > > These naked figures disturb us in what they mean openly the erotism saphic, but also because it is an initially question of an exhibition: left impudor shameless and délicieusement perverse where, paradoxically, is found will have it hieratic effigies. > > The observer does not fail, obviously, to be dreamed like third compared to both s?urs. Assigned to reside in this imaginary place where the red curtain, before it does not rise, sealed scenic space, this witness tests himself suddenly like a singularly privileged partner: these naked women wanted not to have of secrecy for him (phantasm!). Would this be the reason for which the painter believed to have to represent in the content, on the mantelpiece, a painted work where are shown the open legs of some ideal creature, i.e. the missing part of these woman-trunk? > > But the witness does not live himself only on the mode of the partnership. He is also Peeping Tom. Gabrielle and its sister which, however, “took the initiative” cannot prevent our glance from going to lose themselves, precisely, in the more intimate distances of the representation (cf the bottom of the table to the top of the chimney). At the bottom of the part, close to the hearth whose fire is symbolically hidden by a table covered with a cloth (one sees with sorrow the top of a flame), is a lady’s companion in his work of seam. It has beautiful being equipped, it while interests us only more. In this respect, the red hanging (on the left) and the chimney (on the right) form a crenel in the space of which we reach the character as if it were with its defending body. The fire which is dissimulated in the hearth, contrary to the anatomy of the figure painted on the hood of the hearth, seems to mean that the lady’s companion (of which the feet exceed hardly dress) is presented as a guardian of a all the more desirable privacy as this dressmaker is pure. The narrow cockpit in the second plan, which chichement gives its plate to couseuse thus materializes a zone of course until where the predatory glance can thread. > > Behind this double portrait and its decorum of loan, a scene of kind was thus installation, with a narrativity so obviously readable that space, lacunar and split up, leaves something to be desired . “the embrasure makes the spectacle” ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/29 "2004-03-31T16:06:14Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Oh and this, courtesy of google translations 😛 > > [The embrasure makes the spectacle by Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle](http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/fontainebleau.html) I read the translation, and I have no idea what it was trying to say!! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/30 "2004-03-31T16:12:16Z")
Her sister’s hair, right before her nipple was pinched, was laying down flat. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/31 "2004-03-31T16:44:57Z")
Simple. This was the winning entry in the “Baffle Art Historians of the Future” Contest. A few more possibilities: The curtains are definitely representative of a woman’s dress. Notice how the left side is lifted magically, with no visible means of support. This is the artist thinking of himself as God, able to reach out and change reality, without being seen. And that structure that they’re standing within is draped with a type of fabric that might be used for ladies’ undergarments. This is obviously a sequel to another painting, lost to history. In the first painting, the left side of the “curtain” is down, covering the entire left figure except for the arm. (Notice how the right side is properly tied back in place.) The viewer would assume that the unseen left figure is a man, testing the child-bearing abilities of his intended. (Notice that she is holding the ring, but not wearing it.) Then in this painting, the left curtain is magically pulled aside, revealing the gender of the figure on the left. Sort of the 16th century version of “We’re here, we’re queer!” But actually, I think there’s a whole different meaning in this painting. I think the artist was a woman and, in fact, a feminist; and this is her depiction of God creating Eve. Think of the Sistine Chapel’s depiction of God transmitting life into Adam through his fingertip. If God were female, transmitting life to Eve, what better place than her nipple? And Eve is holding the ring that Adam will eventually put on her finger (after he’s created from one of her ribs). And that figure in the background is sewing the clothes that they will have to wear after the encounter with the snake. Also – doesn’t the whole parting-of-the-pink-curtain appear to be somewhat vaginal? And what’s with the big TV in the background? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/32 "2004-03-31T16:55:52Z")
It was customary for artists to paint hands in awkward poses so they could demonstrate their knowledge of anatomy. That’s why you frequently see individual fingers pointing at strange angles. One of the most common hand poses used for this purpose was an exaggerated pinch. In this portrait this gesture is used twice; one of the women is pinching a ring, the other is pinching a nipple ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/33 "2004-03-31T17:07:21Z")
It’s a depiction of a rehersal for the halftime show at Superbowl -CCCCLXXXVI. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/34 "2004-03-31T20:57:37Z")
Well, you know the old saying… _You can pick your nipples and you can pick your sister’s nipples but you can’t pick your sisters._ ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/35 "2004-03-31T21:21:16Z")
Interesting thread. The only thing I have to add is that the sisters have nearly identical [powdered?] hairstyles, pearl earrings, blase expressions, plucked eyebrows, bodies, faces. The only differences I see are that Gabrielle’s sister has dark hair and is slightly shadowed. I think the picture is kinda creepy. The “matched set interchangeable robot clones” look contributes to this. Isn’t there some school of thought that says that the only thing better than a threesome is a threesome with twins? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/36 "2004-03-31T22:10:44Z")
> [@astro's French expert](#): > > Assigned to reside in this imaginary place where the red curtain, before it does not rise, sealed scenic space, this witness tests himself suddenly like a singularly privileged partner: these naked women wanted not to have of secrecy for him (phantasm!). Oh, yeah, that’s hot. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/37 "2004-03-31T22:36:32Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > The only thing I have to add is that the sisters have nearly identical [powdered?] hairstyles, pearl earrings, blase expressions, plucked eyebrows, bodies, faces. The only differences I see are that Gabrielle’s sister has dark hair and is slightly shadowed. > > Isn’t there some school of thought that says that the only thing better than a threesome is a threesome with twins? I wondered whether the women are actually meant to be sisters, or different representations of the same woman. The woman in the background might be her as well. The painting could be a representation of her life. She starts as the woman in the background, clothed in respectability, working in secret. The nude woman on the left is her after becoming the king’s mistress. The woman on the right is her after becoming pregnant. The ring is both a trophy of her success and a symbol of how the child will solidify her relationship with the king. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/38 "2004-04-01T00:58:37Z")
Perhaps it’s a nipple ring they’re getting ready to insert? ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/39 "2004-04-01T01:09:49Z")
perhaps it is a nipple ring and her sister is helping her with it. sometimes you need help with rings, tricky hinges and the ilk. ---
**Author:** ![Age\_Quod\_Agis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d07c76/32.png) [@Age\_Quod\_Agis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Age_Quod_Agis)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462/40 "2004-04-01T01:36:36Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > Isn’t there some school of thought that says that the only thing better than a threesome is a threesome with twins? Yes. I believe it’s called “The Greatest School of Thought in the World.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-painting-why-is-one-sister-pinching-the-others-nipple/237462.md?page=3)