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Study of a Female Nude

Creator

French Artist · 1758–1823

Born the tenth son of a stonecutter in Burgundy, Pierre Prudon altered both halves of his name and became Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, as if to relate himself to Peter Paul Rubens and to evoke landed gentry. He began studying painting in Dijon at age sixteen. He arrived in Paris in 1780, but his experience in Italy from 1784 to 1787, when he absorbed the softness and sensuality of Correggio's works and L

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Date: about 1800
Medium: Black and white chalk with stumping, on blue paper
Culture: French
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

The nude model's head tilts downward with closed eyes, conveying a sensual aura of dreaminess. The naturalistic texture of her hair, gathered in a bun with delicate curls framing her face, contrasts with the marble-like texture of her skin. Her pose, seated with her arm extended upward and illuminated from the upper left, almost certainly imitates antique sculpture. Pierre-Paul Prud'hon displayed his classical understanding of the female body in this intimate study, rendering the figure in a series of volumes--cylindrical legs and arms, conical breasts, triangular nose--with a treatment of the skin that yields a soft effect, achieved with short repetitive lines of hatching.

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