Bathsheba Bathing

Francesco Hayez painted Bathsheba Bathing around 1834, depicting the Old Testament episode in which King David, watching from his palace roof, sees Bathsheba bathing and is overcome by desire for her — the beginning of the adulterous relationship that led to the arranged death of her husband Uriah. The nude bathing figure was a standard vehicle for the display of the female form in the academic tradition, the biblical narrative providing the justification for what was primarily an exercise in the rendering of the idealized nude. Hayez's treatment shows his mastery of the Venetian tradition's warm, golden light on female skin combined with the compositional organization of his Neoclassical training.

Hayez renders the bathing figure with luminous flesh tones and warm, Venetian-influenced coloring. The careful modeling of the nude figure and the richly textured setting demonstrate his mastery of the sensuous female form within a biblical narrative.