Lautrec was an enthusiastic frequenter of brothels, as were most of his contemporaries, so nothing unusual there; but he painted the women and occasionally their clients. He seems to have had a faiblesse for redheads. No academic nudes these. Henri was not an attractive man: too much...
The lovely shawl made her appear modern to the public of the time - it is Japanese and ‘Japonisme’ was all the rage - it is curious that the addition of clothing to a nude tends to make the subject more risqué - Wilson Steer never dared to exhibit Seated Nude in a Black Hat (1900) precisely...
A legend, possibly based on fact, has it that Phryne, a fabulously rich concubine of outstanding beauty in ancient Greece, was on trial for her life, for murder for which she was assuredly guilty. Her counsel opted for a dazzling defence, literally: he disrobed her in front of the judges....
Botticelli’s masterpiece is a complicated painting and experts still argue over its meaning. It is also a very full painting with the three Graces, Venus, Mercury, Cupid, Zephyr, blowing on the nymph Chloris and the figure she metamorphosed into, Flora, scattering flowers. In 2007...
Susanna and the Elders was a popular Old Testament subject with painters. There are innumerable versions by Rembrandt, Reni, Millet, Lotto, Van Dyck, and this one by Tintoretto, who curiously copied Susanna's pose from Giorgione's Tempest, the serenity of which I have 'borrowed'...
What was the attraction in big women for Fellini? It wasn't that he disliked thin ones - far from it! Yet most of his films have room for an over sized Junonic actress: Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita and the unforgettable, matronly tobacconist who overwhelms the young Fellini in Amarcord...
The model for this picture, Gabriella is a cook in a hospital, but she had always desired to do something artistic. When I first saw her I immediately thought of a woman from La Belle Epoque, she looked as if she had stepped out of Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre; in fact with her crow black...
The second of the series after the Corday. I had had in mind the idea of interpreting the Ingres’ Grande Odalisque for some time and I had even done a version with the same set, but the first model was not right. Then in 1989 a girl of just eighteen happened by my gallery in Bologna. She had...
This photo, the first of the series was a response to a competition organised by an arty Café in Bologna. The model Soraya who bore a certain similarity to Marat in the original, was the first in a long line of willing, patient and extraordinary, ordinary women who have modelled for...
I went to Art College in Kingston, London, on the banks of a shallow, weedy and unremarkable river with the evocative name of Hogsmill. We were told in History of Art that Millais painted his famous picture further up-stream. Millais’ model was Elizabeth Siddal wife of his friend and...
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