Ablutions and Adornments - I

Hans Memling
King David and Bathsheba
ca. 1485
oil on panel
(fragment with Bathsheba bathing)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Anonymous Italian Artist
Interior with Figures Bathing
16th century
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Scarsellino (Ippolito Scarsella)
Venus Bathing
ca. 1585
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

attributed to Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Landscape with Bathers
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Giovanni Biliverti
Venus Bathing
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Artemisia Gentileschi
Bathsheba Bathing
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

workshop of Jacob Jordaens
Bathing Diana with Fauns and Nymphs
ca. 1650
drawing, with watercolor
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Wolfgang Heimbach
Bathers in a Landscape
ca. 1652
oil on copper
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Group of Bathers
before 1667
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Artist after Giambologna
Bather
17th century
gilt bronze
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jean-Baptiste Pater
The Bath
ca. 1730-35
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Étienne-Maurice Falconet
Bather
1762
terracotta
(modello for porcelain figurine)
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

James Tissot
The Japanese Bath
1864
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Paul Cézanne
Bathers
1875-76
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Maurice Denis
Bathers
1907
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Edvard Munch
Bathing Men - Middle Age
1907-1908
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

 from The Island of Statues

                      Some god might help; if so

Mayhap 'twere better that aside I throw
All choice, and give to chance for guiding chance
Some cast of die, or let some arrow glance
For guiding of the gods. The sacred bloom

To seek not hopeless have I crossed the gloom,

With that song leading where harmonic woods

Nourish the panthers in dim solitudes;

Vast greenness, where eternal Rumour dwells,

And hath her home by many-folded dells.

– W.B. Yeats (1885)