Thursday, September 20, 2007

La Belle Rosina or Two Young Girls, Antoine Wiertz, 1847


I stumbled upon this image in Peter Gay's The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Volume 1: Education of the Senses. Kind of a nice Victorian take on the Memento Mori tradition. In the words of Peter Gay:
In posing a strapping young nude contemplating a skeleton her size, Wiertz vividly confronts the two fundamental forces, love and aggression, Eros and death, which, according to Sigmund Freud, unceasingly battle fr supremacy over the human mind.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Have you come across Musée Fragonard in Maisons-Alfort near Paris? It is currently closed for restoration, but take a look at their website for more information:
http://musee.vet-alfort.fr/musee.htm