- woman is seemingly dissociated from what is going on around her, she is looking outward towards the viewer
- her form is suggestive without being explicitly sexual, however she is the only figure not clothed in anything, although the other figures are only draped in cloth, her cloth is transparent and therefore redundant in its purpose
- her lighter skin brings her to the foreground and successfully makes her the centre point of the image
- the male figure in the painting is also gazing at her, encouraging the other viewers to follow his line of sight, it is almost an instruction for the viewer
Para 2: Rembrandt "Danae" 1636, oil on canvas, 185cm x 203cm (73in x 80in), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
- both figures have their gaze focused away from the surveyor to something happening outside the painting
- this suggests a narrative and thus the woman is not just a static being but suddenly has character
- her body however is still facing the surveyor but they are not attached to the scenario
Para 3: Jenny Saville "The Mothers" 2011, oil on canvas, 106 5/16 × 86 5/8 inches (270 × 220 cm)
- ‘I had thought about doing mother-and-child images because I have never done anything with children before. I’ve tried to stay away a little bit, about the issues surrounding biology being determinate and that women are here to have babies. But, it’s so powerful and I thought, well, I quite like tackling grand, old subjects. It’s a challenge to make a painting with a child that isn’t sentimental. It’s a real challenge to actually make the sort of physicality of a baby’s body, and not be cutesy and Baroque and bubbly; to find a dynamic within the body. Children are quite animalistic and that is difficult to create.’ - Jenny Saville
- "Like other works from this series, this drawing is inspired by Renaissance images of the Virgin and Child, and in particular Leonardo da Vinci’s large cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, also known as the Burlington House Cartoon, in the collection of the National Gallery in London."
Para 4: Nan Goldin "Self-Portrait in my Blue Bathroom", Berlin, 1991
- her body seemly does not exist/ is left to the imagination of the viewer
- again, her gaze is focused out of the image, she seems startled/ she is not passive, her expression suggests emotion within her character and prompts the viewer to consider a previous story line prior to the image
- the title is personal, "in my blue bathroom", she is claiming ownership over the space in which she exists and simultaneously making her work personal and somewhat intimate
- the way she has used the mirror depicts vanity however her glance is not at herself but at something beyond that therefore dissipates this notion
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