Bathsheba at her Bath | |
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Artist | Sebastiano Ricci |
Year | c.1720 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 118.5 cm× 199 cm(46.7 in× 78 in) |
Location | Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
Bathsheba at her Bath is an oil on canvas painting executed c.1720 by the Venetian artist Sebastiano Ricci which is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. A common subject amongst artists, this was the first of two of Ricci's depictions of the theme.
The painting depicts the Biblical story (as narrated in 2 Samuel 11) of the seduction of Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, by the Israelite king, David. In the painting Bathsheba, attended by four maidservants, is taking a ritual bath in the open air whilst being observed by King David from his nearby palace roof. In common with other artists Ricci portrays Bathsheba as somewhat vain and promiscuous, thereby excusing David's subsequent immoral behaviour, which was to send her a letter inviting her to his quarters and making her pregnant. [1]
As in the other Ricci work, the background is composed of columns and balconies and the painting uniformly illuminated with light with very little shade. Bathsheba's vanity is exemplified by the way she is looking into a mirror and David's kingship by the fact that he is wearing a crown.
In Ricci's later reworking of the subject, the image of David is replaced by one of his messenger.
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Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, according to the Hebrew Bible. She was the mother of Solomon, who succeeded David as king, making her the Gebirah. She is best known for the Biblical narrative in which she was summoned by King David, who had seen her bathing and lusted after her.
Uriah the Hittite is a minor figure in the Hebrew Bible, mentioned in the Books of Samuel, an elite soldier in the army of David, king of Israel and Judah, and the husband of Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam. While Uriah was serving in David's army abroad, David, from the roof of his palace, looked down on his city and spied upon Bathsheba bathing in the privacy of her courtyard. Moved by lust at the sight of her, David called for Bathsheba to be brought to him and slept with her, impregnating her. In an effort to hide his misdeeds, David called Uriah home from war, hoping that he and Bathsheba would have sex and that he would be able to pass the child off as belonging to Uriah. However, Uriah, being a disciplined soldier, refused to visit his wife. So David murdered him by proxy by ordering all of Uriah's comrades to abandon him in the midst of battle, so that he ended up getting killed by an opposing army. Following Uriah's death, David took Bathsheba as his eighth wife.
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David and Bathsheba is a 1951 Technicolor epic film produced by 20th Century-Fox and starring Gregory Peck as King David. It was directed by Henry King and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, with a screenplay by Philip Dunne and cinematography by Leon Shamroy.
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Bathsheba at Her Bath is an oil painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt (1606–1669), finished in 1654.
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Bathsheba are names given to a c 1480 oil on wood panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Hans Memling, now in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. Its unusually close framing and the fact that many of the details are cut off suggests that it is a fragment of a larger, probably religious, panel or triptych that was broken up. The painting is noted for being a rare 15th century depiction of a nude person in Northern Renaissance art; such figures typically only appeared in representations of the Last Judgement, and were hardly as deliberately erotic. Memling is attributed one other secular nude portrait, in the center panel of his c. 1485 Vanitas allegory Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg. As opposed to Bathsheba, that nude is fully exposed, with visible genitalia.
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Bathsheba is a 1636-37 painting by the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, with contributions by Viviano Codazzi and Domenico Gargiulo. It shows the Hittite woman Bathsheba being washed and tended to by her servants. At the top left of the painting, King David sees her from his palace. It was one of seven versions from the story of Bathsheba that Gentileschi painted.