Grand odalisque

There are many amazing art works in this week’s reading, but the painting, “ Grande Odalisque”, created by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres impressed me greatly. In this painting, there is a naked woman lying down in a sofa with her face towards and is looking us. She only painted her back and one of her breast, but she is glamorous and attractive. She has transparently white skin, and there is some coldness in her eyes. As compared with her body, the background is dark and makes people pay attention to her.
According to our text book, the painting is significant because it expresses the character of the epoch. Notwithstanding that it is not a figure from any specific historical or mythological text, it maintains monumentality and idealization typical of history painting. Ingre’s preoccupation with total relationship and formal counterpoints led him to push his idealization of the female body to the limits of naturalism, offering abstractions of the model from which he worked.
I really like this painting because her nudity is beautiful. When I saw this painting for the first time, I was shocked a bit, because even though she shows only her back, she is attractive and erotic. In addition, her facial expression is mysterious and coldness, so it makes me wonder what she was thinking about when she was painted. In the picture she is alive as the painter managed to depict her skillfully. It seems that she is going to move the next second. This makes the painting a really great masterpiece.