Bathsheba at the Fountain, c.1635 by Peter Paul Rubens
Canvas Print - 13771-RPP

One of the paintings for which Helene Fourment posed for the artist - without his having sought an exact portrait likeness - is "Bathsheba" in the Dresden Gallery. The story of Bathsheba is told in the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. King David saw from the roof of his palace "a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful." David learned that it was Bathsheba, the wife of his captain Uriah, and "sent men to bring her. And when she came in to him, he slept with her... The woman became pregnant and caused David to be notified." In order to get rid of the husband, the king sent Uriah to certain death, ordering him to take a letter to Joab the governor alone. Then he married Bathsheba, and she bore him a son, whom she named Solomon. A grim story full of sinful perversions! This is how the Dutchman Rembrandt, who elaborated on this subject several times, interpreted it in the painting he painted in 1654, now in the Louvre. There, Bathsheba is depicted quite naked; her body stands out from the vague darkness of the background, "of which the painting itself seems to be a praise, and which yet deep down the woman questions fatefully". Rembrandt, the insightful interpreter of mental processes, glimpses the "loneliness of the doubts and conflicting feelings casting a shadow in this woman's soul". The Flemish Rubens's Bathsheba, on the other hand, knows neither doubts nor contradictory feelings - she is aware of her beauty and revels in the seductive power of her body. Thus the artist's life-affirming optimism shows only the bright sides of the legend, the happily exhilarating image of Bathsheba-Helene, in whose face only love and devotion are reflected. Rubens was indeed not the first to devote himself to the glorification of woman - let us think only of the Venetian masters of the Renaissance - but none before him, and few since him, have attempted or succeeded in portraying woman so convincingly with the radiance of her sensuous beauty.

The colours shine as if from within: the red of the tablecloth and curtain, the rich brown of the skin, the greenish blue of the negro page's dress, whose swarthiness brings out even more the richly tinted tonality of the nude central figure. It is indicative of the master's late style that the increasingly imposing pictorial concept led to a freer construction of the composition and the figures.