Jean-Pierre Sudré

The turban, peacock-feather fan, and the hookah pipe on the far left indicate that this woman is an odalisque, a slave or concubine within the harem of a Turkish sultan. For Jean- Auguste-Dominque Ingres and many of his contemporaries, such exotic settings and subjects provided valuable opportunities to depict an erotically charged nude female body. By purchasing this high-quality reproductive print, male audiences in Western Europe could indulge in popular but inaccurate fantasies of life in the Near East, a world of which Ingres had no direct knowledge. The 1814 painting on which this print is based was created in Rome using life drawings from hired models, and the odalisque’s face is based on a much-admired portrait by Raphael, demonstrating Ingres’s admiration for Renaissance painting.