荷蘭畫派，1540-1550年

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.This picture is not necessarily clean, but it is very attractive. The panel has an old cradle, which is keeping it flat and maintaining a stable paint layer. The cracks and joins in the panel have attracted some retouches, particularly a join which goes from left to right through the knee of the seated figure in the lower center. There is another join through the center of the work that has not attracted much retouching. Other cracks and joins above the figures in the upper left have also been retouched. If the work is cleaned, retouching will certainly be removed and need to be replaced. However, the details all look very healthy, and although the work is thin in the darker weaker colors in some areas, it is mostly in very good state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The present work, set in a 16^th century bathhouse, can be connected with a distinguished line of painters and printmakers.  It is a continuation of a development that began towards the end of the 15^th century, in which secular subjects with nude figures started to appear in paintings and prints.  Perhaps the most iconic image from that period is Dürer’s woodcut The Men’s Bath, datable to about 1496-97.  A drawing by him dated 1496, in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (inv. no. Kl. 2, which Sotheby’s helped restitute to the museum), may have been the model for an intended companion piece of a Women’s Bath.  Although there are some suggestive elements in both compositions neither is explicitly sexual.  However, alongside them an increasing number of frankly erotic subjects began to appear as the 16^th century progressed.

The present painting, by an unidentified Netherlandish artist, depicts the interior of a bathhouse used by both men and women — though the women predominate — as well as a few children.  While a number of the women are simply drying off after bathing or grooming themselves, the main thrust of the painting is flirtation and sex in various forms.  The content is itself arresting, but what makes it art historically fascinating is that the painter has drawn on a variety of sources, mainly prints, from Germany, France and Italy as models for his figures.  One of the lewdest images, that of two women at the rear center, is based on an engraving by Barthel Beham.  The woman drying her foot in the front center, has, in contrast, a mythological basis, because it is taken from an engraving of Venus after Her Bath by Marcantonio Raimondi after a design by Raphael (fig. 1).  Other motifs also based on Raimondi’s prints include Venus Wounded by a Rose (the woman on the bench in the middle ground), a variation of Prudenza  (the standing woman touching her head) and Charity (the woman in the background with two children).  There is even a quotation from Dürer’s Men’s Bath (the drinking man with the headdress seated in the rear center). 

The artist cleverly weaves all these disparate elements together to make a seamless composition.   There may be some further meaning or moral overtone, as suggested by the inclusion of the painting on the wall over the door, the subject of which may also have a mythological basis, and the inscription below it; but the latter is completely illegible.  It is more likely that The Bathhouse is just what it appears to be:  a scene of uninhibited eroticism designed for a client well-versed in contemporary imagery.