Bildnis der Ida Rubinstein

Ida Rubinstein was the sensation of Paris in 1910. A dancer with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, she had electrified audiences as Cleopatra and in Scheherazade, and that summer Valentin Serov painted her in a borrowed studio there. He posed her nude and did something unusual with it. Instead of soft flesh, he flattened her body into a hard, angular silhouette, more like a figure carved on an ancient Assyrian relief than a European nude. The sharp contour, the greenish skin and the deliberate awkwardness all echo the exotic, angular roles that had made her famous. Serov was one of Russia's most celebrated portraitists, and this was among his last works. He died the following year, at 46.