Das Badebecken

In 1777 the comte d'Artois, the youngest brother of King Louis XVI, bet Marie-Antoinette that he could build a pleasure pavilion in the Bois de Boulogne in under three months. Hundreds of workers put up the little chateau of Bagatelle in about nine weeks. To decorate its bathing room, Artois turned to Hubert Robert, so known for his crumbling arches and columns that Parisians called him Robert of the Ruins. This is one of six panels he supplied. It is a scene of pure invention, an overgrown Italian temple with a statue of Venus, water spilling from fountains into a pool where figures bathe. More than a century later the American financier J. P. Morgan bought the set, and it reached the museum in New York in 1917.