The Bath of Psyche

Frederic Leighton showed this at London's Royal Academy in 1890, when he was the Academy's president and about the most decorated artist in Britain. Psyche, the mortal loved by Cupid, stands undressing beside a pool before her lover arrives, absorbed in her own reflection in the still water. Leighton built her pose from an ancient statue he had studied in Naples as a young man, the raised arms lifting the drapery to bare the body, so a piece of classical marble stands behind this very Victorian picture. The tall narrow shape, framed by columns and a fall of cloth, was made to be read almost like a single sculpted figure in a niche. It became one of the most reproduced images of its day, sold as prints into countless middle-class homes at a moment when a public nude still had to wear the safe costume of Greek myth.