The Nude

In 1896 Turin held its first Triennale, a large exhibition of contemporary art, and this canvas, more than two metres long, was the picture people argued about. A model with loose black hair lies stretched across a big white bearskin, her skin painted rosy and soft against the fur. The controversy only added to Grosso's fame, and in Turin the painting became simply La Nuda, the Nude, as if there were no other. In 1975 the art historian Rosanna Maggio Serra wrote of its frank eroticism, and the museum's catalogue describes it as painting for pure pictorial pleasure. Grosso kept coming back to the image. He made a slightly firmer replica around 1900, a more modest version in 1912 and another in 1926, colder in the drawing and harsher in contrast, and all three are in private collections.