Marietta

Corot is remembered for silvery landscapes, so a reclining nude sits oddly in his work. He painted her in 1843, during his third and last stay in Rome. The model was called Marietta, and she posed in the studio of a younger French painter, Benouville, where Corot inscribed the canvas Marietta a Rome. The pose leans on Ingres and his famous Grande Odalisque, but the handling is loose and thin, the pencil lines still showing through pale washes of pink and ochre. Corot was fond of it. He kept the little picture in his own studio for the rest of his life and liked to bring it out for the people who came to see him.