Ninfa e sátiro

This oval canvas was made to hang above a doorway, probably for Leopold, duc d'Arenberg, a soldier who found himself in Paris in 1714 after the Treaty of Rastatt had ended his years of war. Watteau was then the fashionable painter of the fete galante, those dreamy parkland gatherings of well-dressed lovers, and a reclining nude like this is a rarity in his work. A satyr draws back the drapery from a sleeping woman, the whole scene tuned to the pinks and silvers of a decorator's overdoor. Watteau signed a receipt for 200 livres in 1717 for two such panels. He was already ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him in 1721, at 36.