Bathsheba (Memling)

The painting is a rare 15th century depiction of a nude person in Northern Renaissance art; such figures typically only appeared in representations of the Last Judgement, and were hardly as deliberately erotic.

Memling is attributed one other secular nude portrait, in the center panel of his c. 1485 Vanitas allegory Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.

[2] It shows Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, assisted by her maid as she rises from her indoor bath, as related in 2 Samuel 11.

The maid's facial type, demeanour and clothing bear the strong influence of Rogier van der Weyden's depictions of the Virgin Mary.

Its unusually close framing and the fact that many of the details are cut off suggests that it is a fragment of a larger, probably religious, panel or triptych that was broken up.