![]() Sensational as it seems, it wasn’t the first time “Danae” had been blamed for prompting untoward reactions in a viewer. The Soviet paper “Isvestia,” which first reported the attack, contended that the man was a lifelong virgin who had been driven mad by the image of “Danae” in a magazine-a tidbit of questionable accuracy that other news outlets couldn’t resist picking up. Still others cited the influence of the painting’s nude subject. Some sources alleged that the attacker was a disgruntled Soviet national who had walked from a disenfranchised Baltic state to the Hermitage by foot others proclaimed him a lunatic and left it at that. It didn’t take long for the story to make up for lost time in the news cycle, with its combination of old world mystique and political resonance thoroughly doused in scandal. Only the following March did word get out. The Soviet powers-that-be hushed the incident, appalled that such an attack could occur in their great nation. In truth, it’s hard to know exactly what happened in the Hermitage that morning, and why. Only 12 years later-far longer than it took Rembrandt to paint her-did she reappear again, missing some of her old gloss but nonetheless complete. Rembrandt and the Female NudesĪfter that, “Danae” went underground. (One was later quoted to dramatically proclaim that he would strap the painting to his very person and jump into the Neva if it would save the masterpiece.) The staff then fixed the underlying paint with a mix of sturgeon glue and honey, a traditional means of restoration that they insisted be applied to the 17th-century work.Ī pattern emerges when we look at the most controversial female nudes in the known history of Western art: all of the artists who painted them are men. The restorers set about neutralizing the acid by spitting mouthfuls of water onto the canvas. Once he was subdued-or perhaps concurrently-panic set in amongst the museum’s restoration staff. Museum guards tackled the man, finding his body strapped with explosives. Petersburg, Russia, approached the priceless 6-by-7-foot canvas of Rembrandt van Rijn’s “Danae,” slashed the nude woman’s lower belly and then threw on a jar of sulfuric acid. In the summer of 1985, a middle-aged man walked into the Hermitage Museum in St. They just weren’t always the ones doing the painting. Women have long changed the course of art history by making bold statements. Her first monograph, Pheromone Hotbox, features 21 female nudes of international female artists.Įdouard Manet’s “Olympia” and the Continued Importance of Female Nudesįemale Artists Reclaiming the Subject of the Female Nude ![]() Amanda Charchian is a Los Angeles-based artist whose photographs have been exhibited in London, Zurich, New Delhi, Belgrade, New York and elsewhere. Ginger Entanglement, Amanda Charchian, 2013.
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