The present work is Francesco Hayez’s first of three paintings on the subject of Bathsheba, and its rediscovery in 1998 was called by Fernando Mazzocca, the great scholar of Hayez, ‘one of the most sensational rediscoveries in the history of 19th century Italian art.’ Bathsheba was entirely of Hayez’s own conception, painted without commission for the 1827 exhibition at the Brera. Hayez described the work in his memoirs as ‘…a Bather, to keep my hand practiced at painting nudes, and also to demonstrate how I liked painting large-scale figures, even when not obliged to do so for clients’ (F. Hayez, Le mie memorie, 1890, p. 63). The only non-commissioned work in the exhibition, it was purchased at the exhibition by King William I of Württemberg, who, not unlike King David before him, was so captivated by the work’s quality and beauty that he purchased it immediately, paying ‘in full the price requested by the artist’ according to contemporary news sources, and taking it home to Stuttgart with him.

While the work’s biblical subject matter made it appropriate for public display, Bathsheba is, above all else, a masterful depiction of a female nude, the kind of which Hayez – who would become famous (perhaps infamous) later in his career for exactly this subject – excelled at. Bathsheba and other traditional iconographic models provided Hayez cover as he explored a new vocabulary of both a marked naturalism and a provocative sensuality. In doing so, he sought to synthesize the examples of the Old Masters, such as Guido Reni, Titian, Domenichino, and Giulio Romano, with the Neoclassical revival of the ‘ideal beauty.’ The result was not the cold, impassive, exaggerated beauties of the Classicists that came before him, but instead the soft and sensual contours of a real woman, elevated to the ideal.

Conscious that he could only push the fleshy display so far, Hayez conceals as much as he reveals, adopting a half-turned position which he would turn to again in one of his most controversial paintings, his Venere che scherza con due colombe (Ritratto della ballerina Carlotta Chabert), of 1830 (fig. 1). The similar bangle, as well as the use of the white drapery behind the figure, suggest its composition might have been worked out around the same time through the use of the same model. Returning to the subject of Bathsheba in 1834 and 1841-42 (fig. 2, Pinacoteca di Brera), Hayez experimented with the adoption of a frontal pose, though he lifts the figure’s foreleg to maintain her modesty.

This first Bathsheba is an important work of Hayez’s early career. Her alert and intelligent gaze draws the viewer into the scene, where we find her pale skin perfectly set off against the dark background of her bath. The smooth line of her body is interrupted only by the golden bangle, slightly too tight against the flesh of her upper arm, though this detail only serves to emphasize her naturalism. In the background, also gazing out at the viewer from the highest extreme of the picture plane, we find the figure of David, already enthralled with his conquest. In its use of colour, execution and quality, Bathsheba is, at every level, an undoubted masterpiece by the artist.