The Toilet of Atalanta
James Pradier (1790-1852) · 1850
A young woman crouches to fasten the sandal on her foot, her head bent so that her curls fall forward, a cloak bunched over one knee. Three apples lie on the base beside her, along with a discarded ribbon and a string of pearls. The apples tell you who she is: Atalanta, the huntress who would only marry a man who could outrun her, and who lost her race because Hippomenes threw down golden apples that she stopped to gather. Pradier signed the work on the central apple, spelling his name with a Greek letter, a scholarly joke. The marble is a virtuoso piece of polished nudity, an everyday gesture dressed up as myth.
Begun in 1849 and finished for the Salon of 1850, it was one of Pradier's last works; he died in 1852. The Ministry of the Interior bought it in 1851 for the Luxembourg museum, the gallery for living artists, and it moved to the Louvre in 1854. Compare it with the Three Graces nearby to see how the sculptor's ideal of the female body stayed constant over twenty years.
Did You Know? Pradier hid his signature on one of the golden apples and spelled his name with a Greek sigma.
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