Four Studies of Recumbent Female Nudes (Galatea)

Characterized by a striking chromatic contrast between the red chalk and the blue paper, this study was for Maratti’s late painting 'Galatea and Acis,' a mythological subject taken from Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses'. The beautiful Nereid Galatea stretches her hand toward a shell filled with corals and leans into the body of her love one, the shepherd Acis. The statuesque, reclining sea nymph is repeated three times on this large sheet: the artist drew a full study of the figure on the left and emphasized her sinuous outline and sensual pose in the two studies on the right. Currently preserved in the Far Eastern Museum at Khabarovsk (Russia), Maratti’s painting was executed at the end of the artist’s long career, around 1708-13, and just like the present sheet it was formerly treasured in the renowned collection of the Earls of Orford at Houghton Hall.