DITA AMORY: An adolescent girl gazes into a mirror above the mantel of a fireplace. She seems introspective, self-absorbed. Although nude, her pose is not erotic. Rather her very upright stance is reminiscent of ancient art—maybe an Egyptian frieze or a Roman fresco. The painting style also seems to come from a more distant age.

The artist, Balthus, painted the canvas with oils. But its matte surface and muted palette suggest fresco—a Renaissance technique of painting on wet plaster. Balthus particularly admired the great fifteenth-century fresco painter Piero della Francesca. Piero’s work is notable for its insistence on geometry and proportion—another characteristic that Balthus has adapted here. Notice, for example, the squaring of the fireplace and the wainscoting. And look at the wallpaper. This square design is not simply a surface pattern—it’s evidence of the artist’s preoccupation with the structuring of the picture plane.

Of course, Renaissance artists would not have allowed the underlying structure to remain visible like this. When Balthus did so in 1955, it acted as a statement about modernism— showing the relationship of abstraction to the history of representation.