The slave and the dove. Nude

Sorolla came into contact with Greek art at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia. In this painting, the slave girl depicted is reminiscent of the Greek Venus, an iconography that would become fashionable in the French salons of the second half of the 19th century. On the other hand, her crestfallen posture and sad countenance are reminiscent of the famous engraving by Albert Dürer entitled Melancholy I (1514). This painting is also notable for the anatomical control of the figure, the dark background that contrasts with the whites of the skin, the still life of flowers and petals in the lower part, and the allusion to Greek archaeology, one of the painter's passions, represented in the red-figured ceramic krater on the right-hand side of the composition.