Reclining Venus

Sleeping Venus by Giorgione, The Nude Maja by Francisco de Goya, and Odalisque by Lefebvre

"A nude never descends the stairs — a nude reclines."

— The Hanging Committee of the 1912 Salon des Indépendants exhibition in Paris, France

The Reclining Venus—alternatively known as odalisque^note a Frenchified form of the Turkish word odalik, "chambermaid" or simply Reclining Nude—is a Stock Pose in Western art depicting a woman reclining against a bed or couch, often in differing states of undress.

The implications of what is occurring in the image differ. Since admiration and idealization for the human form was commonplace in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, Classicists and their post-Renaissance successors preferred showing off the human body as a means of capturing the human form and all of its anatomical splendor. However, since much of history's remembered artists are men, Male Gaze is most definitely involved, the staging either implying the women are Ready for Lovemaking or are simply intimate enough with the artist that this would not be the first time they have been seen naked so casually. But make no mistake; It's Not Porn, It's Art.

While male depictions of the Reclining Venus do exist, since the paintings are universally recognized as Always Female, pop culture usually plays gender-inversions of the trope as comedy.

Oftentimes, the Reclining Venus position is associated, if not interchangeable, with "the Sleeping Nymph", a motif that began during The Renaissance involving a depiction of a woman (the eponymous "nymph") sleeping in a similar reclining position.

Can be considered a sister trope to Reclining Reigner and Sitting Sexy on a Piano. See other Art Subjects such as Death and the Maiden, Crucified Hero Shot, "Back to Camera" Pose, and Nude Nature Dance. Related to Art Imitates Art and Life Imitates Art.

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Examples:

Arts

• Artemisia Gentileschi:
  • Danae shows the mythical woman, mother of Perseus, reclining nude against a couch as she is impregnated by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold.
  • Played with in her take on Cleopatra. The famously beautiful queen is reclining horizontally on her bed, arm bent underneath her head — Cleopatra isn't posing seductively, she's dead and in the throes of rigor mortis.
  • Venus and Cupid has Venus portrayed asleep on her ultramarine bed.
• Odalisque by French painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre is a painting of an unnamed female model painted by behind.
• Francisco de Goya:
  • The Nude Maja (Spanish: La maja Ddsnuda): It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows (also known as a fainting couch). Amusingly (or to highlight the model's sexuality), she is using her arms as headrests instead of, you know, the pillows.
  • La maja vestida (translated to English as The Clothed Maja) is an imitation of La Maja Desnuda, also made by Goya, but with the model fully dressed.
• Grande Odalisque (alternatively referred to as Une Odalisque or La Grande Odalisque) by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicts a nude female model looking toward the viewer over her shoulder wearing a bonnet and holding a peacock feather-duster in her hand. It also stands out because it leaves more to the imagination by showing the model with her back turned to the viewer.
• Gabriel Grün: The Big Halatea and The Small Galatea both feature female nudes reclining against a pastoral backdrop in a manner similar to Sleeping Venus and Cabanel's The Birth of Venus.
• Medici Chapels: "Dawn" and "Night", while not inspired by the Love Goddess Venus, are still naked figures of attractive young women in reclining positions; albeit a tense one in the latter's case. "Dawn" is putting her weight on one arm while "Night" is cradling her head between her arms, therefore evoking different elements of the typical odalisque.
• Nue Couchée: Played for Horror. It's a piece deliberately made to be a surrealist depiction of the universal artistic pose. Even its name —"Reclining Nude" in French— is a reference to this.
• Odalisque (1874): The painting depicts a woman reclining nude on a couch. Unlike most examples, she is facing away from the viewer. The painting's very name is itself an alternate term applied to the Reclining Venus trope.
• Odalisque with a Slave by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a painting commissioned by Charles Marcott. It depicts a nude odalisque, a musician, and a eunuch in a harem interior, and is considered a classic example of French Orientalist art.
• Olympia by Impressionist Edouard Manet depicts a nude woman lying on a bed being brought flowers by a servant. Olympia was modeled by Victorine Meurent and Olympia's servant by the art model Laure. The painting was considered scandalous in its time because of the naked woman's confrontational gaze and the details suggesting she is a prostitute (such as her bracelet, pearl earrings, and the orchid in her hair).
  • I Like Olympia In Blackface by new realist and pop artist Larry Rivers is an Art Imitates Art reimagining of Manet's painting, involving both a three-dimensional depiction of Victorine Meurent and Laurie's characters from the original painting behind a black woman in a similar nude position and a red-skinned woman acting as her maid.
  • A Modern Olympia by Paul Gaugin is clearly inspired by Manet's painting. It lampshades the Male Gaze aspect of the earlier work by depicting a clothed man looking at the woman lying in bed.
  • Olympia (1974) by Mel Ramos affectionately lampoons Manet's painting. Its reclining woman is modeled after a stereotypical Playboy cheesecake centerfold, while her maid holds a bouquet of flowers and scowls at the viewer disapprovingly. Addresses the Male Gaze concept using an entirely different approach.
  • In 2016, guerilla performance artist Deborah De Robertis posed naked in front of Manet's painting at the Musee d'Orsay, recreating the painting's subject matter. She was arrested for indecent exposure.
• The Pink Nude by Henri Matisse depicts its naked reclining woman on a blue-checked bedspread.
• Reclining Nude by Amedeo Modigliani presents its nude reclining woman in bed with plainly visible underarm hair.
• Sleeping Venus (Giorgione): The Trope Codifier. The model is lying on the grass in a casual pose, using her arm as a headrest while she peacefully sleeps.
• Venus and Cupid by Lorenzo Lotto has the titular Venus depicted reclining on a blue blanket on the grass.

Comic Strips

• Parodied in this 1864 cartoon◊ where the viewers are being fed up with that year's oversaturation of nude women at the Salon de Paris.
• A background image in The Far Side involving a pair of snake gunslingers had a painting of a long-lashed python on the wall behind the bar.

Films — Live-Action

• In Titanic (1997), the odalisque position is evoked when Rose asks Jack to draw her a nude portrait while wearing nothing but her blue diamond necklace, Rose reclining on the couch.

Literature

• In the Discworld, this is discussed as a comment on the foibles of the art and cultural world. The Royal Art Gallery has an impressive collection of female nudes, for instance, both in art and statuary, and it is noted that the carpet in front of them is worn down to the underlay by the sheer pressure of visiting crowds, who are unaccountably disinterested in landscapes or still lives that don't feature female nudes. A Snark Knight notes that if it doesn't have a strategically placed urn or a length of gauze in the picture, it is therefore Pornography but if it does, it is elevated to Art. There is also an amateur art group, the Ankh-Morpork Fine Art Appreciation Society, who regularly attend classes to appreciate the female nude; some members even remember to sharpen their pencils or to dip the brush into the paint occasionally.
  • An odalisque of the young Gytha Ogg appears as one of the sketches behind Leonard of Quirm in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. While most of Leonard's works reference Leonardo da Vinci, it's possible this is intended as a reference to a different Leonardo (see above).

Live-Action TV

• Step by Step, "What's Wrong with this Picture?": Dana is asked to pose for feminist abstract artist Jayne McNeil. Feeling honored, Dana accepts. Jayne then asks her to pose nude. Convinced that the painting will be abstract and she won't be recognizable, Dana agrees. She later invites her family to the charity auction where the painting will be unveiled. Unbeknownst to Dana, Jayne decided to switch to photo-realism. Dana, portrayed half sitting, half lying nude on a sofa, is very recognizable. The painting itself is only shown in an Unreveal Angle. See here◊.
• Murdoch Mysteries, "This One Goes to Eleven": Mrs. Sally Pendrick is being portrayed in an "odalisque" pose, lying completely naked on a sofa by the pool in her and her husband's residence. Detective Murdoch is quite embarrassed to run into her being painted like that. The painting is done in a modern, non-representational style with geometric figures in primary colours (very much a proto-Cubist style). Constable Crabtree believes it represents a pyramid, but Dr. Julia Ogden clearly sees it's "a woman in a rather intimate pose".
• Parodied in the Saturday Night Live Digital Short "Everyone's a Critic", when Andy Samberg and Paul Rudd paint nude portraits of each other in the Reclining Venus position and try to sell them at an art auction. The only problem is that anyone who looks at the resulting work is driven to violent, suicidal hysteria if the internal hemorrhaging does not kill them first.
• Columbo, "Double Exposure": In Dr. Keppel's motivational film about advertising, there is a shot of a half-lying, half-sitting model in a bikini.
• The Borgias. In "The Purge", Cesare is called into his sister Lucrezia's bedchamber only to find her naked on the bed in this manner.

Music Videos

• Giant Woman Val (played by Pamela Anderson) strikes this pose a few times in the video for Miserable, which features the members of Lit climbing on top of various parts of her body as she lounges in a bikini and platform heels. While she is in this pose the band walks up her thigh and stands on top of her hip, at which point the woman playfully waves at her little guests.

Video Games

• Red Dead Redemption II: The French painter and Gadfly Charles Chatenay produces a full exhibition of reclining nudes, male and female, which scandalizes his 19^th-century southern American audience. A melee breaks out when they start recognizing their own relatives in the paintings.
  Woman: Couldn't you have painted some drawers on her?!
• One of the in-game paintings in Terraria, "Dryadisque", parodies the Grande Odalisque with the Dryad as the subject.

Web Comics

• Freefall: Parodied with Helix's (mercifully offscreen) topiary sculpture "Sam as a Reclining Nude". The Sam in question is a tentacular Starfish Alien whose body is an affront to human eyes and minds, and there's not enough Brain Bleach on the planet to spare the viewers.
  Mayor's Aide: [restrained by guards] My eyes! I've got to pull out my eyes! If I don't, I might see it again!

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Finn and Jake have a painting in their home of a reclining nude woman that is mostly covered up by a portion of the painting ripped open.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Robotnik does this a few times — it goes about as well as you think!
• "The Springfield Files" of The Simpsons: When Agent Mulder flashes his FBI badge, there is a picture of him posing as a Reclining Venus (half-sitting, half-lying) wearing only black underwear. As most male examples, it's played for laughs.
• The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: The final video "The Monster O'McDonaldland Loch", has a portrait of a female anthropomorphic dog lying on a bed appear in the background in the scene where Hamburglar tears his pants trying to scare Birdie, her body covered only by a bedsheet.

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