/internal/media/dispatcher/91813/fullSlumbering Woman1849[Johann Baptist Reiter]Johann Baptist ReiterOil on canvasIt seems to be a warm summer’s day. Still half asleep, the almost nude woman stretches languorously. Light shines into the image, casting a shimmer across the woman’s thigh and lower arm. The bedsheets, in various shades of off-white, appear invitingly cool. The woman reclines in a seemingly natural way, and yet it is all a pose. Reiter is envisaging the viewer, who unexpectedly becomes a voyeur in front of this painting. There is a long tradition of female nudes in the history of art, although their nudity was generally justified by the myth they represented. Yet nothing in Slumbering Woman suggests a mythological story, making this the earliest profane nude in Austrian art history.Paintinghttps://sammlungtest.belvedere.at/objects/4298/rdf