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beautiful paintings and old master copies
Aphrodite and Eros
Oil on prepared MDF board, 493 x 612mm (20 x 24 inches approx.)
Copy after Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (Venice 1675 - 1741).
I have taken liberties with the face, making Aphrodite, I think, both gentler and more intelligent. At the same time I had to alter her foot, because it looked as though Pellegrini's model must have ruined her feet by wearing fashion shoes: at any rate, I thought her toes looked squashed together and her foot a bit oedematous.
I used to work for a gynaecological surgeon who would quite often pause at the end of a patient's bed, and sigh at a particularly bad example of the bunions and calloused toes caused by high-heeled narrow shoes. "Ah, the feet of women!" he would exclaim, looking at the ceiling with a vague attitude of despair. I don't think surgeons are allowed to be eccentric like that any more, and they have to keep their opinions to themselves. Now both sexes make messes of their feet with trainers, which is worse, because even the shoe itself has no aesthetic appeal. It is merely a way of continuing to wear bathroom slippers out of doors. But I digress. My daughter posed for the foot.
Give me a good, large, grounded, Picasso early period foot any day.
This painting is sold. If you want to see it, and at the same time have the most delicious meal you're likely to get in north London (and at a reasonable price too), go to Bistro Aix, 54 Topsfield Parade, Tottenham Lane, Crouch End, London N8 8PT . . . 020 8340 6346. They also have my copy of Fragonard's Girl reading, which is for sale.
More technical details are on other pages: the sketch and the intermediate stage.
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