Odalisca

Place of OriginItaly

Datepossibly 19th century

DimensionsOverall (with base H x W x D): 26 1/2 × 17 × 8 3/4 in. (67.3 × 43.2 × 22.2 cm)

Mediummarble

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineGift of Harry W. Cummings

Object number

1916.63

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 32

Label Text“Less is more”—the unknown artist of this marble bust of a woman coyly renders the flesh of the figure in the merest of passages, one shoulder and the upper section of one of her breasts. In pronounced contrast, her face is represented as completely veiled. Since at least the mid-18th century, Italian sculptors have demonstrated their skills in this manner, the conceit being that the sculptor is denying the permanence of the hard stone, thereby suggesting the transitory and the life-like. An odalisque, or odalisca, was the West’s romantic, exotic conception of a woman in a Turkish harem.