Bediende brengt drinken naar naakte jonge vrouw aan een piano 1843 - 1898

Félicien Rops made this etching, "Bediende brengt drinken naar naakte jonge vrouw aan een piano," sometime in the late 19th century. The scene depicts a nude woman at a piano being attended to by a maidservant. The interior is decorated with classical statuary. Rops was Belgian, and this image reflects several social and cultural tensions in Europe at that time, especially around class and gender. On the one hand, the image derives its power from a kind of illicit voyeurism. But it also speaks to a growing anxiety about the decline of traditional social hierarchies. The woman is nude and vulnerable, but she’s also at the piano, a traditional symbol of bourgeois accomplishment. The maidservant is properly attired, but she is in a position of subservience. To understand Rops' work more fully, you might consult periodicals from the time, as well as histories of gender and class in 19th-century Belgium. Art offers a window into the values and anxieties of its time.