Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

November 10, 2015

Was Bathsheba Bathing in the Nude?

Europe’s great artists weigh in.

In the book of Samuel, King David looks down from his roof one evening and sees “a woman washing herself.” He then initiates his affair with the woman, the beautiful Bathsheba. While many great European artists—most famously Rembrandt—have depicted Bathsheba as bathing nude, others have imagined her merely washing her feet. David M. Gunn explains:

SaveGift