La chiquita piconera

La chiquita piconera is one of the best-known works by Julio Romero de Torres and is often regarded as one of his most accomplished mature paintings. Dated 1930, shortly before the painter's death, it is held in the museum devoted to him in Córdoba. In the foreground, a young woman sits on a rush-seated chair, stirring a charcoal brazier with a shovel. She looks straight out at the viewer, one shoulder bare and her legs covered only by stockings and high heels, a provocative device for its time that recurs throughout the artist's output. Through a doorway behind her opens a view of Córdoba, with the Paseo de la Ribera, the Guadalquivir, the Roman bridge and the Calahorra Tower, a setting he returned to often. The model is traditionally identified as María Teresa López, then about 13 or 14, although another woman was proposed in 2002 and the question remains unsettled. The painting is widely read as charged with eroticism and with the sexual fetishes that run through the artist's work. Because of its underlying theme of prostitution and its emphasis on the stocking and the brazier, it has been compared to a caprice by Francisco de Goya.

Painter

Julio Romero de Torres

Date

1930

Medium

tempera, oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

200 × 169 cm

Museum

Museo Julio Romero de Torres, Córdoba

Genre

genre art

Depicts

high heels, sitting, waist-length hair, Guadalquivir, prostitute, chair, part, María Teresa López González

Share:FacebookWhatsApp