Oranges and Lemons

Oranges and Lemons, painted in 1927, is a work in which Julio Romero de Torres blends a traditional still life with the human figure. Against a simple background sit several oranges and, in the foreground, a young woman with bare torso holding fruit against her chest. The arrangement is deliberately bold: the painter breaks the usual separation between still life and portrait, letting the female body take the central place normally reserved for objects. The title carries the symbolic key, since the model's breasts stand in for lemons and the oranges join that sensual reading. For this reason the picture is often read as an erotic allusion, something that could have seemed provocative to the more conservative sectors of society at the time. Romero de Torres, a painter from Córdoba associated with the depiction of Andalusian women, worked in tempera and oil on canvas, which gives the surface a soft, luminous matte quality. The work is held in the museum devoted to the artist in Córdoba, where it can be seen as an example of his personal treatment of sensuality.

Painter

Julio Romero de Torres

Date

1927

Medium

tempera, oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

104 × 74 cm

Museum

Museo Julio Romero de Torres, Córdoba

Depicts

orange, woman, toplessness

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