User:Peaceray/Il bagno della pastora

Il bagno della pastora (English:The shepherd's bath) is a 1903 oil painting on canvas by the Italian painter Basilio Cascella. It is in the Basilio Cascella Civic Museum in Pescara. It depicts a young woman in a typically bucolic setting of Abruzzo.

Description
Cascella began painting the picture in 1899 at his studio and lithographic plant in the Porta Nuovain neighborhood of Pescara. In 1903, he finished the painting and sent it to the Venice Biennale. However, the exhibition organizers refused it due to its belated arrival. A postal mistake in returning the painting caused it to remain at the Ancona railway station until it was found over thirty years later.

The models were Concetta Palmerio, Cascella's wife and favorite model, and a friend, Vincenzo Bucci. The painting displays a pastoral setting that recalls the typical rural world of Abruzzo, the artist's native region, and which constitutes a recurring element in his art. The painting includes a natural and innocent eroticism, depicting a primordial condition where nakedness is natural. It also has a mythological quality. The youth, who wears short trousers possibly made from lynx or goat skin fur, has feet that are slightly hoof-like, and has a set of Zampogna pipes laid upon the rock in the background, bears a resemblance to a faun or a young Pan.