Reclining nude

In Reclining nude Fabio Fabbi portrays the oriental woman as a figure of exotic sensuality and mystery. The insufficient veil that the figure wears seems to make her nudity all the more prominent; her eyes unabashedly seek out the viewer, yet the very foreign and alien nature of the painting to a Western European viewer makes its occupant at once provocative and unobtainable. Fabbi's depiction is part of the European-wide cult of Orientalism in art, which was as fascinated with the vibrant colours and textures of the East as with the dichotomy of sexual liberation and submission that its women represented.