A crowd of nude women lounge, bathe and play music in an imagined harem, seen as if through a round window. Ingres, who never travelled to the East, reassembled bathers and odalisques from half a century of his own work, then turned the rectangular picture into a tondo. He finished it at 82 and proudly inscribed his age.
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The lute player with her back to us is his Valpinçon Bather of 1808, reused almost unchanged. Find the inscription AETATIS LXXXII, 'aged 82'.
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