Girls Bathing

Bernardino Luini's Girls Bathing is among his most celebrated secular works, depicting the pleasure of outdoor bathing with the gentle sensuality characteristic of this Milanese painter's approach to female beauty. The outdoor bathing scene occupies the boundary between the mythological (nymphs or Diana's companions) and the genre (contemporary women at leisure), its meaning deliberately ambiguous for the sophisticated private collector. Luini's soft modeling and the warm atmospheric light create an image of feminine beauty that reflects the Leonardesque ideal filtered through the more accessible sweetness he developed for the Milanese market.

Luini's smooth, luminous sfumato technique directly reflects Leonardo's influence, with delicate gradations of light and shadow creating an idealized softness in the rendering of flesh and facial features.