This drawing produced in Nice represents a woman—possibly Henriette Darricarrère, Henri Matisse’s muse and wife—inside the artist’s studio, which we assume is luminous. Instead of a posed session, it seems as though Matisse might have drawn the model during a break, lying indolently on a comfortable and studied armchair.

The woman’s gaze, the rotundity of her legs, and the presence of her breasts between the draping capture the viewer’s attention and seem to erase the surrounding elements whose reference to a real location remains diffuse. The lighthearted image conceals an allusion to art history: the position of her legs imitates the sculpture The Aurora in the mausoleum of Lorenzo de Urbino (1524-1534), a work by Michael Angelo that Matisse took as a reference for several of his drawings in the 1920s.

This allusion to Michael Angelo does not feel imposed; the drawing’s lines generate an image with volume and the material consistency of a sculpture.