A century ago a painting in the National Gallery was slashed by a suffragette. But what is it about this Velazquez nude that makes it so provocative, asks Tom de Castella.
It’s the last word in sensual languor. And one of the most famous bottoms of all time. But 100 years ago the Rokeby Venus was attacked as it hung in the National Gallery. The painting took at least five slashes with a meat chopper. Its attacker, Mary Richardson, a suffragette who later became a disciple of the fascist Oswald Mosley, was protesting against the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst. “Slasher Mary”, as the press dubbed her, later admitted that it wasn’t just the picture’s value – £45,000 in 1906 – that made it a target. It was “the way men visitors gaped at it all day long”.
It is one of the most erotically charged images of that or indeed any age. “She is seen as the paradigm of female beauty,” says Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston. An unknown model reclines on a bed with her back to the painter. The bottom has a 3D quality.