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Cara marble. Marked on lower front: “S”. In this enchanting small sculpture Saloun combines his mastery of expressing his state of mind, thus building on his earlier series of smaller sculptures from the beginning of the century, with the freedom to fully visualize erotic female beauty. This position as a central subject was opened to artists at the fin de siècle, when “the woman is placed on the metaphysical throne of the universe, and love, which gives movement to the sun and other stars, is lifted up to the mythical altar. Woman unseated other powers and values of life in art or removed them to the background, and thus these are understood and valued only through her and covered only in the glow she reflects onto them. The woman becomes the nearly sole inspiration of poetry and art ...” F. X. Salda, Boje o zitrek, Meditace a rapsodie, Prague, 1948, pp. 58–59). An identical work is in the holdings of the National Gallery in Prague, inventory no. P 8005.