The Toilette of Salome (first version)

Aubrey Beardsley, 1872-1898

1894

From Oscar Wilde’s Salome

Far more explicitly erotic than the later version of Salome's readying herself for her dance, this one has fewer outrageous book: The shelves to the left of Salome contain, quite anachronistically, two books then considered immoral or at least naughty: Zola's La Terre (Beardsley uses Nana in the later illustration), and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs de Maln. Note the Hogarthian technique of placing legible texts within the picture space that comment upon the subject depicted. — George P. Landow

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