拍品专文
The present work is a witty play on a basic tradition in Old Master painting, namely the Allegory of the Senses. In this tradition, the five basic human senses--sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell--are depicted in a series of paintings, each symbolically alluding to a specific sense (for example, a vase of flowers represents the sense of smell or a bowl of fruit to the sense of taste). Caravaggio, Ribera and many other Baroque masters are renowned for such allegorical compositions. Magritte explicitly evokes this tradition. This is clearest in the depiction of roses in the foreground, what is more, he literally represents their fragrance with wavy lines. The window at the right, on the other hand, evokes the sense of sight. And yet Magritte frustrates and transforms this tradition by entitling the picture Le sense de la pudeur, an aberration from what is conventionally represented in this genre.