Donkey, Tangier. The Snake Charmer is an oil-on-canvas Orientalist painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme produced around 1879.
It is signed J.L Gerome 1880. The painting depicts a naked boy standing on a small carpet in the centre of a room with blue tiled walls, facing away from the viewer, holding a python which coils around his waist and over his shoulder, while an older man sits to his right playing a fipple flute.
The performance is watched by a motley group of armed men from a variety of Islamic tribes, with different clothes and weapons. The work measures 33 × 48 inches.
It is a highly finished academic painting, with a synthesis of Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian elements creating a voyeuristic fantasy for Western audiences. Adult snake charmers didn't perform naked since Islam prohibits that, but children did, in order to create more suspence in the spectator: seeing a poisonous snake held by an unprotected, stark naked boy was more thrilling than seeing it held by a strong, clothed man.
Also, child nudity was highly accepted. However, the painting has hint of sublimated homoeroticism, with the buttocks of the naked boy at the centre of the painting and his muscled body wrapped in the coils of a phallic snake observed by a group of clothed males. The scene is made acceptable for a 19th-century western audience by its oriental setting. Gérôme made the painting on a visit to Constanti
It is signed J.L Gerome 1880. The painting depicts a naked boy standing on a small carpet in the centre of a room with blue tiled walls, facing away from the viewer, holding a python which coils around his waist and over his shoulder, while an older man sits to his right playing a fipple flute.
The performance is watched by a motley group of armed men from a variety of Islamic tribes, with different clothes and weapons. The work measures 33 × 48 inches.
It is a highly finished academic painting, with a synthesis of Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian elements creating a voyeuristic fantasy for Western audiences. Adult snake charmers didn't perform naked since Islam prohibits that, but children did, in order to create more suspence in the spectator: seeing a poisonous snake held by an unprotected, stark naked boy was more thrilling than seeing it held by a strong, clothed man.
Also, child nudity was highly accepted. However, the painting has hint of sublimated homoeroticism, with the buttocks of the naked boy at the centre of the painting and his muscled body wrapped in the coils of a phallic snake observed by a group of clothed males. The scene is made acceptable for a 19th-century western audience by its oriental setting. Gérôme made the painting on a visit to Constanti
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