Exercise:Annotate a Female Nude in the Western Tradition, Part 4, Project 3

This exercise asked me to:-

Choose one of the classic nudes in the western tradition, shown as the sole figure in a painting; so I decided to start with the one that inspired so many who followed - Giorgione's Sleeping Venus. This was the first time a Goddess had been shown sleeping, and the first time that Venus had been painted with dark hair, albeit with reddish highlights. 

The questions posed include:

Do you think this image invites the sensual gaze? If so, how has the artist used the formal elements of the painting to achieve this?

Compare your chosen image with this one by "a female artist", Maria Szantho. 

All of the discussion around feminism in the previous post perhaps made me notice immediately  the use of the phrase "a female artist" in this question, as if I am bound to find differences in these two paintings because they were done by people at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum. I must admit to being slightly put off when I see the preface "female" in front of someone's occupation. Art history language is extremely gender-biased, and the word "artist" refers to a man unless it is qualified by the adjective "woman".

 Is this relevant? Do you want to invite sexual sterotyping, OCA? Since I have trawled the internet and looked in every book I have without finding another copy or reference to this painting (date/size/medium/subject etc) I wonder why you didn't just write "unknown female artist"? After a lot of searching, I found one or two blogs that talked about this Hungarian artist, who was very well-known in her own country, representing it in the 1939 New York World's Fair with three of her paintings. So, not exactly unknown, but certainly hasn't stood the test of time like Giorgione.

Reclining Nude, Maria Szantho. Date unknown. Photo taken of image in OCA Course Handbook for this exercise.

Lastly, the exercise asks: Have you ever been to a life drawing class or drawn  or painted a female nude. Did you see this as a formal challenge or were you conscious of additional cultural factors at work?

I must say I found this exercise very hard-going. Instead of finding these annotations easier as I go along, I seem to be finding them harder and harder. Here goes: