Virtuous Woman
Oil on Belgian Linen, 72" x 48"
Rosales re-imaginations of European models upend the canons of western culture, making space for Black female empowerment in the grand narrative of history. Centering the Black figure of Eve as the protagonist, Rosales presents the perfect woman. Inscribed within both a circle and a square, Rosales’s Eve subverts Leonardo da Vinci’s design of an ideal human body as represented by a man (c. 1490, Vitruvian Man). At a height of six feet tall, Virtuous Woman towers over Leonardo’s diminutive notebook sketch. The painting forms part of Rosales’s early artistic journey to challenge white, patriarchal, hegemonic systems.
