![Paul Delvaux - The Road to Rome (La Route de Rome) [1979]](http://c4.staticflickr.com/6/5797/30996360715_e5cfeb3dc5_b.jpg)
La Route de Rome since its completion in 1979, has come to be regarded as one of the most alluring examples of the artist’s late Surrealist production. Although Delvaux's paintings are renowned for their hallucinatory scenarios and dream-like imagery, the artist claimed not to be a proponent of the writings of Sigmund Freud and did not invest his compositions with the blatantly psychoanalytic references that were favoured by Dalí, Miró and his fellow Belgian, René Magritte. Delvaux's approach to painting was more subtle in its representation of the uncanny, without being overtly grotesque or offensive with his imagery, he would interrupt the peacefulness and banality of a given scene with instances of the bizarre. Many of these pictures present a conventional architectural setting, like a railway station, loggia or a street corner, which is populated by expressionless and still women, usually depicted in the nude. The passivity of these women recalls the gentle beauty of a Botticelli or the flawlessness of a Bouguereau and adds a certain sense of timelessness. The blatancy and contextual inappropriateness of their nudity, however, leaves the viewer to contemplate the perplexing narrative of the composition.
[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 160 x 240 cm]