Interior (The Rape)
by DEGAS, Edgar, Oil on canvas, 81 x 114 cm
The title of the painting, The Rape, may be misleading. It perhaps refers to a scene in Zola’s novel, “Madeleine F�rat,” in which Madeleine says to Francis that he is tormented because he loves her and she cannot be his. However, it is probably not a literary illustration. Degas himself never accepted this title. To his way of thinking the picture was primarily a study in nocturnal light effects in an interior.