The seated female nude depicted on Aristide Maillol’s relief plaque is an adaptation of The Mediterranean, a life-size figure of a bather that the artist sculpted fifteen years earlier. At the time of its exhibition at the Salon d’Automne of 1905, the smoothness and restrained pose of The Mediterranean was seen as a clear break from the animated surfaces and dramatic style of Auguste Rodin. Maillol’s aim was simply to create a pure beautiful form. Author André Gide wrote enthusiastically of the novel modernism of Maillol’s work: “It is beautiful. It doesn’t signify a thing.” Throughout his career, Maillol reused the same seated female figure numerous times, adjusting the proportions or changing its orientation. On this small plaque, she appears as a mirror reverse of The Mediterranean.