Beschreibung:
<jats:p>A<jats:sc>T THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY</jats:sc>, Victorian painting experienced at least one mass media event, so far as circulation is concerned — the appearance of Frederic Leighton’s <jats:italic>The Bath of Psyche</jats:italic> (1890) on the wall of the drug kingpin in Paul Thomas Anderson’s notorious film <jats:italic>Boogie Nights</jats:italic> of 1997. As a ferocious deal is going awry, over the desperate dealers looms one of the masterpieces of the Victorian High Renaissance, a commentary through the cool classicism of the late Victorians about the corresponding <jats:italic>fin-de-siècle</jats:italic> of the lately finished century. It is a stunning moment — perhaps recognized only by historians of British art — but there it is nonetheless. One is to presume that the dealer has acquired the original from the Tate Gallery, since he would never own a copy, let alone a poster! Busboy superstud Mark Wahlberg has brief, violent contact with a masterpiece.</jats:p>