This densely worked etching of four female nudes in an interior, flanking a classical bust of a bearded man resting on a plinth, is a homage to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s celebrated painting Le Bain turc, 1852-62 (Louvre, Paris). The women, three of which resemble Marie-Thérèse Walter, are depicted in various positions of repose: the seated figure at left cradles the head of her sleeping companion, while just behind her another woman looks into a hand mirror and attends to her hair. The fourth nude is shown frontally, leaning on her elbow and gazing directly at the viewer. A vase of flowers rests on a window sill behind her, a motif which, according to Brigitte Baer, evokes Marie-Thérèse, while the classical bust is identified as the character of the sculptor. Thematically the etching belongs to a large group within the famous series La Suite Vollard informally known as the `Sculptor’s Studio’. These forty-six etchings, showing an artist and model (or models) variously working, relaxing or carousing in a studio, expand upon themes developed by Picasso in his etchings for Albert Skira’s publication of Ovid’s Les Métamorphoses (1931) which includes the story of Pygmalion, a sculptor who carves a sculpture of a woman so perfect that he falls in love with it. Petitioning the goddess Aphrodite for a bride as beautiful as his sculpture, the goddess grants his wish, and transforms stone into living flesh. In Quatre femmes nues et tête sculptée Picasso inverts these roles, with the sculptor becoming the sculpture, in the likeness of a classical bust of the god Zeus, simultaneously present and yet detached from the sensual scene before him.