Figure 2. Detail of Figure 1
years to the young model's age seems to have required
no leap of imagination on the painter's part.
The Mountain alludes to, among other things, the
artist's marriage to Antoinette de Watteville. Her
final capitulation must have suggested to Balthus
that he had become acceptable both as a man and as
an artist-especially since she married him only after
his first exhibition in Paris in 1934 had catapulted
him, if not to fame, then to notoriety, and he had
been chosen by members of Parisian society to paint
their portraits. Interwoven with these multilayered,
personal allusions in The Mountain may also be an
allegory from the writings of PierreJeanJouve (1887-
1976), a close friend, which had probably struck a
chord with Balthus's own situation as an artist at that
particular time. Jouve's La scene capitale had appeared
in 1935, two years before Balthus painted The Mountain.
The book contains two novellas: La victime, a
work dedicated to Balthus-with a title Balthus reused
for one of his paintings-and Dans les annees profondes.
The second novella takes place in an Alpine region of
the Engadine and contains literary images the magical
clarity of which corresponds to the sharpness that
forms can assume in high mountain regions, not
unlike the forms in Balthus's painting. The novella
tells of the love of the young poet Leonide for Helene,
a beautiful married woman. She finally yields to him
but dies during their lovemaking. Only when the poet Figure 3. Detail of Figure 1