These Tattooed Women Are Actually Oil Paintings

Agnieszka Nienartowicz is a talented Poland-born artist who combines classical and modern art in a really unique way. Nienartowicz paints portraits of women in which she then incorporates classical artworks.

There are several different ways in which Nienartowicz places the works of Caravaggio, Guido Reni Hokusai, and Sandro Botticelli into her paintings but the most intriguing one is placing them as tattoos on women’s bodies.

“By appropriating fragments of these works, I establish a kind of dialogue with their authors, transferring the inseparable thought behind those paintings to my own canvas,” Nienartowicz says about her work. “At the same time, placing them in a completely new context, I deprive them of their original meaning and transform them into an artifact. This ambiguity is what I love.”

Another characteristic of Nienartowicz’s works is their hyper-realism. The artist pays such attention to details that it’s easy to mistake her pieces for photographs. Only when you look at them closely, you begin to realize that’s an oil painting in front of you.

Check out some of Nienartowicz’s paintings below.