in art showing Bathsheba bathing, watched by King David. This could be shown with various degrees of nudity, depending on the pose and the placing of clothes or towels. One of the most common placements in the 15th century, perhaps surprisingly, was in miniatures illustrating a book of hours, a personal prayer book, that overtook the psalter as the most popular devotional book for laypeople. This was especially the case in France. In art the subject is one of the most commonly shown in the Power of Women topos. As an opportunity to feature a large female nude as the focus of a history painting, the subject was popular from the Renaissance onwards. Sometimes Bathsheba's maids or the "messengers" sent by David are shown, and often a distant David watching from his roof. The messengers are sometimes confused with David himself, but most artists follow the Bible in keeping David at a distance in this episode. Paintings with articles include: Bathsheba, Hans Memling, c. 1480 Bathsheba at Her Bath (Rembrandt), Louvre, the most famous painting of the subject. Bathsheba at her Bath (Veronese), 1575, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France. Atypically, Bathsheba is clothed in this. Bathsheba (painting), Artemisia Gentileschi (and Viviano Codazzi, Domenico Gargiulo, 1637 Bathsheba at her Bath (Ricci), 1720s, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Bathsheba at the Fountain, Rubens, c. 1635. Bathsheba receives David's letter Literature 1588 David and Bethsabe, a play by George Peele 1874 The story of Bathsheba, David and Uriah is echoed in Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd. 1893 The Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Crooked Man uses the David/Bathsheba story as its main structure. 1984 The tragicomedic novel God Knows written by Joseph Heller. Narrated by king David, purports to be his deathbed memoirs; however, not recounted in a straightforward fashion, the storyline is often hilariously fractured, exploring David's childhood herding sheep, the prophet Samuel, Goliath, King Saul, Jonathan (and homosexual innuendoes), Bathsheba and Uriah, the Psalms, the treachery of Absalom, Solomon, with even the occasional display of David betraying a knowledge of the future and Heaven. 2000 The biblical commentary anthology Really Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs contains a contemporary-setting story based on the first part of 2 Samuel 11, then discusses the biblical story in the following commentary segment. 2011 Jill Eileen Smith's Bathsheba: A Novel (The Wives of King David), 2015