Sometimes this is what dignity looks like.

Taurus opens the Minotaur cycle. The bull and the woman are painted as a single silhouette, the face split into planes of cool and warm red. The pose is composed, hands folded, gaze lowered, with no defiance and no attempt to be liked.

The painting does not explain where that calm comes from, and it does not have to. The surprise is the viewer’s problem, not the sitter’s.

“A woman with a bull for a head. She finds this normal. Given a minute, so will you. The rest feel implied.” TAURUS

Giving the viewer a minute is not a courtesy. It is a test: whoever passes it accepts everything else in the cycle without further argument.