With his sinuous, round-bellied nudes of 1999, Currin shifted away from the jokey, lowbrow subjects of his earlier work and toward a chaster rehashing of the Great Tradition. The inspiration for these paintings, he says, was his wife, the sculptor Rachel Feinstein, whose wide-set eyes and angelic smile appear repeatedly in his work. The art-historical reference is to the 16^th-century German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, who turned out playfully erotic mythological scenes populated by coquettish nymphs, which charmed the provincial aristocracy of his day, much as Currin's work charms the Connecticut collectors of ours. In the last few years, a painting by Currin has become the trophy of choice in Westchester living rooms, sending auction prices through the roof. (Last spring at Sotheby's, a work from 1995 sold for an astounding $427,500.)