King Candaules plays a stupid game and wins a stupid prize. 

It’s a wonderful thing when a man is madly in love with his wife, but forcing a guy to spy on her while she’s naked because you want him to see just how crazy beautiful she is...is just a terrible idea, don’t do that. King Candaules unfortunately didn’t have someone to slap him and tell him exactly that, so his bad decision ruined his life.

Gyges, Candaules’ bodyguard, hides behind the door at night while Queen Nyssia gets undressed and, of course, he gets caught. Nyssia is not happy about finding a peeping tom in her bedroom. Finding out it was her husband’s idea made her even angrier, so she gives Gyges an ultimatum: be executed or kill her husband. Candaules gets the axe, Gyges takes over the monarchy...long live the new king?

In Vargas Llosa’s novel, "In Praise of the Stepmother," the story gets a new "Letters to Penthouse" ending. In his version, the presence of a voyeur in his bedroom excites Candaules to such a degree that he gives his bodyguard, well, quite a show. Also Nyssia never finds out she was spied on and no one dies. Arguably a happier ending, depending on your sense of poetic justice.

Jacob Jordaens utilized the subject matter as a chance to portray his ideal woman through Nyssia. Similar to how Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres approached the goddess Thetis in Jupiter and Thetis. Though the story of Candaules having his wife spied upon wasn’t a common painting subject there is another well known version by artist William Etty. Etty approached the image in a manner almost completely opposite from Jordaens.

Jordaens unabashedly utilizes the male gaze, inviting the audience to admire Candaules’ wife alongside Gyges. Etty tried using the story to get across the message that infringing upon a woman’s privacy is wrong and deserves to be punished. But put the two paintings side by side and speaking, purely at face value, there isn’t much difference. The painting focuses on a naked woman being ogled by two men.

So which version got hit with controversy and was written off as violent porn: Jordaens’ celebration of idealized female nudity or Etty’s warning against treating women like objects? Well, it wasn’t Jordaens.