This corner of a painter's studio somewhere in France in the mid-nineteenth century is hardly bound by time or place; it could just as easily be a loft in New York today or, if photography had existed four centuries earlier, a studio in the Italian Renaissance. What is surprising here is the absence of even the slimmest disguise - no volants of drapery, elaborate hairstyles or strands of beads as is often found in the work of other purveyors of 'studies for artists'. Here the model is completely naked. With her intelligent head and dirty feet, this young woman helped found the sober girls' student club that Édouard Manet's Olympia joined ten years later.
