Jeanne de Marsy

A cabinet card portrait of the artist’s model Jeanne de Marsy (1865-1937), who sat for both Manet and Renoir in the early 1880s.

In this portrait, Mlle de Marsy's frank confrontation of the lens, the half-smile that plays about her sensuous lips, the exposed flesh of her smooth white arms and the ample charms of her belle poitrine create an image of a woman at the height of her sexual allure. The tight black satin of her dress stretched across an obviously corseted waist borders on the erotic.

Photographed by Nadar of Paris.