Deirdre’s forerunner: the blonde harem-girl of fine-art fame
In Enigma Deirdre observes, with some solemnity, that sitting as a model for artists may have the effect of enduing her with a kind of immortality: for the artwork created shall serve as a record of how she appeared at that time, long after her youthful beauty fades and even after she has departed the earth. It is a heady thing for any young person to contemplate!
According to legend, the genesis of Francis Boucher’s famous 1751 portrait of the ‘resting girl’, notable as a prime example of the Rococo ideals of feminine beauty, luxury, and gentleness, came through the great playboy Giacomo Casanova, who had observed her as ‘a pretty, ragged, dirty, little creature’ of thirteen in the house of her sister, an actress. Struck by her beauty upon seeing her naked, however, he commissioned a nude portrait of her to be made, calling her O-Morphi: a pun on both the name of her father, the Irish emigre Daniel Murphy, and omorfos, the word for beautiful (which Gregory the Greek delivery boy calls Deirdre).
When he first saw the painting, Louis XV was enchanted, insisting upon knowing how the painting had done justice for the girl and, having seen her, claiming that she was even lovelier in person. Of the painting style Casanova stated that the ‘skilled’ artist had depicted her legs and thighs so beautifully ‘that the eye could not wish to see more.’
Young Marie Louise’s beauty became so famous abroad that she was summoned to the court as a royal petite maîtresse (junior mistress) and ultimately presented before the French king, after which she became a protégée of Madame Pompadour herself, the King’s longtime favourite. By 1755 she had become pregnant and was cast out of court and into a forced marriage to preserve what dignity might remain for a concubine.
Consistent with her precocious accomplishments, Marie-Louise’s first three children were born between 1754 and 1757, the first an illegitimate daughter of the king, the third born a month after she had turned 20.
The painting came into the possession of the painter Charles-Joseph Natoire in Rome, who had it placed in a ‘private room’ with three others, none of his own work: ‘Because the room was very small and secret, I wanted nudity.’ It currently resides at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.
In Deirdre’s emulation of the famous painting she reclines slightly more upon one side and somewhat more elongated, given a wider couch than that fostering the awkward-looking attitude in Boucher's famous painting. Perhaps the narrator’s recollection has been inaccurate; but it is also likely that Deirdre’s version, if we were able to view it, would be more aesthetically pleasing if only for such improvement to the pose.
This article appears in the Addenda of Deirdre, the Enigma (Third, 'Late Winter' edition of 2026).
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