Worlds most scandalous painting returns to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

She’s back.After two years of traveling, “Madame X” — the iconic 1884 portrait by John Singer Sargent — has returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it’s the star of a new exhibit ,”Sargent and Paris,” which runs through Aug.3.The painting of a striking young woman in an alluring black dress has long been one of the Met’s biggest attractions.“People get upset when it’s not on view,” said Stephanie L.

Herdrich, curator of American painting and drawing at the Met.“I’ve even seen people with [Madame X] tattooed on their bodies.”In its day, the painting wasn’t nearly so highly regarded.It was branded “immodest,” “indecent” and “vulgar” when it debuted.

One critic deemed it “the worst, most ridiculous, and most insulting portrait of the year.” Another called it “simply offensive in its insolent ugliness.” Cartoonists mocked it for months.The new exhibit examines the scandal surrounding the piece, which Sargent painted when he was 28 after spending a decade in the City of Light.The madame who posed for him, Virginie Amélie Gautreau (nee Avegno), was a 25-year-old socialite whose reputation was forever changed by associating with Sargent.Like Sargent, Amélie was American.

She hailed from a wealthy French Creole family in New Orleans.After her father died in the Civil War — he was a major in the Confederate Army — her mother took 8-year-old Amélie to Paris, in hopes of finding her a rich husband.

With her distinctive looks and bold fashion sense, she became the toast of Paris.At 19, Amélie married Pierre Gautreau, a wealthy businessman 20 years her senior, and had a daughter, but that didn’t stop her exhibitionism.“She was a professional beauty … what we would call an influencer today,” Herdrich said.

“She wore glamorous, often low-cut dresses, dyed her hair, rouged her ears.”The newspapers — in France and the US — reported where she shopped, where she got her hair done and how she...