Femme nue couchée

Courbet painted this reclining nude in 1862, a frank, unidealised body of the kind that made him the scandal of French Realism. But the strangest chapter of its life came long after his death. By the early 20th century it belonged to the Hungarian collector Ferenc Hatvany, and in 1945, as Soviet troops took Budapest, it was looted from a bank vault where he had hidden his collection. A Red Army soldier is said to have rolled the canvas up and carried it into Slovakia, where he gave it to a doctor in Bratislava. It hung on that ordinary wall for decades, its value apparently unknown, before resurfacing and being returned to Hatvany's heirs. In 2015 the painting sold at auction for more than 15 million dollars.