O Homem Ferido

This looks like a wounded duellist asleep against a tree, a sword at his side and a red stain spreading at his heart. Courbet began it in 1844 as something gentler. X-rays taken at the Musée d'Orsay show a woman was once leaning on his shoulder, her head resting where the sky is now. She was Virginie Binet, his companion of some 14 years. When that relationship ended around 1851, Courbet came back to the canvas and painted her out, replacing her with the sword and the wound and finishing it about 1854. So the injury in the title is not from any fight. The man is a self-portrait, and what he is recovering from is the loss of the person who used to be in the picture.