Le Violon d'Ingres

Le Violon d'Ingres is a photograph made by the American Surrealist artist Man Ray in 1924, depicting the bare back of his model and muse Kiki de Montparnasse, her head wrapped in a turban, with two f-shaped violin soundholes superimposed onto the small of her back so that her body reads simultaneously as a nude and as the body of a stringed instrument. The title puns on the French idiom for a hobby pursued alongside one's main profession, referring both to Man Ray's own interest in music and to the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whose odalisque nudes and skill as an amateur violinist the image knowingly evokes. It is one of the most widely reproduced and highly valued photographs in the history of the medium.