Phryne

Born Mnesarete in Thespiae, Boeotia, before 370 BC, she grew up poor but took the professional name Phryne and built a fortune in Athens as a hetaira. She sat for the painter Apelles and the sculptor Praxiteles, whose Aphrodite of Knidos was said to capture her form. When she was tried for impiety, the orator Hypereides defended her; the story that she was acquitted after baring her breasts became famous, though its truth remains disputed. Largely forgotten during the Renaissance, she resurfaced in the late eighteenth century and turned into a fixture of European art after Jean-Léon Gérôme pai…