The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer

Edgar Degas modeled this two-thirds life-size figure around 1880. The original was sculpted in wax, dressed in a real fabric bodice, tulle skirt, stockings, ballet shoes, and a horsehair wig tied with a satin ribbon. When he exhibited it at the 1881 Impressionist show in Paris, critics were genuinely shocked. Real clothing on a sculpture broke every accepted rule.

The model was Marie van Goethem, a young Belgian dance student at the Paris Opera school. She came from a poor family, and her story became a symbol of the hardships young dancers faced in 19th-century Paris. Degas created roughly 150 sculptures during his lifetime but exhibited only this one. The rest were found in his studio after his death.

The Met's version is a posthumous bronze cast from 1922, still dressed in a real cotton taffeta skirt. It stands in Gallery 815 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The mixed-media approach that scandalized 1881 audiences now reads as one of the most forward-thinking moves in 19th-century sculpture.