Italy's great neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova had a guilty secret, according to a Milan art expert.
Canova broke one of the art world's key taboos by moulding from life parts of statues, art critic Maurizio Bernadelli Curuz claims.
He used the prohibited technique for the breasts of his celebrated sculpture of Napoleon's sister Paolina (originally Pauline) Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (Conquering Venus), the critic says.
The evidence, Bernadelli Curuz claims, is there to be seen in a preparatory cast of one breast on show at Rome's Napoleonic Museum.
The cast is suspiciously perfect and shows telltale signs of having been impressed on a young woman's skin, he says.
What's more, the breast departs from Canova's usual idealised beauty, influenced by classical Greek models.
"The chalk shows on the one side the softness of the skin and on the other the healthy specific gravity that curves the plastic material on the lower part of the soft hemisphere," he says in an article to be published in leading Italian art magazine Stile Arte.
"In short, it isn't the conventional breast of Greek statuary, linked to the evocation of a perfect, platonic, ideal woman.
"It has something concrete, hardly idealised at all, for all that the form is sublime".
But the real giveaway is the nipple, which allegedly "presents an illuminating deformity".
The tip of the breast is "slightly squashed in such a way as to form the impression of two slightly parted lips" instead of standing proud and round, Bernadelli Cruz claims.
This can only mean wet chalk was applied to it to make a 'wet T-shirt effect', the critic says.
Canova (1757-1822) was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh.
The epitome of the neoclassical sculptor, his work marked a return to classical refinement after the theatrical excesses of Baroque art.
Despite only living to 40, Pauline Bonaparte (1780-1825) left a strong mark on her time.
After her numerous young love affairs became an embarrassment, Napoleon had Pauline married to Charles Leclerc, one of his generals.
She accompanied Leclerc to Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in 1802 to remove the black general Toussaint Louverture from power.
Despite her brother's position, Pauline continued to have affairs in Saint-Domingue, often with low-ranking soldiers and officers.
However, she did attend her husband during his fatal sickness with yellow fever, which killed him in November 1802.
Napoleon then had her married off to a Bonapartist member of the famed Roman Borghese family, Camillo Borghese, and she changed her name from the French Pauline to the Italian Paolina.
The marriage was initially passionate but foundered on her affairs and eccentricities such as using ladies-in-waiting for footstools and African slaves to carry her to her bath.
After Waterloo Pauline moved to Rome, where she enjoyed the protection of Pope Pius VII, once her brother's prisoner.
Pauline lived in a villa that was called Villa Paolina after her and decorated in the Egyptomania style she favoured.
Camillo moved to Florence to distance himself from her and had a ten-year relationship with a mistress, but Pauline persuaded the pope to convince Camillo to return to her, three months before her death from cancer.
The famous statue of Paolina is one of the biggest attractions at Rome's Borghese Gallery.
