# The Reader Wreathed with Flowers \(Virgil's Muse\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [COROT, Jean-Baptiste Camille]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 47 x 34 cm ## Commentary Besides landscapes, Corot worked in the studio on studies from life. The male friends or young girls who modelled for him varied their poses during the sittings, as Corot made numerous sketches, and then selected an attitude or expression that he could use later in a full composition, thereby blending realism with feeling and allegory. Thus transfigured, his models become archetypes, allegorical figures, and deities. In this painting the model has been transformed into a barefoot Muse deeply absorbed in a book, her head wreathed in flowers. ## Related artworks - [Agostina]() - [Corot's Studio]() - [Goat-herds]() - [Haydée, Young Woman in Greek Dress]() - [In a Park]() - [Lady in Blue]() - [Landscape near Riva on Lake Garda]() - [Mill at Saint-Nicolas-les-Arras]() - [Morning at Beauvais]() - [Peasant Woman Pasturing a Cow by the Edge of a Forest]() - [Peasants under the Trees at Dawn]() - [Poetry]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()