Madame X Revealed

The painting is enormous, standing nearly seven feet tall. There is a strong use of dramatic monochromes, a stark difference between black and white and a powerful use of rich, deep browns.

John Singer Sargent, painter of beautiful women and powerful men, displayed his portrait of 23-year-old Virginie Gautreau at the 1884 Paris Salon. There is an intimacy implied in the relationship between the master painter and the great beauty he depicts. Madame Gautreau, like Sargent an expatriated American, had made it to the top through her wit, her looks and her social strategy. Sargent portrays her as a creature of tense elegance, with a profile as sharp and precise as if carved out of some hard, brittle material. She wears the crescent-shaped tiara of Diana the huntress - she is a woman of predatory sensuality.

In the original version, Sargent shows the New Orleans Creole with one strap of her dress dangling from her shoulder suggesting, to outraged Parisian viewers, either the prelude or the aftermath of sex. It scandalized the Paris establishment, causing a furor that neither Sargent nor Gautreau would live down. It crippled Sargent's bid to establish himself as a portrait painter in the City of Light and drove Gautreau into social exile.

Some say Madame X was Sargent's greatest painting - the brilliant but superficial society portraits with which he will be eternally associated came after that.

"Strapless: The Rise of John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X" by Deborah Davis provides a closer look at this chronicle of miscalculation.

Fig Leaf - Exposed

One of the only three original Toronto Street buildings from the 1800s, Fig Leaf Ristorante stands in quiet but monumental splendour, a graceful entrance leading to an interior full of bustling bonhomie. A favourite, semi-formal lunch spot for the Bay Street crowd, a reservation is always a good idea since the dining room fills up quickly come noon. The owners have carefully and lovingly preserved the high-vaulted ceilings and original mouldings, and managed to integrate the sense of age and dignity with a playful, enthusiastic Mediterranean energy, using the large windows and a large amount of wood and mesh to great effect.

The resto has always been LG's first choice for lunch and though service might sometimes slow to a crawl, we've never been disappointed with the food yet. LG usually opts for the funghi pizza - crispy, thin crust with a variety of mushrooms and smoked mozzarella or the fusili sanremo - pasta with generous chunks of chicken in a sinfully rich rosemary cream sauce. I usually order the linguini con vongolle if I'm really hungry - linguini with fresh clams that still retain a faint whiff of the sea, served up in a garlicky wine sauce that is light on the palate. What draws me back time and time again though is the incomparable fig crostini.

Although billed as an appetizer, the portion is big enough to pass for a main course. Slightly melted cambozola cheese, sticky caramelized figs and barely charred red onions are heaped in a mound on pieces of hot, crusty bread. Cambozola is derived from a marriage of Camembert and Gorgonzola. It is mild and creamy, with streaks of tangy blue that add a zing. The taste of the cheese itself is a wonderful mélange of buttery, salty, acidic flavours. Half-melted by the grill, it wraps lovingly around the figs and the onions, imparting occasional bursts of sharpness amidst earthy sweetness. You can almost imagine yourself in a sun-warmed grove, the breeze in your hair, the feel of the ground solidly beneath your hips, at ease with yourself and the world.

While the Fig Leaf holds sway over the fig crostini, figs and cambozola can also come together in strong harmony when you wrap fruit and cheese in a prosciutto parcel. The cheese also goes amazingly well with garlic that has been roasted whole until it achieves a wild, fragrant nuttiness, extracted from its skin and roughly crushed. Spread both cheese and garlic on fresh rosemary foccaccia for a simple yet unforgettable meal. Definitely mmm-mmm good.