#studio

This one sat around unfinished for decades — started in Italy, finished in Paris when he was in his seventies and running the state art school, according to Wikipedia. Two of his students painted the background and the water jar for him, which sounds like cheating until you learn that's just how a big studio worked.

This one's sometimes read as a stand-in for painting itself - the model's laurel wreath, trumpet and book are meant to be Clio, the muse of history. Whoever made it, from what I can find, held onto this one for his whole life and never sold it, even when money was tight.