I am Madame X » (Unabridged - 9 CD'S, Approx, 11 Hours)

Gioia Diliberto knew she wanted to be a writer ever since her days as a dreamy child who spent most of her free time scribbling stories in her room. These days, Diliberto pens inventive novels like I Am Madame X -- in which she imagines the story behind a painting that fascinated her for years.

When John Singer Sargent unveiled Madame X -- his famous portrait of American beauty Virginie Gautreau -- at the 1884 Paris Salon, its subject's bold pose and provocative dress shocked the public and the critics, smashing Sargent's dreams of a Paris career. In this remarkable novel, Gioia Diliberto tells Virginie's story, drawing on the sketchy historical facts to re-create Virginie's tempestuous personality and the captivating milieu of nineteenth-century Paris. Born in New Orleans and raised on a lush plantation, Virginie fled to France during the Civil War, where she was absorbed into the fascinating and wealthy world of grand ballrooms, dressmakers' salons, and artists' ateliers. Even before Sargent painted her portrait, Virginie's reputation for promiscuity and showy self-display made her the subject of vicious Paris gossip.

Immersing the reader in Belle Epoque Paris, I Am Madame X is a compulsively readable and richly imagined novel illuminating the struggle between Virginie and Sargent over the outcome of a painting that changed their lives and affected the course of art history.

The New Yorker

Belle Époque Paris may have greeted John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madame X with derision, but the luminously pale model he captured has become an icon. Deborah Davis sets out to revive the woman behind the image in Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. She depicts Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, “Paris’s hottest ‘it’ girl,” as a narcissistic socialite whose greatest fear was to be ignored. Davis speculates that Sargent, as a result of his infatuation and sexual confusion, conflated Gautreau’s profile and that of a young artist, Albert de Belleroche, into a single object of desire in sketches and paintings. Though the portrait’s poor reception at the 1884 Salon proved only a temporary setback for the artist’s career, Gautreau’s social reputation never recovered from her association with the painting, and she was further obscured by its anonymous title. “Was Sargent trying to punish Amélie in some way?” wonders Davis. “By removing her name from ‘Madame X,’ he robbed her of a claim to immortality.”

In Gioia Diliberto’s novel, I Am Madame X, Gautreau reasserts her place in history, recounting her days as a celebrated beauty, fawned over by society columnists and coveted by men. Her provocative sartorial choices—including the famous black dress—and brazen love affairs earned her a prominent position in the scandal sheets. But in Diliberto’s imagination, it is Gautreau’s devotion to her daughter that produced the unusual posture of the portrait: “I heard Louise crying. . . . I turned quickly, pushing off with my hand from a round Empire table, and twisting and stretching my neck. One of my dress straps slid off my shoulder. . . . ‘Hold that pose!’ he shouted.” (Andrea Thompson)