The French man who posed in red heels and a blue dress for the provocative portrait of former President Bill Clinton that hung in Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion expressed shock at his figure’s newfound fame.
In a recent Facebook correspondence with Artnet, model Christophe Nayal said he “was absolutely stunned to find out that Epstein bought [the] painting,” which caused his dress-clad body to adorn the walls of the convicted pedophile’s sumptuous home near Central Park on New York City’s Upper East Side.
Nayal had been a frequent model at the New York Academy of Art, where artist Petrina Ryan-Kleid was a student when she painted the now-viral portrait in 2012, dubbed “Parsing Bill.” The painting depicts Clinton lounging seductively in an Oval Office chair, wearing red heels and a blue dress reminiscent of the infamous garb soiled during the former president’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. “Some past students even recognized my legs in that painting,” Nayal said.
Ryan-Kleid told the Washington Examiner that she likewise “had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago,” adding that “it was a complete surprise to me to learn … that it wound up in Epstein’s home.”
