A prolific writer, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) is generally regarded, along with Gustave Flaubert, as a founding father of realism in European literature, and as one of France's greatest fiction writers.

Ostensibly a tale of sexual androgyny, the power of love, and its bitter aftermath, this volume is in fact a study of the force of art on society and the deadly immortality of beauty. The nameless narrator attends a ball held by a wealthy Parisian family whose fortune comes from a work of art, and there meets an extraordinary old woman who bears a strange resemblance to the statue depicted in the painting. He returns to his lodgings to tell the tragic, yet ultimately rewarding tale of the creation of the painting's inspiration: a tale of passion, lust, and transexuality, in which music and art, their powers combined, are fatally attracted.