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Phryne hides her own face behind her arm, so the one person in the room not looking at her is the defendant. Gérôme had Nadar photograph the model, Marie-Christine Leroux, and worked from the prints.

Phryne was the most famous courtesan in fourth-century Athens, and the most famous body in Greece. Praxiteles used her as the model for the Aphrodite of Knidos, the first life-sized female nude in Greek sculpture. People took sea voyages to look at it. She was charged with impiety, a capital offense. The ancient accounts say the charge involved profaning the Eleusinian mysteries, and that the private history behind it was a rejected suitor. Her defense was conducted by the orator Hypereides, one of the best in Athens, who was also her lover. The speech was going badly. So Hypereides brought her into the middle of the court and tore open her robe. Then he asked the jury whether they really meant to condemn a priestess and servant of Aphrodite. The source for all of this is Athenaeus, writing some five centuries later. They acquitted her, and the sources differ on whether the reason was religious awe or straightforward superstition about destroying something that beautiful. Some tellings have him baring only her breast. The story is late and probably grew in the telling. What it gets right is what an Athenian court was: a large crowd of ordinary men who could be moved by a stunt. Phryne got rich enough afterward to make the offer that says the most about her. When Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335 BC, she offered to pay for rebuilding the city walls. She had one condition: an inscription saying that Alexander knocked them down and Phryne the courtesan put them back up. Thebes declined. Gérôme painted the scene in 1861 and turned it into the year's scandal. The jurors are packed along the right in red, every face doing a different version of shock. One is on his feet with both hands up. Others hold their palms out flat, as if that would help. Hypereides holds up the blue cloak like a man completing a card trick. Phryne is the only pale upright shape in the picture. She has covered her own face with her arm, so the one person in the room not looking at her is her. Critics accused Gérôme of selling a nude with a classical alibi. His title puts the trial in front of the Areopagus, though the ancient accounts never say which court tried her. The painting is in Hamburg, and the alibi has held up for 165 years.