Black and grey tattoo of an Art Nouveau style woman within a circular frame, covering the middle of a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Art Nouveau woman in a circle on upper back

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A large black and grey tattoo of a woman in profile with her hair swept up into an ornate style, set within a circular backdrop, covers much of the upper back. Fine linework and soft shading define the hair, flowing drapery and a small floral motif she holds near her chest. The photograph is taken from behind the wearer, who has a bob haircut and a black top slipped off the shoulders, against a plain pale wall.

Back Woman Profile Hair Drapery Flower Circle Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clockmaker's daughter had been told all her life that the moon was a silver coin the sky kept in its pocket, and that a girl who looked at it too long would owe it something. So when the Duchess of Varenne commissioned a portrait in a painted circle, Ysolde Marchetti laughed and said the moon would have to queue behind the sitter's ledger. The Duchess did not laugh. She wanted her face turned in profile, her hair lifted into a crown of coils, and a single sprig of blossom held close to her heart, as though she were guarding a secret she had already spent.

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Ysolde worked through the winter with a fine nib and a lamp that hissed. Every evening the Duchess's maid carried the sketches back to the house on the hill, and every morning they came back with new instructions: softer at the throat, less light on the brow, the drapery thinner where it crossed the arm. Ysolde began to suspect the Duchess was not choosing lines at all but listening for something beneath them. On the last night she asked the maid what the blossom was for. The maid shrugged. It was from a tree that had been cut down the spring the Duchess's husband drowned, she said, and the Duchess had kept one branch in water until it rotted and then kept the petals in a tin.

Ysolde finished the drapery in one long stroke, the way her master had taught her, and left the circle unshaded, a pale moon beside the figure. When the Duchess came to collect the drawing she looked at it for a long time, then tucked it inside her cloak against her chest, just where the flower would sit. "Now the moon can wait," she said, and went out into the snow without paying.