COURTESANS, CLUBS & CORRUPTION | The “Arts” of the French Second Empire with Sylvia Sagona

While "virtuous" women were confined to a drab existence of home and hearth, their outrageous sisters of the night, under the elite patronage of the Gentlemen's Jockey Club, blazed a trail of diamonds and destruction through European aristocracy, influencing politics and art on the way.

SYLVIA SAGONA is a Fellow of the School of Languages at the University of Melbourne specialising in 19^th century French art and society.