Description of the artwork «Anatomy of the Heart (She had a heart!)»
Simone wrote this work in 1890 during his stay in Rome. The canvas depicts an investigator performing an autopsy on a woman lying on a table, presumably a prostitute, since most of the bodies found in the Tiber River once belonged to prostitutes, and were also associated with the color of reddish hair. A young woman appears to the viewer with long, red, flowing hair, which in painting was traditionally associated with women of slutty life from the Renaissance concubines to the Pre-Raphaelite school of British artists of the nineteenth century, whose influence reached the twentieth century.
According to the letters that the artist sent to his family, he used as a model the body of a young actress who committed suicide due to grief.