Manet's model, Victorine Meurent, had recently posed as the brazen nudes in?Olympia?and?Luncheon on the Grass?(both Musee d'Orsay, Paris). Here, appearing relatively demure, she flaunts an intimate silk dressing gown. Critics eyed the painting as a rejoinder to Courbet's?Woman with a Parrot and as indicative of Manet's current vice of failing to value a head more than a slipper. Recent scholars have interpreted it as an allegory of the five senses: the nosegay (smell), the orange (taste), the parrot-confidant (hearing), and the man's monocle she fingers (sight and touch).