Frederic Leighton's "Flaming June" (1895) is a vibrant painting that features a young woman sleeping on a marble terrace, dressed in a sheer Grecian gown that fills the canvas with a warm orange hue. Despite being regarded as the artist's masterpiece today, the painting lived in obscurity for many decades until it was rediscovered in England and eventually purchased by the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, where it has enjoyed a renaissance of appreciation. In the lead-up to the painting's upcoming display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we explore four unexpected and intriguing facts about this luminous image of slumber.

Firstly, Leighton was a proponent of the Aesthetic Art movement, a 19th-century style that aimed to create beauty freed from morality and Victorian fussiness. In keeping with these ideals, "Flaming June" does not possess any discernible narrative significance or reference to myth or religion. Rather, the vision of a sleeping woman set in a vaguely archaic past was a common motif in Victorian art. Leighton originally intended the figure from "Flaming June" for another work, "Summer Slumber," and spent some time configuring her figure.

Secondly, during the Victorian era, accounts of real-life medical cases of protracted sleep became quite popular, including the case of Ellen Sadler, who supposedly fell asleep at 11 and did not wake for nine years. These stories spoke to an overarching interest in rest and resistance against consumerism during the rise of the Industrial Era. "Flaming June" embodies a yearning to relax and take pleasure in just being alive, as one Paris Review essay noted.

Thirdly, the woman who inspired "Flaming June" was Dorothy Dene, a friend and frequent model for Leighton who appeared in numerous paintings. Dene changed her name from Ada Pullen and was born to an impoverished family that she supported by working as a model. Over the course of more than 17 years, Dene became Leighton's most frequent model, and the artist encouraged his colleagues to use her as a model as well.

Lastly, Leighton admired Michelangelo's sculpture "Night," which appears on Giuliano Medici's tomb at the San Lorenzo church in Florence. The sculpture's pose of a nude female with a prominently curled knee has been cited as a source of inspiration for "Flaming June." Leighton's preparatory drawings show the artist reconfiguring the model's pose through a variety of positions relating to Michelangelo's sculpture. Interestingly, the presence of oleander growing on the terrace in "Flaming June," a poisonous plant associated with death, subtly belies the painting's vitality. This existential theme may have had personal significance for Leighton, who was nearing the end of his life, and yet his brushwork betrays no sign of deterioration. "Flaming June" was the last full-scale painting he completed before his death in January 1896.