Frances Borzello wrote the Artist’s Model, her first book, in the conviction that the stereotype of the model as female was a development of the last two hundred years. Before that the perfect body was always seen as male, its classical pedigree making it far superior to its lumpy leaking female counterpart. The author went on to write a series of books linking are to social history, among them Civilizing Caliban which documented the use of art in the nineteenth century to civilize the poor, and Seeing Ourselves, the first history of women artists’ self-portraits. She is currently writing a book about the nude in contemporary art.