The mystery underneath a Degas down under

The existence of an earlier portrait beneath Edgar Degass Portrait de femme (Portrait of a Woman, around 1876-80), in the collection of Australias National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, has been known for decades. But a group of scientists at the Australian Synchrotron now have a good guess at who is underneath: Emma Dobigny, one of Degass favourite models, who worked with him from 1869-70.
The team scanned the painting using a rapid, non-invasive, high-resolution X-ray fluorescence (XRF) s