Bill Clinton's portrait includes a secret Monica Lewinsky reference, painter claims

(Image credit: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer/S.Jones)

published 2 March 2015

Monica Lewinsky's shadow will forever haunt Bill Clinton. Or at least, it will forever loom over his likeness in the National Portrait Gallery.

Nelson Shanks, the artist who painted the portrait, told the Philadelphia Daily News he snuck a shadow into the picture to both literally and metaphorically depict the Lewinsky scandal.

If you look at the left-hand side of it there's a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him. [Philadelphia Daily News]

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Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.