Bill Clinton's portrait has a secret Monica Lewinsky reference

 By 
Brian Ries
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The artist who painted the Bill Clinton portrait that hangs in The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery added an easter egg that contains a veiled reference to the president's infamous affair with Monica Lewinsky.

If you look closely at the portrait, you'll notice a dark shadow that appears on the mantel in the Oval Office just behind Bill Clinton's right shoulder.

Can you see it?

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Look closer...there:

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

That shadow, Philadelphia portrait artist Nelson Shanks says, is cast from a blue dress -- similar to the blue Gap dress worn by Lewinsky while she had oral sex with President Clinton and contained a semen stain.

Clinton, the FBI later concluded, was its source.

"I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting," Shanks says, describing the shadow.

"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," the artist. "It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him."

The Clintons, according to the artist, want it removed from the gallery -- though a spokeswoman there denied that rumor to the Philadelphia Daily News.

Lewinsky, for her part, spoke about the dress to ABC's Barbara Walters in March, 1999, telling her that she thought the whole thing was "funny" until she grew "terrified" about being hit with obstruction of justice charges if she washed it.

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