It was the little blue dress that Bill Clinton had hoped to forget.
Worn by Monica Lewinsky during one of their White House trysts, the stained garment became a symbol of the former US president's reckless infidelity.
But now a painter has revealed that he worked a sly reference to the dress into Clinton's official portrait, which is hanging in Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
Nelson Shanks's portrait shows the 42nd president leaning against a mantelpiece with an unexplained shadow looming nearby.
Shanks told the Philadelphia Daily News that the shadow was cast by a mannequin wearing a blue dress that he had set up in his studio while working on the portrait.
"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," he said.
