Which 19th-century sculpture by Edgar Degas depicts a young ballet student in a real fabric tutu?

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is Edgar Degas’s sculpture of a young ballet student wearing a real fabric tutu.

Degas modeled the original figure in wax around 1880–1881 and exhibited it at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1881. Unlike conventional idealized sculptures, the work presented a working-class adolescent dancer with naturalistic features, a tied ribbon, human hair, and clothing made from actual materials.

The model was Marie van Goethem, a Belgian-born student at the Paris Opera Ballet. The original wax figure remained in the collection of Degas’s heirs after his death. Bronze casts were produced later, beginning in the 1920s, and are now held by museums around the world. The title is also commonly rendered as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.