For Christian Louboutin's latest lookbook, photographer Peter Lippmann used models to essentially recreate iconic works from art history: Whistler's Mother, Francisco de Zurbarán's St. Dorothy, and here, Jean-Marc Nattier's 1738 Portrait of the Marquise D'Antin. And added, you know, really expensive shoes. It's an old trick — and an interesting gloss on the just-as-old "is fashion art?" question. (It's not, and it needn't have to be in order to be compelling or legitimate. "Art" isn't "better" than "fashion.")

Warning: Slideshow images are NSFW, due to artistic boobs and nudes.

But seeing these Louboutin images made me think of fashion's long history of appropriating images from art. Sometimes the results look beautiful, sometimes they look cheesy, and sometimes fashion actually gives as well as takes.