In reinstalling the piece, she says that she couldn't help seeing the parallels between Scheherazade's plight and Matisse's own desperate situation.

WSJ: Matisse's The Thousand and One Nights in Pittsburgh

Isabel Allende, in The Stories of Eva Luna, creates a modern Scheherazade, who entertains her lover with stories conjured from her imagination.

BBC: Today

The second panel has been interpreted as a precursor of sorts to the artist's stark and curvaceous "Blue Nudes, " cutouts from 1952 and, perhaps, a reference to Scheherazade herself.

WSJ: Matisse's The Thousand and One Nights in Pittsburgh

The stories, narrated by the bride Scheherazade to the Persian king, have resonated in art and literature for centuries, from Edgar Allan Poe to Alfred Tennyson's Recollections of the Arabian Nights.

BBC: Today

One of the most beloved pieces Matisse made during those last few years is an abstract take on "One Thousand and One Nights, " the famed collection of Middle Eastern folk tales relayed by the fictional Scheherazade each evening to avoid death at the hands of a murderous Persian king.

WSJ: Matisse's The Thousand and One Nights in Pittsburgh