Russian pianist and patron, of Polish origin, with French citizenship.

Maria Sofia Olga Zenajda Godebska, known as Misia Sert, was a muse for numerous visual artists for whom she regularly posed. Her pseudonym, Misia, means "teddy bear" in Polish. She was born on March 30, 1872, in St. Petersburg (Russia), and passed away on October 15, 1950, in Paris.

She was the granddaughter of the Belgian cellist Adrien-François Servais. She was the daughter of a Polish sculptor and Sophie Servais; her half-brother was the sculptor Cyprien Godebski. She was educated in Belgium by her grandparents, who had a musical salon in whose soirees she met Franz Liszt.

In 1880, she moved to Paris with her father and siblings. There, she took piano lessons with Gabriel Fauré and would later teach the Beckendorf family. She debuted as a pianist in 1892. Between 1893 and 1904, she was married to Thadée Natanson, co-founder of "La revue blanche," a period during which they became friends with the poet Stéphane Mallarmé.

Misia was an influential figure of the French Belle Époque, being portrayed by important painters such as Toulouse-Lautrec in 1895, Édouard Vuillard in 1897, Pierre Bonnard in 1902, and Auguste Renoir in 1904. Also, Maurice Ravel dedicated the song "Le cygne" (1907) from the cycle "Histoires naturelles" and the symphonic work "La Valse" (1919-1920) to her.

She was married for a second time to the founder of "Le Matin," Alfred Edwards, from 1905 to 1909. After the Paris premiere of the opera "Boris Godunov" by Modest Mussorgsky in 1908, produced by Serge Diaghilev, she became a patron and close friend of the Russian businessman for the rest of her life.

That same year, she met the painter José María Sert, with whom she was married from 1920 to 1927 and traveled around Europe. She met Coco Chanel in 1917, with whom she was also close. Among her composer friends, in addition to Ravel, were Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla, to whom she wrote in the 1930s with the aim of visiting him in Granada. In 1933, she met Marcelle Meyer, a pianist whom she also supported. She spent her final years in Paris, where she passed away at the age of 78.