LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM A woman who posed naked for British artist Lucian Freud revealed Saturday (April 12) she was paid 20 pounds - and the resulting painting is expected to become the most expensive work by a living artist.

Sue Tilley said she had been delighted to be the inspiration for "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" in 1995, which is set to become the most expensive painting by a living artist when it is sold in New York next month.

Art experts expect the painting of a fleshy woman reclining on a sofa to fetch up to 17 million pounds when it goes under the hammer in New York in May.

Tilley, nicknamed Big Sue, joked she was the first nude pin-up to grace the front page of the Financial Times newspaper, which carried a photograph of the painting Saturday.

"I can't quite believe it, to be honest," she told the BBC.

"I only found out on Thursday afternoon. You know, I didn't have any idea it was going to happen, so I'm a bit in shock.

"I was reading on the Internet... all the things about it. And I was just going 'Oh my god', I could hardly believe it was about me.

"Half the time I don't really think it's me. But then this morning I was looking at it again and I was going: 'that's my funny little face!'"

Tilley, who now manages a job centre in London, said she was introduced to Freud by a friend and became his muse, often going for lunch with the artist before posing.

Freud, the 85-year-old grandson of pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin but his family fled Germany as the Nazis rose to power and he became a British citizen.

He has said: "I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."