When painter Oskar Kokoschka's passionate relationship with Alma Mahler ended, he had an unusual way of dealing with his heartbreak.

He commissioned a life-size doll of her.

Kokoschka and Alma had begun a turbulent affair in 1912. During their relationship, he painted one of his best-known works, The Bride of the Wind (The Tempest), depicting the couple together. Alma appears asleep in his arms while Kokoschka lies awake, surrounded by a swirling, turbulent landscape.

After Alma ended their relationship, Kokoschka remained obsessed with her. In 1918, he hired Munich dollmaker Hermine Moos to create a three-dimensional likeness of his former lover. He sent Moos drawings, measurements and remarkably detailed instructions describing not only how the doll should look, but how its body should feel.

The finished doll arrived in 1919. Covered in swanskin and incorporating horsehair, it wasn't quite the realistic substitute Kokoschka had envisioned.

That didn't stop him from incorporating it into his life.

He dressed the doll in custom-made clothing, posed it around his studio and reportedly took it to cafés and the opera. It also became his model: Kokoschka depicted the doll in numerous drawings and several paintings.

Eventually, he decided he'd had enough.

In the early 1920s, Kokoschka threw a party at his studio, complete with champagne and chamber music, and displayed the doll one final time. By the end of the night, he had decapitated it and smashed a bottle of red wine over its head.

Kokoschka later claimed that the doll had finally cured him of his obsession with Alma.

It may be one of art history's more elaborate ways of getting over an ex.