Goodbye to the painted ladies

 I made a poor choice for the wall calendar that accompanied me through the last year of my Rome project. I found few of the portraits in the 2019 "Reading Women" calendar  either positive or inspiring. October's was Dirck Hals' Seated Woman with a letter, 1633.

It's Vincent van Gogh, so how can you criticize? But September's L'Arlesienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux, 1888-1889, did not make my heart sing when I looked up from my work.

April's mid-19th century Aristocratic Lady Reading, by an unknown Chinese artist, felt as constrained and awkward as some of my writing.

All through 2019, as I toiled away at my thesis on Rome, I sat under the eyes of a series of somber women. Incautiously, hastily, and so late that my choice had dwindled to almost nothing, I had bought a 2019 calendar called “The Reading Woman,” to fill the wall space above my computer. This is a spot that calls for happy, relaxing pictures – scenes to rest the mind and gladden the eye as a reprieve from the text-jungle of the computer screen.

Instead, there was Dirck Hals’ Seated Woman with a Letter, looking somewhat baleful, I thought. There was Vincent van Gogh’s L’Arlesienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux, her cheek resting on her hand in an attitude if not surly then at least questioning: “Is this all there is?” she seemed to be asking. There was a stiffly positioned Aristocratic Lady Reading, looking over her shoulder in a way guaranteed to cause a crick in the neck.

 Most disturbing of all was Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the Defeated Emperor. It took me some time to notice that the portrait wasn’t just of a serene-looking woman calmly reading a book. At her feet, peeping out from under her robes like a child hiding under the tablecloth, was a bearded man wearing a crown. What could be the meaning of such an odd picture? Busy as I was, I looked it up. Turns out that Catherine wasn’t just holding a book, but also a sword, which “symbolizes her martyrdom and death by decapitation under the pagan emperor Maximinus,” according to the explanation by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which displays the painting. “She stands victoriously over the emperor, secure in her eternal, spiritual life.” For the whole month of February, I kept returning to the oddity of a crowned head peeping out from under a woman’s robes.

At first, it's hard to see, but under the lady's robes are a crowned head and hands; she seems curiously unperturbed. The portrait is Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the Defeated Emperor, c. 1482, attributed to the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy. 

Not all the paintings were discomfiting. Portrait of Georgine Shillard-Smith, by Hugh Henry Breckenridge in about 1909, portrayed someone who might sympathize with a project in severe straits. And we could at least imagine that the woman reading a letter in Daniel Garber’s Morning Light, Interior, was getting pleasant news. But only four of the 12 portraits showed women actually reading -- most had shoved aside their books or papers, which seemed to be either unimportant props or triggers for severe pensiveness. Altogether, a passive, enervating bunch to survey at a time when I needed inspiration.

Hugh Henry Breckenridge's Portrait of Georgine Shillard-Smith, c. 1909, provided a sympathetic face for March.

Is it consternation or pleasure on this woman's face as she reads a letter in Daniel Garber's Morning Light, Interior, 1923? This was the portrait for July.

For 2020, I got to the calendars before the stock had been too badly rifled. But what caught my eye? After two years’ labour on Rome, with the grueling project finally over and put to bed, it was scenes from that familiar city that jumped out at me. This year, every time I look up from my computer, I will be reminded that I am free.

Now that I no longer have to produce a thesis on Rome, I'm happy to look at  pictures of this beautiful city. They will keep me company through 2020.