7 posts tagged “17th century”
When I was in college, my personal dramas were clumsy and obscure. All they would do was confuse people, so I kept my strident affectations to myself.
I used to call myself Catherine of Braganza.
It wasn't because I was Portuguese.
It wasn't because I was Catholic.
It wasn't because I was married to an adulterer.
It was because I felt unwanted, awkward and ignored. I was pathetic. As she was.
Catherine came to England in 1662 to be married.
She sailed on the deceitful winds of political trafficking; she watched the contracts and alliances that bound her destiny sinking into the ocean that carried her: dim, melting promises.
She was plain, devout, modest - and the English court in the mid-17th century was no stage for such a dainty player. Cromwell was dead, Charles II was king, and the palace of St. James had become a harem of wives, whores and actresses. Dukes were pimps and their duchesses were willing and waiting toys.
Catherine had been raised in a convent. Her life had been quiet, almost servile. Yet one month after she had arrived, Charles' current mistress, Barbara Villiers, gave birth to a son. When she heard the news, the shocked queen was carried away in a swoon, overcome by a nun's condemnation. Yet for all of Catherine's well-bred protestations, it was Barbara, from a loyal but poor family, who lay bleeding in the royal bed.
The new queen was lost in a jungle of gossip and immorality. She was surrounded by languid, dissipated women: a demimonde circled around her, wearing gowns that receded from fragrant bosoms like silken tides, with hooded eyes that glittered with a constellation of sensuality.
The names of Catherine's competitors survive, evocative memories of a time when women decorated the court like cats - glinting, sleek, purring with danger:
Nell Gwyn - an actress at fifteen, and a beloved commedienne. She specialized in 'breeches roles': wearing male costume to show off her pleasing, hidden figure. She became the royal mistress at eighteen. On his deathbed, Charles pleaded, "Let not poor Nelly starve".
Moll Davis (according to Pepy's wife, "the most impertinent slut in the world") - was another royal choice taken from the theater. Moll was a clever singer and dancer; from the stage lit with candles, above the tiny cries of the orange girls, she was a tempting bundle of wit, garters and petticoats.
Louise de Keroualle was a lady-in-waiting to Catherine, with a face that was both innocent and captivating. There seemed to be no sin in her genteel prettiness. But her lips were voluptuous; and her eyes narrowed as if she was appraising the worth of a jewel, a gown, a man.
In total, these ladies - and others - bore the king eleven illegitimate children. Catherine miscarried twice - she was the king's 'barren queen'.
Many people have written about this world; one that teemed with such luscious enjoyment. But when I was in college, I chose to ignore it and spent my time pitying myself as well as pitying the sepia memory of Queen Catherine, one more outsider.
It is a symphony of sickly colors. A random collection of rich, carved things painted with an understanding that is dour and cold. It has the strange, reflective glow of a world beneath the sea - colored with pastes of seaweed, shells and yellow, altered light. It could be the remains of an underwater meal, where Neptune had just risen from the table, blue and sated.
It is this altered light, as controlled and understood as a domestic animal, which has made this painting famous. Light's subtle movements are calculated, traced and pinned to the canvas like butterflies stolen from the air. It travels in thin, hot rivers along the edges of a glass, pooling in the concave base of a chalice, and is still and green like a mossy lake at the bottom of a wine goblet. Reflections of window panes, portals of illumination, float through these murky waters.
One expects such clear and inquisitive lighting to emanate from the sun - the most perverse star of all: bright during the day, covered and silent like a child at night. Instead, it reclines in a globule of tinted oil, poised at the end of a paintbrush - a daytime star ready to fall.
Hidden in this landscape of food, glass and silver are signs of momento mori: reminders of the vanities of life in the midst of this tranquil luxury. These are subtle warnings: the broken timepiece - its winding key dangling helplessly in a black, empty space. A glass has fallen on its side, the broken pieces scattered on the plate where the slice of pie waits to be finished, rendering dangerous a symbol of the lush, satisfied life.
Across this scenery - a map of extravagance and admonition, mountainous with fine linen, mysterious, dark and flourishing - light falls with its myriad definitions. Walls and glasses drip with the ocean's wavering reflections. Silver melts into a luminous shadow. Fabric breathes like a sleeping animal. Darkness becomes a recluse and retreats into its resentment, as light spreads across the inanimate country, particles of the atmosphere touching angles, curves and corners - a life-giving invasion.
Today it is little more than the remains of a decorative pretension, a thin fabric caught on time's sharp edges. The stitching has come undone, exposing the soft underside like a delicate wound. Still, the unknown artist's work retains its allure, even as it continues its charming decline. And the memories still live within the shadow of its whimsical architecture.
Over 300 years ago this dainty shoe, with a shape as unnatural and modish as the most expensive of ladies, was a dainty and expensive treasure. The colors were so light, they dared to evaporate into the living air, and merge into the perfumed, witty atmosphere of 17th century Paris. The slope of leather was decorated with an avalanche of ice blue ruching and lace. The decorations tumbled and grappled until the landscape was littered with their delightful meddling.
But despite all its elegant weightlessness and refined geography, it was condemned to the ground: living its useless and beautiful life on unswept, polished acres.
And for all its potential for mischief, the shoe was only seen rarely: winking saucily from behind oceans of embroidered hems, then receding as the frothy tides returned. Or there could be a thrilling but brief exposure as the lady was being handed down from her carriage. Perhaps they held a message: in the turn of the heel or the feline arch of the toe during an otherwise sedate curtsy.
There was once a hidden language in the small things - a fan, a calling card, a flower, a patch, a shoe; in the excitement of subtle daring. And there was once a time when Beauty was a formidable predator; when it waited patiently and secretly.
The other day, when I reached for my letters, I felt a folded newspaper amongst them. I slowly pulled it away from its sealed brethren, and out of the little brass house marked with my last name.
It revealed itself minutely, a quiet dusk of black, white and gray. There were stars and crosses on its cover - confusing and tantalizing. There were lines that might have formed languages; or possibly they explained the twelve astrological legends. There were curved expanses of white and pink - a mathematical drama of color and pattern. What did it all mean?
Finally, a pair of heavy-lidded eyes, yawning under their awning, ended my speculating. They were a deep, unreachable blue - hypnotic lamps - and stared from a chemical field of white lead and arsenic.
Her shining, choking bodice swept low and a sapphire brooch hung over it like a dark sun.
My lady's hair was frizzed and powdered, and jeweled galaxies wound through the cloudy curls. Her ears, pierced by barbarous means, were hung with twin pearls - reflected moons, chaste and desirable. Her head - separate from an uncomfortable, misunderstood body - reclined on a starched platter of wire and lace.
No one knows for sure who painted this portrait, nor the identity of this pale lady. From the cover of my newspapaer she watched me, trapped in a madness of 17th century ornamentation. I studied the silver and black calligraphy that traveled from shoulder to hem; from a breastplate of iron and bone to a skirt shaped by a hidden, wooden cage.
I assumed she was proud: of her stifled and inanimate beauty, of her artificality, of the wealth that gave her the leisure to be as useful as a doll. I thought she might be sad, and for the same reasons. I was thinking of all those things, until I saw the small coral blossom, insinuating itself into a smile that dimpled the corners of her mouth. It was like a whispered secret, a sly revelation - telling me that I needn't have worried.
And it was only by chance that I found out. I was drifting through the pages of the Los Angeles Times, for reasons too unimportant to describe, when I saw her face - glowing through the dirty ink - and read that she would be taking up residence in Pasadena, at the Norton Simon Museum. She will be accepting visitors from November to February, and I will certainly be one of them, basking in the light that was created nearly 350 years ago.
I saw her half-sister once, long ago. They share fathers: they were painted by the same man, Jan Vermeer - the painter who would capture and hold life as carefully as he would a butterfly. I remember pushing through the crowd so I could look into silent, speaking eyes; so I could melt into the gleam of her pearl earring; so I could feel the cool, cobalt textures of her turban. Her face was simple, like beauty, but it was also as multi-faceted as a diamond. For centuries her admirers had been dazzled by her mystery.
And now another child is coming to visit. I've seen her before, in books, in my thoughts - I'm well acquainted with the ribbons tied into her hair, with her plush jacket. The folds and creases are edged with gold: the alchemist has shared his art with the painter. I've traveled across the plains of that jacket, experiencing the progression from dark to light like the heat of the rising sun against my face.
I know her pearls, her slim arms, the patient and gentle smile. This is no Mona Lisa smile: final, fatal, a dead end. You've received all she is willing to give. This golden girl is just beginning to welcome her guest - her plain face is warming to the friend who has interrupted her letter-writing. You haven't surprised her, but you have been recognized. She greets you with a soft familiarity; she smiles, she pauses and waits for you to take a seat.
Vermeer specialized in capturing these quiet moments, preserving them in light like flies in amber. A girl in a crimson hat suddenly glancing over her shoulder; a woman reading a letter, both hands holding it tightly; a maid pouring milk - the stream pouring from the jug like a skein of white silk...and a girl caught in the middle of her writing: these are acts that have happened hundreds of times in any country, in any century. Silent, exquisite, they are seconds of life that are substantive, yet ethereal: they hold onto their three dimensions until you venture nearer. Then they dissolve into color and light, an emergent world that is on the brink of disappearing. This is a world that balances on an eyelash, which can vanish in a blink of an eye.
So when I do see her, I do intend to stand close, so I can see how time was made to stand still, how light was channeled to define life - how it was so magnificently understood. But I shouldn't want to stand too close, lest her smile waver, her warmth fade and her world dissolve into mindless geometry.
"Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-Doux."
- The Rape Of The Lock
'Billet-Doux' is a phrase born in the squalid masquerade of the 17th century: a time of pretty falsehoods and flattering hypocrisies. Ballrooms reeked. The wealthy were protected and cosseted, yet could die from the complications of a pin prick. Women dressed for society and were abused for domesticity.
Yet from this swirl of powder and sweat came the 'sweet note'. Originally, 'billette' referred to a sealed document; serious, formal, its parchment coils wound tight with a dollop of hot wax and a buried initial. The Latin world 'dulcis' sweetened many languages: Spanish (dulce), Italian (dulce) and Franch (doux). Then - no one knows how: can anyone tell the exact moment of conception? - the two words married into a phrase, to mean a private letter, filled with secret words - perfumed and delectable - the 'billet-doux'.
It was the birth of the love letter.
What a serene and decadent way to enjoy another's whispered written words! Scented and perfect, she is wrapped in robes of embroidered muslin and tinted quilts. Her hair enjoys a final breath before being braided, pulled and piled into the strained style of 1909. The tousled locks need battle only a barrette or two - no proper dam to hold back such a gleaming river.
Her supine figure is round and lovely. A light touch to her arm would leave a shallow dimple. Her back, her shoulders aren't sullied by any allusion to a skeleton, except for the slight well dividing her shoulder blades.
The note in her smooth hand has clearly raised a question. The finger pressed against her lips, red like a blush and not a warlike streak; the smoky eyes raised - focused, yet distant; arched, shadowy brows - all indicate a pretty inquiry.
Was the letter brought in with the flowers? Did a suitor tip her maid a few coins to hide the note amidst the white and colored sprays? Is the gentlemen known to her? Or is she wondering where they met - at a ball (will whe have to consult her dance cards?), riding - he might have been one of the men observing the 'seats' of the ladies as they rode by; did their eyes ever meet...did he tip his hat?
Or is she just wondering: do I, or don't I?
There's no background here, no gradation of color, no obstacles to the handful of objects in the foreground. Just a velvety, warm, black surface extending to embrace the fruits, flowers and porcelain in fluid, graceful shadow. It is simple, yet rich. It doesn't overwhelm, but it has depth and power - a perfect balance. This still life was painted by the 17th century Spanish painter Francisco Zubaran and perhaps only he could have manipulated such a contentious color so effortlessly.
The objects in this still life humble. Lemons, oranges, a flower, a porcelain cup. They could be the favored possessions of any Spanish peasant family. But the simplicity stops there. The spacing of these things are a mathematical reckoning. Each grouping is its own galaxy, with its own axis, its own living geometry, its own starless sky.
There is solitude and solemnity here. Quiet reverberates around each object - a vibrnt atmosphere. The little tray holding the lemons reflects their cadmium image like a still and silver pool. The sea pink was placed on the edge of the saucer with such care, it might have been a religious icon. The leaves crest the group of oranges like a Roman consul's laurel wreath. Motionless, yet stirring with beauty and meaning, these objects are a blaze of silent glory. The composition is an intellectual exercise, and example of stunning precision. The painting's serent asceticism challenges the richness of color and detail - and portrays their tranquil confrontation.
Just as shadow threatens to take over, at the same time it highlights the prey it is about to envelop. This is the essence of chiaroscuro, using the dark to emphasize the light that is in danger of flickering out. But the candle remains lit, and it does not curse this magnificent darkness.
Never was life so still, and never was stillness so alive.
