15 posts tagged “18th century”
It was not a true one. The blood was not thick and full of escaping life. The body did not remain on the ground, finite and still. It was not a real death. Yet it was the finest kill I have ever seen.
I saw it in a movie. Now, I don't discuss movies very oftten. But this act of destruction was so unexpected, so grand, so sweeping, so shrouded in unanticipated grace, oh and by the way, so deserving, that I applaud it ever time I see it, which I do often.
The name of the movie is 'The Brotherhood of the Wolf', ('Le Pacte des Loups'). Any attempt to describe the plot would, I fear, induce a chain of seizures in either speaker of listener, so I will refrain. Suffice it to say, it is an irresponsible combination of lust, violence, fear and elegance. It is a horrible, beautiful painting.
Now - this thrilling kill. It came at the end of the film. A woman, a howling gypsy - earthy and snarling with a feral femininity - is finally on the run, after making a complete annoyance of herself for almost two hours. And it looks like she is going to escape. What a bother!
Until she is stopped by another woman. This woman is the most exclusive, most artistic, most dramatic of ladies. She is a mystic. She is dangerous. She is also an employee of a most inspired brothel - structured like a decadent, naughty poem. She knows the landscape of darkness as well as that of light. She is not to be trifled with.
Oh, and did I mention that this all took place during the 18th century? Wow!
Anyway, both women face each other. The first pulls a dagger from her filthy corset and brandishes it, sneering like a wolf. Suddenly she staggers back, with several slim, red stripes running across her throat. The divine whore stands still, and then slowly folds the dark, lace leaves of her fan. Each rib of the fan is a black stiletto knife, delicately tipped with her opponent's blood.
And that, my friends, was the finest kill I have ever seen.
I found her in a darkened hallway of a museum that was new to me. There was no marquee of adoring lights to surround her. Yet she glowed with a froth of color that mocked like the sun frolicking across the ocean's surface, picking out the jeweled lights on Neptune's brow.
There were no benches placed before her; those that would visit her, proclaim their ardor and admiration, would have to stand, as they would before a princess. But her glance, full of shallow youth and pride, would have to insist: You will stay, and you will wait. Her coral smile, a faint dimpling on soft, dangerous country, added: And you will enjoy it.
There was nothing coy about the mischievous creature I found in the shadows. She was lush and bold. Pearls, translucent marbles that rolled from the mouths of oysters, wrapped around her neck and cascaded down her breast. The thick, nacreous ropes were arranged with careful abandon over skin that was white and suffocating with arsenic. Her hair melted into auburn coils, its henna exuberance held back by a pink ribbon which happily admitted its silken defeat.
Liquid colors flowed about her, swift-moving pastel rivers of blue, white and pink. The currents of a spring sky - delicate, willful prisms - rushed through the fabric of her gown and gave it stormy life. Her sapphire plumage was matched only by the parrot balanced on her lithe fingers, cautiously pulling her gown open.
Who was she? I read the portrait's title: 'Young Lady With A Parrot'. Frustrating! She would have to remain a mystery - her dainty secrets locked away. She might have been a lady-in-waiting, a royal daughter or a courtier's sin. All I had was her beguiling light and joyous color.
I am reading a mysterious little book. It is like a river: with many streams and one source. I found it amongst the art books, looking small and out of place next to the other statuesque volumes. I liked the cover: the prim print; the gentle tint of colors: gray, sage and olive, soft as the breath of a forest.
The title was 'Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau And His World'. Now, I don't particularly enjoy Watteau - I always thought his frivolity rather doll-like - but this book attracted me.
I read a few sentences...and the words swam like painted fish through vibrant, singing water. Each chapter held its own letter; each letter its own story and each story a charming path leading to Watteau, his seductive comedies, his fetes gallants.
The book's petite essays sparkled like charms on a bracelet - they convinced me to look once more at its subject's paintings. And they were captivating, yes, but strangely bleak, too - in the way that all beauty is that dares to challenge intolerance and death armed only with her fair virtues. Wattteau himself would be dead four years after he painted 'The Festival Of Love':
Young men and women - porcelain children, as substantial as perfume - lie entwined on an island of light, warmed by a gracious sun. But their giddiness is threatened: encroaching shadows, envious depths, grasp at the shallow playthings. The woman wearing a silver sacque dress that dissolves into a pool of satin and pleats is in danger of being engulfed altogether. Her companion, tousled cape at his side, lies by her patiently, as eager to see her face as we are. Perhaps she is contemplating an answer - or a question - and looking at him would betray everything.
The couples wrestle and flirt; hands are raised and eyes are lowered in mock protestation. Blouses sparkle, embroideries glint, stockings and dainty feet are exposed, wisps of hair lay against flushed cheeks. Airs by Scarlatti and Vivaldi play lightly, like blossoms crumbling in the wind.
Shadowy figures recline in the distance, hiding behind a waterfall of dusk and winsome radiance. A ghostly couple leans against one of the trees, deep in discussion, too emotionally involved to have noticed the passage of decades and to realize that no one can see them anymore.
Free from the decadent control of Versailles, they frolic in a genteel, pastel landscape: selfish and careless. As a statue of Venus and Cupid presides over their entertainments, the ladies and gentlemen enjoy their sentimentality.
But they don't have much time; night is about to fall.
The shop was like a magician's hideaway.
Lace dripped from shelves like melting snow; an aurora borealis had been pulled from the sky and now burned somberly among the satins; velvets curled like sleeping animals. I saw taffetas with tiny roses growing from their borders and black linen sutured with thread the color of a sunset.
But I stopped at the silks. They were like breaths of iridescent air, and seemed to shudder away from my inquisitive fingers. They were printed with filigrees of growing things: damask roses, acorns, and thistles. There were leaves growing like the underwater fans that cooled the gaping, panting fish:
There was an entire mongrel genealogy of wildflowers:
They were all twisted into a Rococo exuberance and colored with nature's gentility. Madcap and subtle, the silken landscapes thrived in my hands.
Suddenly, I felt the dainty textiles move and contract. The textures changed as quickly as clouds confronting the wind: tense and rough, then smooth and conforting. There was a quick sharpness as well. I stared at my hands, and indeed there was an offending spot of blood...now where had I seen that thistle?
There was warmth, and the colors paled: there was cold, and my silks became dark and shaded. I heard water - as thin as ribbon, as faint as the daytime moon - and the pretty fabrics were streaked with damp.
I smelt earth, and chlorophyll; decay and green youth. There was the scent of life: cool Spring, dank Summer, the Autumn's harvest and Winter's spices. Within the threads taken from the spindles of busy worms, I detected the watercolor fragrance of flowers and trees.
I heard an aggravated fluttering, and the painted leaves shivered. There were hoofbeats and I peered into the sharp folds, looking for tears caused by tiny antlers held too proudly. I heard a quiet buzzing, and wings bobbing in the air - and an occasional flower would sway fretfully. Newborn breezes lifted the living fabric out of my stunned grasp.
Then the fabrics were quiet. I carefully gathered the resting silks in my arms and walked outside, unnoticed. I walked until I was out of the city, until the streets I followed became dusty outlines and forests stretched out like welcoming arms. I laid the silks on the grass, and, content that they were safely home, left them there.
She was born Catherine Maria Fisher. But her admirers braided her impudence, audacity and charm together into a nickname that was toasted throughout mid-18th century London. They called her Kitty.
Her eyes were dark spirits; quiet temptations. Her flesh was pale and alluring. Its whiteness was a distant snowfall; only in her face did the frost melt. She was a fever of wit and insolence - working class rudeness tempered by a whimsical heart.
She was sought after by men, and followed by women. When she visited Vauxhall Gardens - a green labyrinth of arbors, walks and subdued waterfalls - hundreds watched: in shock, in wonder, in envy. Her style was copied by every rung of female society, from laundress to society hostess.
Sir Joshua Reynolds made her into Cleopatra, as she might appear in an emperor's dream, dissolving her pearl earring in a goblet of wine.
Nathaniel Hone sketched her in a rush of color, her profile a lazy curve.
He painted her with a kitten at her elbow, fishing in a goldfish bowl, in a fit of pretty symbolism. Kitty's life is in that bowl too: in its reflection is a crowd of people looking through her window.
She was a celebrity without pretense. She was greedy, shameless, immoral and altogether charming. She was a courtesan.
This meant that she was not a ragged bargain walking the streets; nor was she a pampered product sitting at the window of the 'abbeys' in St. James or Covent Garden. As one of the most successful and sought-after ladies of 1760's London, she enjoyed the luxury of choice.
In 1763 she was introduced to Casanova...who exercised his own choice:
"...for, though charming, she could only speak English, and I liked to have all my senses, including that of hearing, gratified."
His decision would not have angered Kitty. It would have appealed to her rollicking humor - foolish man! There would always be someone else to buy her diamonds of the most sparkling water, sequin-frosted dresses and gilded carriages for services rendered.
She 'was mistress of a most uncommon share of spirits'. She enjoyed the favorite sport of her generation: gossip. And more than once her name ran through those useless conversations like a scarf caught in the breeze. She had once eaten a banknote worth fifty pounds between two pieces of buttered bread, and "The other day they ran into each other in the park and Lady Coventry asked Kitty the name of the dressmaker who had made her dress. Kitty Fisher answered she had better ask Lord Coventry as he had given her the dress as a gift."
Kitty knew the value of advertising. In 1759, to better announce her arrival in the capital city, she staged a riding faux pas, affectionately remembered as "The Merry Accident".
Hyde Park was a gala place, attracting society's finest: ladies decorated like baroque meringues and gentlemen with waistcoats embroidered with gardens, oceans and aviaries. It was the fashionable theater to display one's horsemanship; to show off a new carriage: a swift curricle, or a closed phaeton where a white and rose face could peer through a window against the crimson upholstery, like a burning cameo.
During that social hour, Kitty chose her moment and - though an accomplished horsewoman - fell off her horse. As a result, her young and shapely legs were exposed before an admiring and curious audience. A witness observed: "...finding the danger over, she with a prity childishness stopped the torrent of tears and burst into a fit of Laughing." But another declared: "Why, 'tis enough to debauch half the women in London."
Her name was shouted down dank alleyways, and whispered in ballrooms that melted in pastel lights. Songs and poems were written about her. One, which has since found its way into kindergarten classes, begins: "Lucy Locket lost her pocket/Kitty Fisher found it/But ne'er a penny was there in't/Except the binding round it." Riddled with innuendo, it was originally the story of a barmaid who had discarded one of her lovers (her pocket). Kitty then took up with this unwanted and worthless scrap (with ne'er a penny').
But she ended her career with a good deal of pennies. In 1766 she married an M.P., John Norris. She used her fortune to help the local poor, including someone very local indeed: Norris himself.
Kitty enjoyed her respectable haven for only four months. She died, some say from the white lead-based cosmetics she used; from the gangrenous earth beneath the snow. She was buried, on her request, in her wedding dress.
"Kitty, repent, a settlement procure,
Retire, and keep the bailiffs from the door.
Put up with wrinkles, and pray paint no more."
They emerged from a dozen boudoirs; their rooms as sweet as sugar cubes, frosted with lace, dusted with petit point and iced with glass.
They had chosen carefully from tiny pots of scented rouge, arsenic powders and lip paints the colors of summer fruit: peach, plum, nectarine. The collections of chemical persuasions were patient as the undecided fingers hovered above them.
Patch boxes with pastel landscapes and encrusted jewels that startled delicate fingers were opened. The tiny shapes were whimsical communiques: stars to hang on the cheekbones of chaste galaxies; diamonds to draw attention to a curved mouth - an unattainable treasure; tears to convey a message of unrequited passion.
The princesses had taken off their tiaras of twisted gold and placed them on their dressing tables. Their crinoline petticoats bobbed underneath architectural skirts that were garlanded with ribbons, knotted with flowers and stifffened with trellis-works of ruched satin.
And then they left.
The forest met them at once; it would be a long, chilly walk. Branches draped against bare shoulders questioningly. "Stay - a question, please" they requested. Perhaps they wondered at the princesses' agile roots, clad in exotic slippers of silver and sapphire linen, and green silk with heels of crimson enamel.
Darkness fell upon them, but the princesses' joy was like a light and it dazzled the shadows. Their laughter rose into thte twilight and splintered into stars that glowed in the cobalt sky. So, out of gratitude, they received the evening's promise: that every twelve hours it would return to release them from the cares of the day and warm them with dreams, just as their laughter had warmed the night's cold heart.
They are mystic glances, subdued by glass, surrounded by enamel and pearls, garnets and gold, colors from the sky, stones from the earth. They stare boldly from beyond their frames, from beyond the centuries - clutching jealously at their meaning, keeping it hidden beneath the guarded depths of a lover's jewel.
There was a time when they searched crowded, powdered rooms: tiny ships with precious cargo, pinned safely within the gentle harbor of a silken bodice, by the sharp island of a velvet lapel. They held the image of a loved one's eye; the eye that animated a living face the way meaning inspires a word. Free from the danger of recognition they were unblinking testaments that their owner yearned, but had to keep that longing a secret.
When the sun questioned such audacity, the eye would appear to blink under its hot scolding. When it rained, the eye seemed to despair and cried for its wearer's loneliness. When the clouds pulled a shadow across the flippant sky, the darkness made the eye overcast and enigmatic.
The eye can be a narcisisstic pool - a liquid mirror in which a person can see his own heart and desire. The DNA of human emotion swims in its oceanic depths. It reaches into the luminous sky and sees its image in the stars piercing the galaxies like an embroidery spanning infinite acres. But it can also be a communique of shade and color; a confession two hundred years old whose ghostly reflection still reclines in the embrace of loving gems, continuing its lonely search.
It is a harsh plaything. Stiffened with whales' teeth, it is a dainty terror; a canvas structure coated with starch and paste. A width of carved bone, curve-defying, slides beneath the laced front, emphasizing with geometrical ferocity the triangular beauty of a woman's torso.
The woman who felt its embroidered embrace also felt her interior cage compressed, as her organs swam through the living plasma in a panic, trying to avoid the rapier ripostes of her ribs. Laces, plaits of iron, reduce Nature's plan to angles and plains. The immovable cat's cradle creates interior destruction, although - even now - we can't help but admire its delicate route.
A garden sways across the breast; panels are the color of a mermaid's tail. Bows are like transparent roses floating on a jade-colored lake.
The art, the careful beauty, is an apology for the pain.
Earl Carroll was a club owner in the thirties and forties. His theaters were in New York (long gone) and in Los Angeles (in the hands of the City of Los Angeles Historic Preservation Board). Over the entrances of both venues was a proclamation of neon insolence: 'Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.'
This was a time for conspicious clubbing. It was a time to wear your tightest and brightest, to wear flashing smiles and face flashing camera bulbs. Hair was short, shingled and lacquered; and shone with brilliantine.
It was no surprise that Carroll's revues were called 'Vanities'.
But the name of the show wasn't important, because the people came to see the girls. The surreal and statuesque costumes from the previous decade were considered clumsy and prehistoric. Who knows how many pounds of feathers, layers of painted taffeta or yards of sequined silk were packed away into trunks? No matter - people wanted to see bodies. And Carroll found them.
He prided himself on how perfectly matched his girls were. Before she was accepted, a willing girl had to be subjected to over twenty measurements. Notes were also taken on her voice, hair, eyes - the things that defeated the measuring tape. And considered last of all was 'personality'.
Carroll's girls were slim, with a hint of feminine softness, allowing the faintest shadow of a ribcage to show through. These revolutionary silhouettes were unheard of in their mothers' day.
Their mothers allowed whalebones and iron rods to compress their spines into an unnatural s-curve. This painful re-shaping forced the lady to walk bosom-first; presenting it like a calling card. Corsets fitted cuirrass-like - so that, bent and laced, a lady's walk was stiff and hobbled. She could take her seat only after making a half-turn that curled her long skirts around her ankles. Then, when all danger of tangling, tearing and toppling was avoided, she could safely lower herself down. She had successfully presented an ideal of feminity without showing an inch of skin.
And what of their mothers? And the mothers before them? In the early 19th century, women - men as well - padded their clothing to create an illusion of a dimunitive waist.
Earlier, the use of cosmetic endowments was seen as not only immoral but illegal. Just as the waist was being tortured, the use of bum-rolls, bustle frills and hip panniers made the admirer forget its torment and to focus on its exquisite tininess. In 1770 a bill was passed into English law, forbidding any woman "to impose upon, seduce, or betray into Matrimony any of His Majesty's subjects by means of scent, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bostered hips." I say, let the buyer beware.
It is ironic that during these decades when the female body was pressed, packed, bent and twisted in ways that made Nature frown at her fair creation's treatment, society preferred that ths body was fleshy and full. Arms and knees wrapped in cellulite were adorable and 'dimpled'. The figures that 150 years later paraded accross stages in divine unison were considered unfashionable, even unhealthy.
Very ironic. I say, if it is indeed true - that the centuries run in a sort of loop, repeating over and over again, just waiting for us to jump on - when it is time for me to come back again, I would like to do so as a milkmaid from 1785. I would churn away happily, knowing that I lived in a world where roundness was admired, and where a lady would never think of showing off her bone structure.
"O Jesu - Coz - why this fantastic dress?
I fear some Frenzy does your Head possess;
That thus you sweep along a Turkish tail,
And let that Robe o'er Modesty prevail...
Why in this naughty vestment are you seen?
Dress'd up for Love, with such an Air and Mien,
As if you wou'd commence Sultana Queen."
I love this portrait on so many levels. It is all blue and white, like Delft china - or a cloudy nighttime sky. The colors are so delicate that they're in danger of blending together and then vanishing altogether within a monochromatic cloud. They face each other, come close, but then swirl away, like flirtatious dancers.
I love her expression, so wry and thoughtful. What is going on in her head, behind her young and weary eyes? This rose and white figure pensively resting on starry cushions is Mary Gunning, the Countess of Coventry - known throughout England as one of the 'Gunning Beauties'. Something stands before her gaze here: she confronts it, analyzes it...before lanquidly accepting it.
She is about 21 in this paiinting - is she already wondering how long her beauty will last; how long will men's glasses be raised to toast her? Is she wondering about the throbbing in her face about the sores hidden beneath the layers of lead-based makeup? Does she see the ghost of her great-great-great-grandmother Grace O'Malley, a famous pirate of Ireland...does she wish she could have ridden the galloping waves with her? Does she see her Irish childhood? Or her London fame?
I love her costume. The style was known as 'Turkish': a la turque. In the second half of the 18th century it took Europe by sirocco storm. Caftans, sultanes, Circassian robes were worn, chased with oriental embroidery and decorated with furs, tassels and fringe. Ornate belts would catch the wayward robes in a tight clasp and luxuriously baggy trousers gave the lady a masculine, confident air. There were no gardens, stuffed birds orminiature ships invading feminine coiffures: they were replaced by dainty silk turbans, colored ribbons, jewels and feathers. Roccoco stiffness was replaced by the sinuous exoticism of the Far East. Fashionable society was suddenly a whimsical seraglio.
At the height of their powers, Mary Gunning and her sisters were the 'goddesses' of the court of porphyria-addled George III. They were 'the handsomest women alive': Horace Walpole wrote of their 'surpassing loveliness'. People not ashamed to worship a beautiful face followed them, mobbed them, crowded the theaters and great houses, gazed into windows glowing gold with melting candle-light just to glimpse their tapestry robes and their white skin.
When this portrait was painted, Mary had 6 years to live. The use of lead-based paint was a deadly art necessary to create a pale and seamless complexion. Society's queens must appear chaste and untouched, yet the makeup penetrated their skin and destroyed their blood. Perhaps what Mary contemplates here are the wages of beauty, what one must surrender for admiration and the price of a merry life.
