Two Miles High (Page 13)

Two Miles High

Leonardo's 'Saint John the Baptist'

Angel Incarnate

Leonardo's 'Saint John the Baptist'

Leonardo's painting St. John the Baptist, which may have been his last, is now in the Louvre. It is a small painting that has divided art critics. Martin Kemp chose it as the cover image of his biography and he calls it "androgynously seductive," which I

'Letter from an Unknown Woman'

Poison Pen Letters

'Letter from an Unknown Woman'

After the film ends, there will be a duel, and both the main characters will be dead. But we don't see the duel. The film's fatalism reminds me of the enigmatic painting The Duel After the Masquerade by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1857-59), shown above, one of several

Letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

Women in Trousers

Letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

Below is the cover of a book of letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Woolf was 10 years older than Sackville-West. I find this book cover worth posting because the publishers evidently decided that Sackville-West would get front billing on the cover, with the coy hand pointing at Woolf,

'Letters to an Unknown Woman'

Poison Pen Letters

'Letters to an Unknown Woman'

Some writers permit publication of their private letters only after their own death, sensitive perhaps to public scandal. Prosper Mérimée’s “Lettres à une inconnue” was published in 1874, four years after his death. It reveals he had a lifelong correspondence with a much younger woman, who turned out to

Life as Opera - Timeline

Life as Opera - Timeline

* 1813 Richard Wagner born in Leipzig * 1821 Lola Montez born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in Ireland * 1824 La Mogador born as Céleste Vénard in Paris * 1825 Prosper Mérimée’s Clara Gazul published * 1830 Mérimée hears Carmen story * 1833 George Sand/Mérimée fiasco * 1838 Georges Bizet born in Paris * 1842 Rienzi launches

Lola Montez and Carmen in the Family?

Women in Trousers

Lola Montez and Carmen in the Family?

Vita Sackville-West’s grandmother was known as Pepita, a Spanish dancer who took up with Lord Sackville-West, and they had five children together, before Pepita died in 1871. Their youngest child, Victoria, became Vita’s mother. Pepita had appeared on stage as “The Star of Andalusia” and it was good

Lola Montez in 1847

Lola Montez in 1847

There appear to be two versions of this painting around - presumably both by Joseph Stieler and commissioned by King Ludwig I. The one above (which I have cropped) is in the Schönheitengalerie (Gallery of Beauties), a collection of portraits in Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich. The one below, however, apparently

Lola Montez the Pomegranate

Lola Montez the Pomegranate

As one ardent fan wrote, “Lola Montez was an enchantress. There was about her something provoking and voluptuous which drew you. Her skin was white, her wavy hair like tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add to that a dashing figure,

From Russia with Love

London Floods

"I always enjoy London in the rain. Don't see why Russians hate the climate here. Like Russia is any better?" The man turned to the woman next to him. "They were Russian Mafia, you know. I'd rather go with that guy who did

Alice's Mirrors

Lorelei

The famous German legend of the Lorelei (or Lorelay) is really not that interesting. Neither as a sexual fable nor as a tourist destination. It's just a rock (above). What is interesting is why these pilgrimage sites lure us there at all. But, with magical and sacred places,

Angel Incarnate

Lot's Wife

Sodom and Gomorrah - a fable for the ages Apocalyptic stories flourish when times are bad. In the 1490's, following plagues and wars, many believed the end of the world was nigh as the year 1500 approached. Preachers attributed it to society's depravity - sodomy alone

Lucia Brocadelli of Narni

Angel Incarnate

Lucia Brocadelli of Narni

During his lifetime, Savonarola was highly critical of women mystics, suspicious of their "diabolical" illusions. His defenders argued then, as now, that this was done not just to protect himself against his enemies but to protect these mystics as well. Certainly he inspired many women to join religious

Lucian of Samosata

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Lucian of Samosata

If Herman Melville had a patron saint it was this man, who lived from circa 125 AD – 180 AD), a "vile Atheist" whom Melville liked because they both enjoyed satirizing "tall tales." Melville is not given enough credit as a satirist; of course not many got

Places associated with Madame de Maintenon

The Judgment of Paris

Places associated with Madame de Maintenon

Born Françoise d'Aubigné in 1635, she was known after her first marriage as Madame Scarron and later as Madame de Maintenon, a title she earned from Louis XIV. She took the name after the estate she bought in 1674, shown below. It is outside Paris, on the way

Mandala

Mount Meru is the mythic five-peaked mountain at the center of the universe in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions. It is represented here as a mandala (a "circle") and as a yantra (a symbol for meditation). What is interesting about this is that it reverses the traditional Sri

Byron's 'Manfred', John Martin and Romanticism

Splendour in the Grass

Byron's 'Manfred', John Martin and Romanticism

Romanticism in English art began, many argue, with the painting below, where a Byronic hero is dwarfed by an overwhelming landscape. This is Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, an oil painting by John Martin from 1812. The splendid nonsense of the painting's title and the

'Mansfield Park'

'Mansfield Park'

This is actually my favorite Austen novel. In her earlier writing, she continually emphasizes the need for Love, but by Mansfield Park she is more cynical about Love’s chances: “I pay very little regard,” says Mrs. Grant, “to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If

Precious Bodily Fluids

Mantua

If Romeo and Juliet were staged in Mantua... Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, as everybody knows. But what if it were set in Mantua (Mantova)? They are connected already: it is to Mantua that Romeo is banished for killing Tybalt. It turns on the manner of Tybalt'

Harris Bigg-Wither and Manydown

Harris Bigg-Wither and Manydown

Harris Bigg-Wither (21 years old at the time) proposed to Jane (who was almost 27). She accepted and changed her mind by the morning. Did this play a role in her plotting for Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma? Steventon was two and a half miles from the Bigg-Withers&

Marc Chagall's Fiddlers

Letters from Africa

Marc Chagall's Fiddlers

Black and Jewish - note the prayer shawl and the white hand in the painting above. Chagall painted several of these fiddlers and this one is from 1923-24, shortly after Chagall and his wife Bella returned to Paris from Russia. The Guggenheim prefers to call him "The Green Violinist,

'Mardi' as a satire of the Latter Day Saints

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

'Mardi' as a satire of the Latter Day Saints

What to make of Herman Melville's Mardi... As one LDS scholar puts it, "That Melville could have used The Book of Mormon in writing Mardi is apparent." The island of Serenia in the novel could well be Nauvoo, or Joseph Smith’s utopian flights of fancy

Marie de France

The Woman in the Bower

Marie de France

We don't know much about Marie de France but we do have The Lais de Marie de France, 12 Breton lais (poems) comprising wonderful tales of adultery and romantic love, Celtic magic and the supernatural and they are available today translated in elegant prose (I have the translation

Mark Twain and George Washington Cable

Letters from Africa

Mark Twain and George Washington Cable

Twain and Cable became friends on a promotional book tour together in November of 1884 that reached 80 cities by February of 1885 when Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published. Twain had invited Cable, famous for Old Creole Days (1879) and The Grandissimes (1880), to join him and, for obvious