Jean and Madeleine

I’m working on my knitting app, using a template intended (apparently) for people who collect insects; the word “beetle” keeps popping up on my little screen. Very confusing but interesting. I needed a break, so, like most people, I went looking for neoclassical portraits, and came across Ingres‘ portrait of his first wife, Madeleine. I love his style, glossy and chilly with perfect lines, but I thought that Mme. Ingres herself was beautiful, so I went looking for a portrait of Ingres, who was, it turns out, also easy on the eyes. When you add in the fact that they had a wonderful marriage, I just feel irrationally happy. So here are some pretty people for your viewing pleasure. And, mother of God, that man could paint. (Click on the portraits to enlarge; the colors are incredible, if you enjoy minute variations on brown and black. And I do.)

The price of everything

Knit your own damn sweater.

I don’t usually read long threads of comments, but I followed them all the way down from the fiercely excellent post  “On Devaluating Hand Knitting,” by Karie Westermann.

I’m glad I did, because I found this, unattributed:

“Knitting is like sex; if I like you and you appreciate it, it’s free. Otherwise you couldn’t pay me enough.”

My holiday wish for you, my anonymous internet darling, is a beautiful lover and 10,000 yards of Mongolian cashmere 2-ply. In whatever order you prefer.

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Image: detail from Christ in Limbo by Agnolo Bronzino – public domain

Slow Children

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner’s-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns…
making soft little sounds with their
mouths, ohs
that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers
flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air…

from “Slow Children at Play,” by Cecilia Woloch

Drawings by Rubens

Rubens’ first wife, Isabella Brant

Rubens’ son Nicolaas

the Duke of Buckingham

Ruben’s sister-in-law, Susanna Fourment

either a Spanish princess or Rubens’ daughter Clara, who died at the age of twelve

I had an art post all ready to go for Halloween: a memento mori from the Walters Art Gallery. (Don’t click that if skeletons frighten you.) My daughter thought it was scary and gross, which, really, was the point, but I deleted it.

Anyway, now I’ve brought you some pretty things: drawings by Peter Paul Rubens.

Most people think of Rubens (if they think of him at all) as a splashy, sexy, overwhelming painter. That’s why I find some of his portrait drawings in chalk or charcoal so…moving, I guess, especially the pictures of his family; they’re so delicate and detailed. Reading from right to left (above), we have a drawing of Rubens’ first wife, Isabella Brant; Rubens’ son Nicolaas; the Duke of Buckingham (thrown in to make the gallery layout work, although it is a lovely picture that makes it easy to see why he caused so much trouble); Susanna Fourment, Rubens sister-in-law, and someone who is either a Spanish princess or Rubens’ daughter Clara, who died at the age of twelve. I hope it’s Clara.

Susanna Fourment (later Louden) posed for several paintings by her brother-in-law, including the famous Le Chapeau de Paille. (Do click on that link; she was ravishingly beautiful.)

All the pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, or the-athenaeum.org, and are in the public domain. I’ll be a good girl and sort the specifics out later – I’m tired :-)

Blackness

Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had absolutely wanted, but in a low-cut black velvet dress, which revealed her full shoulders and bosom, as if shaped from old ivory, and her rounded arms with their very small slender hands….Kitty had seen Anna every day, was in love with her, and had imagined her inevitably in lilac. But now, seeing her in black, she felt that she had never understood all her loveliness….She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her full arms with the bracelets on them, enchanting her firm neck with its string of pearls, enchanting her curly hair in disarray, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her small feet and hands, enchanting that beautiful face in its animation; but there was something terrible and cruel in her enchantment.

Lilac? Oh, Kitty, I don’t think so.

From the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Anna Karenina.