Liars need good memories

More vampires who are like, “I don’t know, man, I spent most of that decade in an opium den.”

More vampires who weren’t paying attention because they didn’t think it would be important.

More vampires who don’t know because there was lot of conflicting gossip and they don’t want to point any fingers.

More vampires who are just bad at dates. “Back in 1620, or was it 1645, wait, what year is it now?”

“Oh yeah, the only thing I remember about the American Revolution was this nice candlemaker I met sometime, and she was wearing this really cute red shawl…”

Zwinger Palace, Dresden

All these portraits look slightly similar, and there’s a reason for that: all were made by the same early 18th century artist of which we almost never hear about: Rosalba Carriera.

You may think; “So you mean that there was this woman who was an artist but was neglected by history (or the way history has been written) even though she was awesome, and in this case, totally influential in art all around Europe, and most of us HAVE NEVER HEARD ABOUT HER?!”. Yeah, I mean exactly that. BUT today is the day to learn a little bit about her and take a look at some of her work.

Rosalba Carriera was born in 1673 in Venice in a middle-class family and started helping her mother making and designing lace, but soon she turned to portrait miniatures, and her career as an artist started. Some people consider that she was trained by Giuseppe Diamantini (pure speculation) or by someone else, but the fact is that there is no record of her education and she was most likely self educated (I have to say that if she was a guy, the self-taught part wouldn’t even be questioned. WHY.)

ANYWAY, her miniatures became quite popular, and if you were a wealthy person in the grand tour around Europe, you wanted to have your portrait made by this lady, who was the first artist to paint the miniature portraits on ivory instead of vellum. By 1703-4 she changed the miniatures to pastel, which became a medium appealing to the Rococo style thanks to its softness… and talking about Rococo, Carriera was a VERY influential artist from this movement, because of her style (clearly Rococo) becoming popular and making her travel around Europe and selling pieces to kings, court members and collectors, making the Rococo style being known while she traveled. I know, she was a rockstar.

Both her sisters were her assistant during the time her work was most popular helping Rosalba work on the many portrait jobs she took, but her sister Giovanna kept working with her until her death in 1738, which caused Rosalba to turn into depression. It did only get worse as her vision failed at the end of her life, getting blind before dying in 1757. Awful way to end an artist’s life, if you ask me.

Still, even though she’s not that famous nowadays, she was a VERY successful artist in her time and became a strong influence in other women artists like Catherine Read, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and our beloved Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

This was supposed to be a short post, but no XD Sorry about that.

Images from top:

Self-portrait Holding a Portrait of Her Sister Giovanna, 1715, Uffizi Gallery.

Charles Sackville, 2nd duke of Dorset, 1730.

Horace Walpole.

Portrait of a Man, ca. 1710, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Pisana Mocenigo, née Corner (or Cornaro), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Portrait of Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Holy Roman Empress, 1730, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Louis XV of France as Dauphin, 1720-21, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Portrait of Antoine Watteau, 1721, Museo Civico Luigi Bailo.

Africa, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

John Singleton Copley

The Death of Major Peirson

England/US (1783)

Tate Gallery, Britain

The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781 is a 1783 large oil painting by John Singleton Copley. It depicts the death of Major Francis Peirson at the Battle of Jersey.

The Battle of Jersey was a French attempt to seize the island of Jersey. It was one of the last battles with invading forces from a foreign nation in the British Isles. Also of note was the presence of Indian General Mir Sayyad (Prince Emire), a British General, in command of French troops.

Caroline Pennock has compiled a thread on Native/Indigenous Americans in Tudor England here. I’m delighted to say I’m learning quite a lot from them! A few highlights:

The Iceberg and the Cathedral: Encounter, Entanglement, and Isuma in Inuit London

St Olave Hart Street, where an anonymous Inuit man, captured by privateer/explorer Martin Frobisher in 1576, was buried

Ornate flintlock pistol crafted by Diego Zanoni of Brescia, Italy, mid 18th century.

BLACK AND BRITISH: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY

Research Guide

Video Clips

Interactive Map

More:

Black Cultural Archives 

Northamptonshire Black History Association

Nottingham Black Archive

Hull Black History Partnership

One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation. 

The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.

And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.

In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives. 

How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.  

There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.

Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that it worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.

What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.

The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society. 

As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:

To teach both sexes due equality

And as they stand bound, to love mutually.

The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.