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Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called "Sodom", Allegory of Heavenly Love, around 1503-1504; oil on wood, 96 × 49.4 cm; Siena, Collection Chigi Saracini, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, inv. 12

Halberd, Arms and Armor

Medium: Steel, wood

Gift of William H. Riggs, 1913 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Lucretia

Happy Pride!

Image: Color by Angelica Kauffmann, 1780.

License: Public Domain.

Left: Actress Henriette Roggers on the first September issue of Le théâtre, 1908.

Villanova Digital Library, Villanova University

Right: Natalie Clifford Barney and Henriette Roggers, 1904, ph. Pierre Scenitas, Paris.

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 96-153, Alice Pike Barney Papers

Identifying Henriette Roggers:

The photo on the top right has sometimes been identified as Natalie Barney and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus—or, the woman on the right has simply been "unidentified".

I recently stumbled upon the name Henriette Roggers because she was mentioned in a letter from Renée Vivien to Natalie Clifford Barney in Je suis tienne irrévocablement (ed. Chantal Bigot and Francesco Rapazzini). Curious, I searched for some images of Roggers, who was a French actress involved with Natalie Barney.

At first, I thought: "Wow, she looks like Lucie Delarue-Mardrus!" And this had me wondering...could she be the unidentified woman in the 1904 photo?

Before I examined the Le théâtre magazine cover from 1908 more closely, I noticed that overall, Roggers seemed to have a keen preference for pearls and wore them often in portraits. Well, the woman in the 1904 photo is wearing two strands! Obviously, pearls were generally pretty popular, but it was significant enough to take notice.