To start the year off: P. S. Johnson’s pleasurable tour through 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art, accompanied by J. S. Bach.
To start the year off: P. S. Johnson’s pleasurable tour through 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art, accompanied by J. S. Bach.
The ancient Greeks felt that true beauty belonged to men, as it could be publicly displayed, whereas the loveliness of women be confined to the boudoir. Beauty signified goodness, something like in Rome, where “virtus” is related to virility and vitality, “vis virumque”.
Nonetheless I cannot conceive of anything more lovely and beautiful and gorgeous and desirable than a female paragon. More of the woman’s character is revealed in her appearance than in a man’s. She is more subtle and more changeable : “Tis to their changes/Half their charms we owe” wrote Pope in his 2nd Essay on Man (devoted to women’s nature). Love at first sight, anyone?
In this vein, I hope consistently, let me reveal a heavenly vision of beauty which took place in Toronto. I have seen this but once in my sixty-plus years. I was crossing the street near a cut-rate joint called “Ed’s Warehouse” [no affiliation with Herr Fox] when a medium sized brunette appeared. The traffic stopped, horns began to blow, men hooted with delight and from nearby windows every Dago screamed, “La bella signora!” over and over. Then, I saw a woman with a face so lovely I stopped in my tracks, my breath halted, and awestruck, I froze in place. She was perfect in face and figure and demure in her mien. She crossed the street as would a meteor the sky, and was…gone. For those atheists who read this note, they would have been converted on the spot to some acknowledgement of divine “intervention.” I think Dante must have seen Beatrice in this light. However glib or eloquent I think myself, my thoughts stutter and stop in my attempt to make this event real in any sane reader’s ken. One could compare her to Helen of Troy and that city’s pride in possessing her, indeed, one Trojan proclaims, “Yes, I would die to have a woman like that in our city.” [from the Iliad] Moreover, she had an angelic or beatific aspect. She smiled upon us in a chaste way that said “You may look, and thank you” but when one looked, it was not desire to possess or “know” her, it was thankfulness that one happened to be walking by when she was making passage. Indeed, what magic is it that such women own? Calypso holding Odysseus on her island? Helen before the doomed Trojan yeomanry? Atlanta being chased in a footrace? Certainly not Elizabeth Taylor gleaming for the camera, or Marilyn Monroe standing above that naughty blast of air! I fail in description but, dear reader, were you there with me then, we should both have skipped a beat for that marvelous half minute of privilege! A ray from Heaven that briefly made the Sun a miser and beggar both!
Hi Stephen,
I was feeling kind of annoyed tonight with the Womens portraits in the last 500 years video. I just feel that women should be appreciated not for the color of one’s hair, of the shine of one’s teeth, but for the quality of one’s mind. So, fashion magazine’s bother me, etc etc. I am a museum regular, but I don’t usally see just portraits one after another. This youtube collection was more like flipping through a fashion magazine which I do once in while, but it always makes me feel ill, so I tend not to.
I enjoyed your perspective upon seeing a beauty, and found some clarity in thought on why men like to constantly objectify women.
Kim