Shakespeare’s Faces
Everyone knows Shakespeare’s iconic portrait from the First Folio (1623), but I’ve never much liked it. There are others…
Read MoreZabdiel Boylston, in my dreams
No portrait of Zabdiel Boylston survives, but this is how I like to imagine him…
Read MoreLady Mary: Beauty and Brutality
Richardson’s 1726 portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in her Turkish robes hides her smallpox scars but paints in slavery…
Read MoreThe Turkish Bath by Ingres
Ingres’s painting of luxuriant nudity began as an awareness of absence. As a young man, the painter read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s dream of unscarred skin…
Read MoreLady Mary in Pictures
Before her bout with smallpox Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a famously beautiful woman. She was painted many times, before and after…
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About My Blog
Occasional musings about stories, history, art, ideas, and the adventures of a writer's life...
