Women in Black
Detail of Christina’s hands. From Holbein’s 1538 portrait.
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Women in Black
Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519 (which means he was born about fifty years after the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
Hans Holbein the Younger (his father was the Elder) lived from 1497/8 - 1543, a few years before Henry the Eighth died in 1547.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was born in 1780 and died in 1867 (the year of Canada’s founding, apart from other things).
Christina of Denmark, Holbein 1538, in the National Gallery, London
Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin, Ingres, 1821. In the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Madame Moitessier, aged about 30, by Ingres, 1851.
Three paintings, three portraits of women dressed in black. The Mona Lisa, Christina of Denmark, and Madame Moitessier. The first by Leonardo, with a date of no later than 1519; the second by Hans Holbein in 1538; the third by Ingres, more than three centuries after the Mona Lisa, in 1851. What do they have in common, what makes them so compelling, and why are we looking at them today? Have a listen. It’s an interesting story….
Notes
MONA LISA:
Sandra Šustić, “Paint handling in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa: guides to a reconstruction,”
https://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/3828#tocto1n1
“ ‘Mona Lisa’ The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” Donald Sassoon (History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-18).
Robert Browning quotation: “Mona Lisa,” Lionel Cust, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 28, No. 151 (Oct., 1915), pp. 29-31 (quotation is on p. 29).
Vasari “never having laid eyes on”, & the quotation of Cassiano del Pozzo: Kenneth Clarke, p. 145: “Mona Lisa,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 115, No. 840 (Mar., 1973), pp. 144-151.
CHRISTINA OF DENMARK:
Susan Foister, Holbein and England (Yale University Press, 2004).
Christina of Denmark, Holbein, 1538. Talk by Dr Susan Foister, National Gallery (UK):
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-christina-of-denmark-duchess-of-milan
Imitation Portrait of Christina of Denmark:
MADAME MOITESSIER, Numbers 1 and 2, and Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin:
Aileen Ribeiro, Ingres In Fashion (Yale University Press, 1999).
Ingres: Moitessier sitting ‘chintz’ portrait (1844-1856): https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-madame-moitessier
Ingres: Moitessier standing ‘black’ portrait (1851): https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.32696.html
Ingres: Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin, in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki File:Ingres_Mademoiselle_Jeanne_Suzanne_Catherine_Gonin.jpg