पूर्व आणि पश्चिमेतील मध्ययुगीन कालातील स्त्रीयां मध्ये फरक काय? याचे एकाच शब्दात उत्तर द्यायचे असेल तर मी म्हणेन Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (१७५५-१८४२) सारखी स्त्री चित्रकार पूर्वेमध्ये नसणे आणि फ्रान्स मध्ये असणे ....
स्वतः चे पोर्ट्रेट
जोनाथन जोन्स या चित्राबद्दल लिहतात :
"Modelling herself after a portrait by Rubens that is also in
the National Gallery, this artist, whose friendship with Marie Antoinette later
forced her to flee France, gives herself all the conventional attributes of
18th-century beauty – but she’s holding the palette, she’s in control."
पण या मोठ्या कलावंत बाईं जरी फ्रेंच राज्यक्रांतीमुळे देशधडीला लागल्या असल्या तरी त्यांच्याकडे दुसऱ्या एका क्रांतीचे श्रेय जाते असा दावा करण्यात आला आहे.
Kathryn Hughes , review of ‘The Smile Revolution in
Eighteenth Century Paris’ by Colin Jones , 2014 for The Guardian, October 2014:
“ In the autumn of 1787, gallery-going Parisians didn't know
where to look. On the walls of the Louvre hung a self-portrait by the eminent
artist Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. In some ways the painting was deeply
conventional. Mme Vigée Le Brun was dandling her infant daughter on her knee in
a gesture that managed to invoke both the Virgin Mary and the new bourgeois
ideal of "natural" motherhood. The problem was her mouth. It was
smiling. Not just an enigmatic Mona Lisa smirk, but a proper one which showed
her teeth. Was Vigée Le Brun mad, a slut or some kind of wild revolutionary?
The only thing to do was rush past, and pretend you hadn't seen.
In this compelling Cheshire cat of a book, Colin Jones
charts the moment in the mid-18th century when Paris learned to smile. Until
that point, the court, tucked away at Versailles, had insisted that everyone
kept a straight face. This was partly because France's most privileged mouths
had been spoiled by too much sugar, and no one wanted their black stumps
flashed to infinity in the Hall of Mirrors. But it was also because smiling in
general risked making you look either plebeian or insane....”
Self-Portrait with Her Daughter Julie, 1786
Courtesy: Wikipedia
जो अमेरिकेत गेल्यावर माझ्या सारखा भारतीयाला दुकानात , बाहेर 'कारण नसताना' तिऱ्हाईताकडे बघून स्मित करणारी माणसे बघून जो धक्का बसतो त्याची सुरवात कदाचित तेंव्हा झाली...
"... Her father was a painter; she showed much early promise and
made the right connections (her husband being an art dealer); by 23 she had
painted her first picture of Marie Antoinette, for whom she became the
portraitist of choice. She was very accomplished, excellent at flesh and all
the varieties of material that covered it: the muslin and lace, the satins and
silks, the straw hats and the flowers that lodged in them; she was good at and
with children. She was also very professional, knowing how to disguise physical
fault and accentuate any hint of beauty; she knew the most winning relationship
between parted lips and visible teeth. She pleased her sitters; her sitters
pleased her. She was expert at a kind of formal informality...." (italics mine)
Isabella Teotochi Marini, May-June 1792
