Research Catalog

Title

Painted ladies; models of the great artists.

Author

Segal, Muriel.

Publication

New York, Stein and Day [1972]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

184 pages illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

With few exceptions, the women who have inspired great sculptors and painters have been largely ignored. Muriel Segal remedies the situation in this irreverent look at the model through history. All the lovely and enigmatic ladies are here, from Phryne, the model for the greatest classical Venus ever sculpted, who did a beach-strip more than 2000 years ago to win Praxiteles' eye, to Kiki, the "Venus of Montparnasse," and sweetheart of the Latin Quarter's unheated studios in the 1920s. Between the fifth century B.C. and the twentieth century A.D., the lives of the models were no less fascinating: Mona Lisa Gioconda, whose tentative smile may have had something to do with enduring Leonardo's homemade dentures; Botticelli's golden-haired Simonetta, who died (she was too good to live) when she was twenty; Lady Hamilton, who posed for "Attitudes" at stag parties; Rembrandt's wife Hendrickje, who saved her husband's paintings from creditors by a tax dodge; and many others.--From publisher description.

Subject

• Artists' models

Contents

Phryne: too sexy for a deity -- La Belle Agnes: the model who shocked the English troops -- Lucrezia and Spinetta Buti: the runaway nuns who became best-selling virgins -- La Belle Simonetta: Botticelli's golden dream girl -- La Fornarina: Raphael's favourite model who preferred black cats to babies -- Lucrezia del Fede: the Madonna suspected of murder -- Mona Lisa: her trials and tribuations in Leonardo's studio -- Violante, Cecilia, Laura and the Duchess of Urbino: the girls with titian-red hair -- Caterina: the French gamine who sued Cellini for assault -- Helena Fourment: fat and happy and hoisted on high -- Hendrickje Stoffels: the servant who was model, mistress and manageress to Rembrandt -- Anon.: 'When posing nude was a criminal offense' -- La Morphise: the provocative nymph on the French King's ceiling -- Amy Lyon: Alias Vestrina, alias Emma Hart, alias Lady Hamilton -- Cayetana: the gypsy duchess Goya painted and hated -- Liz Siddall, Anne Miller: models and painters, dreams and drugs -- Victorine Meurend: who didn't dress for the picnic -- Camille: the model who married and 'Eye' -- Rose, Camille and Claire: fifty years of Rodin -- Suzanne Valadon: the laundress who became a great artist -- Mrs. Kathleen Newton: the gay socialite who never went out -- Lily Langtry and Olga Alberta: models who caught the Prince's eye -- Marthe de Moligny: the model who stayed in her bath -- Fernande Olivier: Picasso's first love -- Nefertiti: pin-up of the graven tombs -- Kiki: the Venus of Montparnasse.

ISBN

• 081281472X
• 9780812814729

LCCN

73187312

OCLC

• ocm00489379
• 489379
• SCSB-110842

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library