Raphael ~ Margherita as La Fornarina obsessed by Raphael, Ingres and Picasso

Not only is Margherita Luti thought to be the sitter for Raphael's La Velata (currently on view here at the Portland Art Museum), history has it that she also is the woman in La Fornarina. No longer as demure, Margherita is mostly naked. She has the same pearl bauble on the silk turban on her head as she does in La Velata. But, the other jewelry is quite telling, a tiny ring on the first knuckle of the most important finger of her left hand and a blue armband that proclaims the artist's name Raphael of Urbino in big gold letters. As Amy said yesterday, "ah love". The up and coming Raphael would have hurt his standing with the monied Rome and Florentine aristocracy if he had married this mere daughter of a baker from Siena. However, that didn't keep him from having her around him almost constantly. She is purportedly not only the object of beauty in La Velata and La Fornarina but also the model he used for many of the women in his other paintings. What have others made of this painting and Raphael's relationship with Margherita?Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1814 decided to let us all know his opinion of Raphael and La Fornarina. That armband with the gravure of Raphael's name meant to Ingres that our man Raphael and Margherita were an item. In his Raphael and La Fornarina, Margherita sits on Raphael's lap. They had been embracing, but now she stares out at us while he looks back at his composition, paintbrush in hand ready to put on the wet red paint at the end of the bristles. Ingres painting helped keep this romance alive another century until Picasso picked up the meme when he did his 347 series. At the age of 87, Picasso did 347 etchings during a six month period. That's an incredible output for anyone let alone someone nearing ninety years of age. And since Picasso had always been known for his obsession with sex it's not surprising then to learn that each and everyone of these etchings is sexual in nature. And 25 of them are of our man Raphael and La Fornarina. Some include noted members of history such as the Pope and Michelangelo. In the one shown below Michelangelo is peeking out from under the bed. For those who want to see more of Picasso's 347 series, click here.
You have to love those shoes. Sex and shoes, the two s's in life.

The Story

Oh how we love the story. The characters are interchangable, one article written about Margherita and Raphael compare them to George Clooney secretly marrying his house keeper. Characters change, but it's the story that matters.
I was listening to a thesis on C.D. about Margaret Atwood's short story, Happy Endings. In it, she takes two people- John and Mary- and hypothesizes six story lines in what is called Meta-literature; a post modern writing style of fiction that brings the reader into the conversation by actually asking you to listen, or telling you what you are thinking.
Atwood takes this couple, John and Mary, and rewrites their storyline six times. Each time she is explaining both the creation of story and the creation of life. Her writing is like thinking in that she is contemplating plot, and how it is written, and how many plotlines there can be to any one story, as if she is wondering about it herself.
In story line A- the one she calls The Happy Ending- the couple falls in love, gets married, have challenging and fulfilling careers, fun vacations, challenging and fulfilling hobbies, lovely children, they grow old and eventually die.
The thesis writer points out that even her language- challenging and fulfilling- are words that parody the things they mean. She follows this story line with five others, the one where John uses Mary for sex, Mary cheats on John for a younger man with a motorcycle, John and Mary have economically different backgrounds and face a Marxist break down...etc. Atwood concludes that all stories are easy to begin, that the true story connoisure is the one who makes the middle the most interesting, and that they all end the same. she writes:
John and Mary Die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.
Raphael and Margherita have the story line we love the best. The one that preserves them forever. He was in the height of his career and she went off to a convent to die of a broken heart. They don't grow old together, they don't have children, and we still don't know if they ever had that rumored clandestine marriage ceremony. He was supposed to be wed to the niece of a Cardinal to increase his stature, but he never did. In the end they die, but in life they loved. Part of that love was what kept them apart- Raphael loved a simple peasant and Margherite loved a star artist, neither would ever have the life of the other even if they took each other for lovers.
We have the story. And everyone knows the best story illustrates itself in language, words make pictures we can see, pictures that breathe. Raphael, possibly more than any other artist the world has ever seen, was able to do that in painting. La Velata breathes, she tells us a story without whispering a single word. And she is here, now, for a little while.

Raphael - La Donna Velata, Margherita Luti

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen this painting is here in Portland. You can pay $5.00 over and above regular museum entrance costs, whatever that is for you, and see this amazing piece of priceless Renaissance art (truth in blogging Mr. Row from the Oregonian, take note). The Portland Art Museum is hosting this masterpiece by Raphael until January 3. At that point you can travel to Reno, Nevada and then after that to Wisconsin to see her. She will leave the United States in June of 2010. The price of the airfare to see this masterpiece escalates substantially after that. Summer fares to Florence, Italy from Portland - $800 at the least, at the back of the plane. Now add in meals and lodging and then the euros begin to slide through your fingers like sand on the beach.

Stand in the southern most gallery of the Portland Art Museum and you will see her breathe. Much as she probably did for Raphael. Stories vary but this one from Wisconsin catches the heat of the moment...

Raphael’s personal life was complex. He never married but was reputed to have had many relationships. In 1514 he became engaged to Maria Bibbiena, the niece of an influential Cardinal and Raphael’s friend. The marriage never took place, and she died in 1520. Raphael lived a grand lifestyle in Rome and attained some status at court. It is believed that he died on his 37th birthday in 1520. He left a significant portion of his estate to Margherita Luti—La Donna Velata—and he was buried in the Pantheon.

Look at her eyes and her mouth, I think of her saying to Raphael as she exhales, you will pay for this later.

Update - 10 November 2009:
Barry Johnson wrote a compelling article on La Donna Velata. I think of it as what should have been written in the Oregonian when this exquisite painting first arrived here in Portland. Click here to read Mr. Johnson's Portland Arts Watch article.

Sue Coe ~ Portraits

Who are these women? They are Texas prisoners who are HIV positive and are HIV peer educators in their prison unit. As part of a project by Dr. Eric Avery, Sue Coe visited the University of Texas Medical Branch in 2006 and during interviews created these portraits as well as others that illustrated parts of their lives that increased the likelihood of their becoming HIV positive. Made with Conte crayon the colors in the portraits are similar to what the women used for make-up. Actual cosmetics were forbidden so these women used the dyes from candies such as M&M's to create the effects of shadow, liner and mascara. Links to read more about this project are here and here.

In 1994, Coe and Avery had worked together on another project. At his request she went to the Infectious Disease Ward at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She sketched patients with AIDS. This was in the height of the AIDS pandemic. All of the patients she sketched died. To view these portraits, visit this link.

Sue Coe ~ Animal Therapists

Continuing with yesterday's theme of a different view of Sue Coe, here is an image of a piece with simple compassion. The bond between animal and human literally jumps off the page.

Sue Coe ~ A Different View

Do a Google search for Sue Coe and you'll find her very political images. She is unrelenting. Yet there are a few images that show a softer Coe, ones that reflect the humanity and humor you'll find if you see her in person. One of those images is from a series that she made during the time she spent with her mother in England during the eleven days prior to her mother's death. Coe and her sister Mandy Coe stayed with their mother helping her to fulfill her desire to die at home.


This and others from that were exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. From their website... "Coe's poignant drawings focus on her mother’s hands and head, perhaps a person’s most expressive features. A social and political activist, Coe’s portrayal of her mother’s suffering relates to her larger body of work in which she often gives voice to the weak and disenfranchised in society. "

Sue Coe ~ Visited Portland in 2007

PORT - Portland art + news + reviews used this image to announce Sue Coe's lecture at PNCA back in 2007. PNCA had mounted an exhibit of her work at its Feldman Gallery and Project Space. This and a number of other pieces in that show dealt with ships of animals that are transported from Australia to the Middle East. They're packed tightly into old freighters without food or water with voyages lasting weeks. Ultimately the ones who survive are slaughtered. Then there are the ones who die when the ship they're on catches fire. The crew abandons the ship, it sinks and the thousands of sheep drown. Another image from that exhibit shows ships passing in the night.

What motivates Sue Coe to create art that is a graphic witness to the treatment of animals, apartheid (she tackled the "suicide" of imprisoned blacks in South Africa), and treatment of prisoners (a series on women in Texas prisons)? It probably comes from her childhood living near bombed out buildings from WW II in England. From a young age she worked in factories and saw her future as limited by both poverty, class and being a woman. She also lived a block away from a slaughterhouse and grew up hearing the screams of the animals that went in alive but came out as meals. She realized once she had gotten herself into art school that she could bear witness to the inequities of life through her work. In 1972, Coe made a decision that would allow her to more readily put her work out to the world. She moved from England with its stricture of class to New York. Immediately hired by the New York Times to create illustrations of the news, she soon found her work in other publications such as the New Yorker and Time magazines. The Los Angeles Times published an interview with her (linked here) where you can read about her working in a Mars candy factory, growing up in England and her mounting activism after entering art college.

Sue Coe's lecture here in Portland ended with her offering the print shown below for sale. As a fund raiser for Farm Sanctuary, she sold the print for twenty dollars cash. That is typical of Coe, raising money for causes that are important to her and providing art to those who want it but might not otherwise be able to afford it.