@kitty-fisher - Tumblr Blog

Spring by Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1480)

#sandro botticelli #rennaisance art #art

keatonpatti

softlitstudent

National Gallery East Wing

iusedtohaveatemper

The Memoirs of Emma Courtney

I would just like to recommend this book to all of you, as I finished it a couple of days ago, and I am having to study it for an exam, and based on the book itself and what I am reading about the author, Mary Hays, it is really worth the read.

This book was published in 1796, and is largely auto-biographical, containing excerpts from real letters written by Mary Hays to William Godwin (on whom the character Mr Frances is based) and William Frend (on whom the character Augustus Harley is based).

Mary Hays was a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have come to the conclusion that she is more awesome and feminist-like than Wollstonecraft. The novel was criticised for how openly it deals with female passion and desire, and the fact that the narrator, Emma Courtney, quite relentlessly pursues August Harley, which was obviously not seen as remotely respectable at the time. Critics at the time were aware that this was based on Hays’ life, and that she had also apparently been involved with other men, but remained unmarried. I can’t find the quote in the chapter I just read, but the implication was that she was quite forward with men.

Apart from all that she very clearly argues for giving women the same education as men, and also for getting rid of useless societal rules which said that one thing had to be expected of men, while an other had to be expected of women, when the existing differences between them had been fostered by society in the first place. At one point in the novel a character does something which is clearly wrong, but this is out of fear of society’s reaction towards something which was seen as wrong at the time- a pregnancy outside of marriage- and Hays actually comments that this was the kind of misfortune that can come from forcing people to abide by ‘morals’ which don’t necessarily serve any positive purpose. That was the gist of it anyway. I felt like this was all really impressive and brave, coming from someone writing in the 18th Century.

I think I should just hand this post in instead of my exam and be given an A for enthusiasm.

#18th century lit

die-rosastrasse

I don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but am I the only one in love with how the Pre-Raphaelites depict women with strong, even prominent noses? It's so beautiful and mature, and I wish more people especially girls could appreciate abd notice this. I've got kind of a long nose myself and fiance adores it and makes me feel better about it lol, he showed me a Rosetti painting and I adored the shapes of their faces like mine! We need more support of what so many girls are insecure of.

Yes!! Rossetti is my favorite painter and one of the things I love in his works the most is how he paint women’s faces. They all have very strong facial features like noses, chins, eyebrows and cheeks and it makes them look so powerful and proud and so beautiful! It’s actually uplifting for me, as I hate to compare myself to pretty delicate faces because it makes me feel uglier and worse, but then I think: how would Rossetti present my face on his paintings? He would exaggerate the characteristics which are ugly for me and create a strong, beautiful woman on canvas. And it makes me feel more confident. With all my heart I love this unique beauty 🌹

kafkasdiariies

La Strada Monreale, Palermo, Franz Richard Unterberger (Austrian, 1838–1902)

mmmaria59

I'm not still over the fact that Adrienne, Robespierre and Sade lived super close. It's just insane

kitty-fisher

Lived super close? As in proximity? :O

mmmaria59

Yes! If I'm not wrong, I read that Robespierre lived in the Rue Saint Honoré, where the Hôtel de Lafayette is located and I also read somewhere that Sade and him also lived close! (I hope I haven't messed up with the info, tbh)

cimmerianweathers

Madame Elisabeth, Sister of Louis XVI, Playing the Harp (detail), by Charles le Clercq, 1783. Oil on canvas.

stevienick

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders ☆

die-rosastrasse

Jules Joseph Lefebvre

French, 1836 - 1911

flowers in hair

elucubrare

what painter (any time) would you pick to paint you? I’d take Raphael, a good 19th century neoclassical painter, or someone involved with the Fayum portraits.

elucubrare

i love you all and so many of you want to be painted by Sargent, which, like, I get it.

#thomas gainsborough

systlin

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just.

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.

saxifraga-x-urbium

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

assasue

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

anx1ous-op0ssum

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”