Friday, June 28, 2019

Meredith’s Perugia #39: Even More Moving Than The Playing Here Is That…

Posted by Our Main Posters



When this amazing Vivaldi was first played… all ten of the players would have been women.

Italy had reputedly the best orchestras and chamber groups in the world at the time, and music lovers would travel from all over Europe to see them.

Well, to hear them, if maybe not to see them, for they would generally be up on a balcony and sometimes hidden by some kind of frieze.

Italian nobles did not want to break up their great family estates, sources of their wealth and powers, and so the firstborn male inherited everything, and all the other kids were established elsewhere.

Many or most of the girls, often well funded, ended up in “secular convents” where they practiced music all day every day of the week.

Composers like Vivaldi, himself a non-inheritor, trained these girls further, bought them the best instruments… and lo and behold.

Posted by Our Main Posters on 06/28/19 at 04:41 PM in

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Meredith’s cup of tea?! She was serious about all the arts; and throughout school and university at Leeds she was an encourager of girls and women to excel. Italians sensed that about her, tributes written had her pretty well sized up.

Here it’s a Moscow group with Elena Zabavskaya & Ekaterina Mochalova on the mandolins. No Russian performance has problems selling out in New York. Whether ballet or opera or instrumentalists, everybody knows they have walked the walk.

A couple of weeks ago I was amid a sea of Russians at City Center theater, where the prodigy Boris Eifman from St Petersburg presents his modern ballet group for several days every year.

Last year I saw the Bolshoi at Lincoln Center with its new The Taming Of The Shrew (its on YouTube but as with all dance: you just have to be there), still the best ballet created in this century (by a Frenchman and the entire company, unique in that respect, to bring them all back from a dark mood after the artistic director was attacked).

Afterward all of the Bolshoi dancers hung out for an hour with some of the audience in the trees outside the stage door, not all of them speaking English but happy to be so totally appreciated. First time I’ve seen that at a stage door. (NY audiences are all a bit nuts.)

Both the Met Museum in NYC and the National Gallery in Washington DC have very large collections of Italian art, oil paintings and sculptures, one cause of the numerous Italians who visit here. Unlike in music, Italian women painters did not rule, but some made it and were pretty good. Check this out.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/oct/05/artemisia-gentileshi-painter-beyond-caravaggio

https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/national-gallery-spends-36m-on-rare-painting-to-boost-womens-art-a3880901.html

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/29/19 at 09:32 AM | #

Artemisia Gentileshi went forgotten for several centuries after her death.

Then in 2002 a large number of her paintings went on show at the Met Museum in NYC and they caused a real jolt.

They were shown with a number by her father, Orazio. He was rather overshadowed, she was that good. It becomes rather obvious if you pull up their paintings side by side.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=artemisia+gentileschi+paintings&form=HDRSC2&first=1&cw=1129&ch=449

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=orazio+gentileschi+paintings&form=HDRSC2&first=1&cw=1129&ch=449

She was in the revolutionary Caravaggio school and knew him well. He was her father’s age.

Almost the only nudes Caravaggio painted were boys. Artemisia made up for that with girls, nude and otherwise, often giving men a hard time.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/30/19 at 12:58 PM | #

Artemisia Gentileshi: That is so interesting Peter. Thank you. I would never have heard of her had it not been for reading about her here.

Posted by pensky on 06/30/19 at 02:59 PM | #

Nice to read you Pensky.

Perhaps we should adopt Artimesia as the TJMK patron saint? Same theme as ours, you caught that, right? Italian justice had a hard time providing justice for a remarkable woman attacked.

So she fought back. He did in fact go away for 8 months, never had the career he might have had (really eclipsed by hers), and that is believed to be his face in her most famous picture, the one below (owww…).

http://truejustice.org/ee/images/perugia/frontpage114/11444.jpg

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/30/19 at 06:14 PM | #

Fuss in the Sun and Daily Mail in the UK over Guede being out now on work release.

But he’s been out before, he’s the only one to show any sorrow to the Kerchers, he’s the only one that did not stalk them, he’s the only one setting himself up for a worthwhile career, he’s the only one with no lust for blood-money. And no Italians think that he or Sollecito wielded the knife that killed Meredith.

Comments posted are not all in tune with the tut-tutting of the Sun and Mail reports. Neither mentioned the bent Fifth Chambers still placed Knox at the scene of the crime, or a few hundred other things.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/19 at 10:09 AM | #

Only two Artemisia paintings have ever sold for more than $1 million.

Those are the one now in the National Gallery and “Self Portrait As Saint Catherine Of Alexandria” both posed by her.

(Not uncommon. “Girl With A Pearl Earring” is pretty obviously Vermeer’s oldest daughter, not some live-in maid/love-interest as in the novel and movie.)

Is Artemisia’s work undervalued?

Well, sometimes billionaires massively overpay for a painting to drive up the value of a segment of the market. Artemisia may be ripe for this.

NYC already has at least one of these world-record paintings (“Woman in Gold” by Klimt) and seems to have just acquired another, possibly for over $300 million:

https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-billionaire-tom-hill-buyer-newly-discovered-caravaggio

Was his money best spent?

Well, Caravaggio’s subject is the same as Artemesia’s in the image right above - and many rate her version BETTER.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/ranked-10-paintings-of-judith-beheading-holofernes

And again.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/10-more-paintings-of-judith-beheading-holofernes

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/19 at 05:53 PM | #

An explanation as to where we are at and when we will be done.

Main posters quite often come forward with surprise posts.

In addition to any of those, there are about 40 posts to come focused on connecting up the dots.

The Wiki is also seeing vital final work.

Then we will be pushing a dossier on paper out the door. Some in main media are already made aware.

Most of those 40 posts will be overviews of the 35 hoaxes you can see listed in our right column.

At present, anyone who clicks on those links has to start reading from the bottom post up, and no “meta analysis” is there.

We might have a post on ECHR just refusing to hear Italy’s well-grounded appeal.

The ECHR has been so tainted by Judge Boninsegna - in effect by the mafias - that it is off on Planet X.

And a couple of tough-to-do posts in our Modena series come next: one is on her entreaties to “see the real me” and one is on her nasty attacks on the media.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/03/19 at 09:18 AM | #

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