The best of articles, the best of taste, just awesome. I love everything she posts in there.
Saw that she has a series of post called "Turbans" - with shots of the said accessory through the ages.
How happy was I when on a rainy vacation day in Washington DC, we entered an awesome antique shop in Georgetown , Susquehanna Antique Company and I found this AMAZING miniature!
Shame that the girl selling it did not know much about it other than it was an early 1800's watercolor of a woman with a turban. Managed to bargain a little and took her home with me.
Shame we cannot identify the sitter or have any indication of date, but doing some online research, did find a very similar one :
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| Germaine de Staël |
What the Phrygian cap is to Liberty, the turban is to Germaine de Staël. Staël was a novelist, literary critic and theorist, political rabblerouser, Napoleon nemesis, and salon hostess who was active in the 1790s, 1800s and 1810s in France and in exile in Switzerland (at her famous Château de Coppet, where philosophers and other learned folk gathered around her). All biographers take pain to note that Staël wasn't attractive and that she tended to look as though she dressed herself in the dark, but they are as quick to add that her wit and charm were unparalleled in either sex. It was in her talk and in her comportment that her brilliance was expressed.
that is so lovely! thank you for the post-=-this one is wonderful. pgt
ReplyDeleteby the way- there is a must have bio of her by Francine du Plessix Gray- Madame de Stael-The First Modern Woman. You will love it.
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