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Probably there won’t be many people happier to see 2009 go than myself. January 2 marks the fourth month since Henry’s death. Just after he died I wanted to believe that I could manage entirely on my own, come to terms with what had happened without assistance from anybody, which turned out to be palpably untrue. Some of you know how un-pretty it has been, for others of you it’s when I am mostly on my best, or at least better, behaviour. All the same, everybody who did something of the below made some contribution to what I hesitate to call my well-adjustment (am mostly interested in a kind of permanent mal-bien-adjustment anyway), but what’s more important to me, reclaiming more than just the essence of who I was before September 2, 2009. Don’t want to get overly Academy Awardy (and some of you will remember I like the Davide di Donatello better anyhow), so won’t name names, but you should all know who you are: So thank you to those on here who:
Gave me their t-shirt to wipe my bleeding nose so that I didn’t leave a really gory trail down Broadway. Just a marginally gory one. Made me feel better for knowing that we can still become OLSPs. ALWAYS make me laugh. Helped me on the road to claiming Prescott St as my own, starting with throwing out around 1500 architectural drawings and a load of wood, and then putting together Henry’s funeral volume. Wrote, and spoke, with incredibly moving stories of Henry’s role in their life, for travelling 1000s of miles to commemorate him. For tripping with us, round and about, Kinder Zoo 2000 included, and that one can say “screen-like diaphanousness” perfectly seriously, and know that nothing beats the satisfaction of a “good” rectangular room. Or an ambiguous transition. Know that when all else fails, you can always take a taxi. Held an exceedingly awesome barbecue. Took me to eat when my world of food began and ended with peanut butter. Were with me, and got through me a funeral and a memorial. Gave me a far better fortieth than I ever expected. Helped me come back to reclaim Italy. Was so very, very nice to me on those flights from Boston to Heathrow. Took calls at unreasonable hours from an unreasonable individual. Told me about the paradox of falling in order to return upwards. Kept on thinking about my (our) book when I couldn’t. Experienced the transcendence of a simmerin’ MJ. Know that sometimes, what we do is secret. Are prepared to meet me in Vegas. Became family. Stayed family. Made me feel that Cambridge is my neighbo(u)rhood. Made me think about someone other than myself, as naturally disinclined to do so as I am, and that it’s not always about me (though that’s still a hard one…). Helped me recover my memory. Reminded me that if there’s no playfulness, there’s no point. Gave me ideas for new preoccupations and resolutions, like collecting taxidermy, and practising my own version of extreme rendition. And the Coachella-via-Prada scheme. Helped me understand parts of Henry’s story that I could not possibly have on my own. Told me I should cut my hair. Made me remember that I really do quite like teaching the history of art. Did not let me get away with not grieving my dead husband.
So, on that cheerful note, lots of love, and Happy New Year to you all.
Caroline
If anyone’s ever read the acknowledgements in my books, they’ll know that my husband, Henry Dietrich Fernandez, was a big influence on my work. He always had tons of ideas, which I would shamelessly rip off from him, and he never minded. Henry is no longer with us.
The funny thing is, I became an expert on widows in early modern Europe in my twenties. Felice della Rovere, protagnist of the Pope’s Daughter, lived much of her life as a widow. And what I learned from them, a lesson Henry would have endorsed, is that you get to work. So this little post is to say thank you to Felice and all the others, for their part in helping me live my new life.
Has been good year so far. Returning to teaching proved unexpectedly pleasurable. Isabella is now in paperback on both sides of the Atlantic, and in her Murder of a Medici Princess form won a prize: The Marraro Prize from the “Society for Italian Historical Studies” for best book of 2008. A brief trip to the archives of Turin last week was quite fantastic. Super helpful people who are very obligingly copying stacks of teenage Queen of Spain, Marie Louise’s correspondence to her family, as I couldn’t stay there very long. Although I would have liked to so very much. Turin is totally lovely, calm and stately, a Piedmontese feel that is all its own, astonishing palazzi (such as Guarino Guarini’s Carignano, with window frames devised to look like Iroquois headdresses) , amazing museums (like the Museo del Egizio, and Museo di Pietro Micca, which takes you underground to the 1706 Siege of Turin) and seriously good food. And the Archivio di Stato is very special, purpose designed by Juvarra, would have been more than happy to linger.
English Christmas: Spent partly in the manuscript collection at the Bodeleian (with the letters of ambassador in Spain to the exiled Stuarts) in the irresistibly named “Duke Humfrey’s Library.” Very magical (no wonder it’s used as the Hogwarts Library for the Harry Potter films) to work in (love the fact you swear an oath before they give you library ticket that you won’t light any kindling). London has some good shows. Byzantium at the Royal Academy is fabulous; I’ve never been enthralled by the way the RA does displays normally, but this time they’ve given it this very atmospheric low level light and these vast chandeliers that look like they come straight from Hagia Sophia, without being kitschy. It felt Byzantine. By contrast, Babylon show at British Museum was awkward and crowded, and proof that exhibition design really does count, because it was, ostensibly, the same travelling exhibition I saw at Pergamon in Berlin, where display was much more visceral and dazzling. And Babylonian. “Renaissance Faces” at the National Gallery triumphed over an exhibition space I normally hate, the Sainsbury Wing Basement. Its themes seemed a bit arbitrary to me (other than it being pictures of Renaissance people), but how could one not get excited by three Jan Van Eyck portraits lined up in a row? And there is a newly discovered Pontormo portrait of a dark man, I can’t stop looking at a reproduction of it I have pinned up in the little office I (arguably, pretentiously I admit) call the studiolo.
New Year: Tripped down to New York for the Metropolitan’s “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy.” I’ve got some ideological quibbles about certain aspects of this, mostly to do with definitions of love versus sex, and women as subject/object (about which I probably do fixate more than most) but no complaints about beauty of artifacts on display. Most exciting for me is that the show has objects associated with all three of the subjects of my books; there is Lavinia Fontana’s “Portrait of a Baby,” a maiolica plate with Felice della Rovere’s personal coat of arms, that sadly I did not know about when I wrote the book (there’s another piece at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge about which I was ignorant too). Then there’s a glass plate with the Medici and Orsini coat of arms that I think was probably commissioned for Isabella de’ Medici and Paolo Giordano Orsini’s wedding. The Met’s caption proposes Isabella as the patron, but the Orsini rose is far more dominant than the Medici palle and those who’ve read my Isabella book might agree that it’s unlikely Isabella would commission anything in which an Orsini emblem was more prominent than a Medici…And the Met’s own Babylon show is really good, it’s got these great glass ingots in it from a shipwreck that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck…
Doing a Murder of a Medici Princess talk at the Boston Public Library at 2 pm on Thursday, January 29.
3 Queens research continues…
Returning to some teaching after a 3 year hiatus…
Even if where I live it’s Fall….Anyhow “autumn” kicked off with a trip to Berlin (least said the better about getting there), for a conference “The Artist and His Signature,” (whre I learned a lot about using “faciebat” over “fecit”) except I talked about the artist and “her’s.” It’s always meaningful going back to Lavinia Fontana, and find there are new things to think about and say, and in the past I hadn’t thought as deeply as I could have done about what the implications of the signature of a female painter really mean. As I said, it’s the only way a viewer can know the work was by a woman…
Berlin’s exciting, reminds me of Rome in terms of its resilience and ability to evolve. Museeinsel is probably the prettiest museum complex in the world. Chipperfield addition looks promising, hope it delivers, am not crazy about Big Top effect of Potsdamer Platz, and the Kulturforum, where I caught the same Sebastiano show I saw (and prefered) in Rome this summer, is a bit clinical.
Back home, working on Princesse des Ursins and gang. If previous work had political intrique, nothing on shenanigans of this crowd, and it’s even more resonant against the background of the circus of an election…
June. Rome, spent time at the Vatican archive, poking through the papal nunzio’s dispatches from Madrid, plucked out some nice material for the book. Always a strange experience having coffee breaks in the café installed in the grotto of the Belvedere gardens. Saw good exhibitions on Sebastiano del Piombo and Quattrocento Rome, Agostino Tassi at Palazzo Venezia, infamous for “relationship” with Artemisia Gentileschi. Correggio show at the Villa Borghese had his Jupiter and Io, a painting I’d always yearned to see. Smaller than I expected, but still a thrill.
July/August. Scandanavia. First time there. Denmark has some jewels of seventeenth-century royal castles, impossible not to be charmed by Rosenbergslot and Frederiksborg. Uncovered some very hard- to-find early 19th century books with fantastic stuff for new book at Copenhagen’s Royal Library, one of the most hassle free libraries I’ve ever spent time, although the “Black Diamond” wing is a bit too zoomy for nerdy scholars, in my view, and I wish they didn’t blast whale music every day at 1 pm (still, beats the bouts of impotent rage I’ve endured at British Library). In Stockholm’s National Museum, was disappointed they don’t display Lavinia Fontana’s Holy Family with Sleeping Christ Child, quite a big focus of my life with Lavinia, but delighted to see the Bronzino (school) portrait of Isabella de’ Medici as a girl, which also features prominently in Murder of a Medici Princess/Isabella de’ Medici…
“Isabella de’ Medici” will be the the Book of the Week on BBC’s Radio 4 from April 21-25. A podcast will be available on the Radio 4 page.
Research is underway on my new book, provisionally entitled The Three Queens of Spain. It ties in with my previous two in that like them, it features an Orsini wife (in this case the French Marieanne de la Trémoille, known as the Princesse des Ursins). However, this story takes me out of Renaissance Italy to early 18th century Spain, where the women involved fight for dominance and control in a war-torn country.
Thursday, May 8, 7.30 pm
Reading at Quail Ridge Books, 3522 Wade Ave, Raleigh, NC, to support "Murder of a Medici Princess"
Thursday, May 1, 7pm
Reading at 57th St Books, 1301 E. 57th St, Chicago, IL, to support "Murder of a Medici Princess"
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