Essays in Portraiture Defended (6-10)

She made fun of all such people as these, who surrender themselves to flatterers, and she added, too, that many wish to be similarly flattered and cozened in portraits as well as in complimentary speeches. “In fact,” said she, “they delight most of all in those painters who make the prettiest pictures of them. And there are some who even direct the artists to take away a little of the nose, or paint the eyes blacker, or give them any other characteristic that they covet; and then, in their blissful ignorance, they hang wreaths of flowers upon portraits of other people, not in the least like themselves!”

That is about what she had to say; she commended most of the piece, but could not put up with one feature of it, that you compared her to goddesses, to Hera and Aphrodite. ‘Such praise,” she said, “is too high for me; indeed, too high for human kind. For my part I did not want you to compare me even to those great ladies, Penelope and Arete and Theano, let alone the noblest of the goddesses. Besides, I am very superstitious and

In view of this, Lycinus, she said that you must rewrite everything of that sort, or else for her part she calls the goddesses to witness that you wrote it without her consent, and says you know that the book will annoy her if it circulates in the form in which you have now couched it, which is not at all reverential or pious in its allusions to the gods. She thought, too, that it would be considered a sacrilege and a sin on her own part if she should allow herself to be said to resemble Cnidian Aphrodite, and Our Lady in the Gardens. Moreover, she wanted to remind you of the remark that you made about her at the end of the book. You said that she was modest and free from vanity ; and that she did not try to soar higher than a human being should, but made her flight close to the earth. Yet the man who said that sets the woman above the very stars, even to the point of likening her to goddesses!

She did not want you to think her less intelligent than Alexander. In his case, when the masterbuilder undertook to remodel the whole of Athos and shape it into his likeness, so that the entire mountain would become the image of the king, holding a city in either hand, Alexander would not agree to the monstrous proposal. Thinking the project over-bold for him, he stopped the man from modelling colossi on a scale that transcended convincingness, bidding him to let Athos alone and not

So it was with her, said she; while she commended your skill in modelling and the idea of the portraits, she did not recognize the likeness. She was not worthy of such compliments, not by a great deal, nor was any other mere woman. Therefore she absolves you from honouring her thus, and pays her homage to your patterns and models. You may praise her in the ordinary, human way, but do not let the sandal be too large for her foot; “it might hamper me,” she said, “when I walk about in it.”