frick collection whitney museum about dangerous beauty leighton s masterpiece flaming june ignites the frick august 1 2015august 1 2015 editor1 comment leighton s flaming june frick collection june 9 september 6 2015 by jai imbrey phd . frederic leighton 1830 1896 flaming june ca. 1895 . oil on canvas . museo de arte de ponce . the luis a. ferr foundation inc. to sleep perchance to dream a beautiful woman in a flame colored gown slumbers on a marble bench overlooking a radiant sea . she sleeps with the total abandon of the young . her rosy face rests against her arm with her unbound hair swept aside to reveal her white neck . an innocent maid asleep on a warm afternoon perhaps she is a roman bride in a saffron tunic awaiting her groom or an ancient poetess in the thrall of a divine stupor or freed of myth and legend simply a timeless evocation of summertime beauty what draws anyone on a warm afternoon to visit lord leighton s flaming june ca. 1895 in the cool penumbra of the frick like a torch in a shadowy hall the electric orange of her radiant gown delivers a jolt of adrenalin . in this age of provocatively ugly art such as up pierre huyghe s human mask sculpture around the corner on the roof garden of the metropolitan she provides a fresh opportunity to celebrate the unadulterated beauty of the female form . arriving in new york for the first time in 30 years flaming june is a masterpiece of academic draftsmanship heightened by a frisson of forbidden fruit . just below flaming june s surface lies something darker more erotic a different form of dreaming perhaps even a harbinger of death . she is caldron of contradictions . while she appears to belong to a distant dreamland her above life size figure shown close up gives the impression of cascading into our space and beckoning our touch . her gentle repose is negated by the serpentine arrangement of her body folded in on its self so that it appears to spill out over her seat in a fan of silken limbs . all the while her robust form is dematerialized by the shimmering creases of her filmy robe . and what of her innocence the childlike aspect of her slumber conflicts with the sensual transparency of her dress which allows a glimpse of the aureole of her nipple her inner thigh and the fine curve of her bare ankle . the sunset theme and the toxic crimson oleander flowers tumbling over the railing remind us of the potentially deadly nature of her sleep . the victorians were obsessed with youth love and poison think henry wallis death of chatterton 1866 leaving us to wonder if she will she ever awaken but oh the bitter taste her beauty had he sickened at a breath of poison flowers a languid humor stole away the hours . . writes george meredith a poet widely read in leighton s circle about a lover s sleep like death induced by deadly blooms . in keeping with many tombstones of the period christina rosetti also alludes to death as a form of dreaming . song when i am dead my dearest and dreaming through the twilight that doth not rise nor set haply i may remember and haply may forget . christina rossetti 1862 at the same time the touch of scarlet petals harmonizes with the spiral of golds olives and persimmon completing the circular disposition of colors that energize the painting suggesting less death than erotic fantasy . in her time flaming june was revered as the ultimate expression of art for art sake a form of muse for the aesthetic movement inspired by antiquity and medieval lore suggestive of refined pleasure and an escape from the industrial world . yet in the 60s a time of bra burning and andy warhol soup cans this type of maiden was often seen as a saccharine vestige of victorian fantasy and was vastly undervalued by the art market . hence her miraculous discovery in 1963 by luis ferr the founder of puerto rico s museo de arte de ponce at a london dealership selling for a mere 2000 pounds . the painting had recently emerged from behind a false panel over a mantle in a home outside of london . before her mysterious thirty year disappearance in the 30s flaming june had hung in the ashmolean museum in oxford 1915 1928 . an early photograph of leighton s luxurious london studio taken in april 1 1895 shows her in a gold tabernacle frame alongside a painted preparatory study . this neoclassic frame served as a model for today s current replica which is based on rarely preserved original molds . sadly the one jarring note is the current frame s garish gold color finish reminiscent of a las vegas house of ill repute . lord fredrick leighton 1830 1896 painted flaming june just one year before he died capping a long successful career that won him a knighthood . he came from a wealthy family of merchants and studied painting in germany and at the florentine accademia di belle arti . early on he was recognized as a remarkable draftsman specializing in history painting . his handsome house in holland park now the leighton museum is a virtual time machine for the aesthetic age . he furnished his home in jewel tones with arts and crafts furniture of extraordinary quality often inspired by japan and the near east . leighton travelled widely often visiting florence where he drew michelangelo s night which inspired flaming june s unusual pose . indeed every nuance of the sleeping face and fall of drapery reveals leighton s constant attachment to shadow line and texture the artist made a series of sketches both nude and dressed before settling on his scheme . leighton also studied giorgione s sleeping venus to investigate nuances of skin texture and the integration of light and form . yet sleeping june bears the stamp of a specific type of beauty favored by the pre raphaelites . she closely resembles one of the loveliest actresses of his day leighton s friend and occasional model dorothy dean . for some flaming june is kitschy archaism . she was reviled in the new york times june 11 review as painted with academic virtuosity in viscous glazes she seems as if immersed in jell o. yet positioned at the frick between two vertical macneil whistler portraits viewed as avant garde in 1880s flaming june presents her own blend of modernity . the abstraction of her pose and audacity of her color scheme make her a forerunner of fauvism and expressionism . the theme of enchanted drugged or deathlike sleep is also a trope in contemporary literature from haruki murakami s eri in after dark to isabel allende s rosa in house of spirits . and the 2015 sci fi film ex machina looks at sleeping robots kept in special cupboards ready to come alive as beautiful and dangerous servers . flaming june possesses the timeless magnetic beauty of some women whom we can not stop staring at . her sleep allows the gaze to linger without feeling self conscious . so we look on pondering at the mysterious nature of beauty and desire a tightrope between the near the forbidden and inaccessible . leighton never married was rumored to have had affairs with beautiful women and close friendships with men . perhaps flaming june s androgynous beauty for she has the sturdiness of young male athlete aligns with leighton s own ambiguous sexuality his own inner unrest . cherchez la femme july 31 2015july 31 2015 editorleave a comment parmigianino s schiava turca portrait frick collection may 14 july 20 2014 by jai imbrey phd . she beckons from across the room a dimpled lady with a warm smile and a peeking d colletage . her ivory ostrich plumed fan serves more as a beacon to her charms than a shield . her lively slightly protruding hazel eyes convey intelligence and a hint mischief . in sizing up parmigianino s famous portrait known as la schiava turca there there is only one point on which all scholars agree the lady was neither turkish nor a slave as her title would imply . if not an odalisque who then a courtesan perhaps or the artist s mistress aa great lady or an allegory now this luminous portrait rarely shown outside of parma is the subject of small focused exhibition at the frick that seeks to resolve her mysterious identity but has it actually succeeded francesco mazzola called il parmigianino 1503 1540 schiava turca c. 1531 34 oil on panel 26 3 4 x 20 7 8 inches galleria nazionale di parma photo scala art resource ny la schiava turca owes her erroneous appellation to a 1704 medici inventory made roughly180 years after she was painted . the cataloguer probably mistook her headdress for a turkish turban and her coquettish expression as that of a willing seraglio concubine . actually she wears a balzo a form of silk and gold corona made fashionable by none other than the marchesa of mantua isabella d este a leading patron of the arts . from her voluminous azure mantel with its slashed sleeves down to her embroidered cuffs whether harlot or lady of rank our sitter was beyond a doubt a woman of significant means . francesco mazzola 1503 1540 known as parmigianino probably painted la schiava turcasometime during his stay in bologna after fleeing the sack of rome in 1527 . a child prodigy parmigianino had already absorbed while in parma the lessons of his former mentor and associate correggio by his midtwenties . by the time he left rome parmigianino had mastered much of raphael s luminous coloring and skilled drawing techniques . in fact when raphael died suddenly in 1520 parmigianino was regarded in some circles as his heir apparent . indeed la schiava turca borrows freely from raphael s mysterious female portrait types such as la donna velata whose closely cropped pyramid shaped figure virtually spills out of the picture frame . what is fresh about parmigianino s lady is her sheer radiance . lit from behind as well as in front her cheeks glow and even her chest bears a faint flush . light spills over her shoulders down her fluffy fan to her long creamy fingers . like all great portraits she is vividly present . parmigianino no longer used pictorial space anatomy light and shade to convey a natural appearance but rather to create new and daring painterly effects in keeping with the mannerist style of mid sixteenth century . here he astutely mixes realistic details with artistic convention the lady s slight double chin and tilted head are counterbalanced by her manipulated pose is she standing or sitting and exaggerated boneless fingers that suggest her refinement and beauty . so how might this wealthy woman have passed her time for prominent noble women of the period such as vittoria colonna 1490 1547 and marguerite de navarre 1492 1449 sister to the king of france poetry was the ultimate status card that showed knowledge of the ancients and a gift of imagination . in this light frick guest curator aimee ng s new identification of the schiava turca as a prominent poetess makes perfect sense . she notes that smack in the center of the lady s balzo parmigianino has depicted a jewel featuring a stamping pegasus long associated in the renaissance with poetic inspiration . according to ancient myth when the winged horse stomped on a rock an enchanted stream gushed forth . as to the fan featured so prominently it might allude to the italian word for feather piuma also connoting a pen or poet . ms. ng singles out the rich and powerful widow