Ladies. Tall and slander. Delicate, subtle, stylish and concentrated. Their elegance is surprisingly simple, their beauty a bit sad. Or rather melancholic. Melancholic in sweet and charming way. Delicate features- eyes and tall, smooth foreheads- are gothic, mouths and face profiles shaped by the spirit of Renaissance. Their hair can not be seen, covered with bonnets, caps or something what makes me think about medieval hennin but neither so sophisticated nor expensive. That’s why more noble. Long necks, narrow and steep shoulders make them similar to those of Joan Cennani or Simonett Vespucci. Plain robes-cinnabar, carmine-brown, green without ornaments. Although worn with dignity. Simple, natural dignity of Louis Tornabuoni who walks eternity among Santa Maria Novella walls. Big hands with long fingers. Once such hands were called aristocratic. Or maybe it is better to say hands created for holding musical instruments, protecting fragile stem of flower, touching invisible silky fold. Or sometimes as it happens in the easiest, natural way- to hang in midair, to freeze in transparent, honey-blue air for a moment so brief and transitory as the flutter of the butterfly wings, although wise, difficult as eternity. Such moments are created for listening to sweet sounds of lute or the melody of our own thoughts. They are good for conversations with our souls or with angels. Cause angels, stylish, subtle, concentrated, are their most proper companions.

Those Ladies belong to the great line started by Laura and Beatrice. They are younger sisters, friends and cousins of Cecil Gallerani, Vittoria Colonny, Fornarina, Lavinia Vecellio the long line of famous ladies from Milan, Florence, Venice or Antwerp. And also of this unique goddess in green, sculptured by wind robe, who dare to step on the ground to pretend ordinary girl depicted on the wings of one Cracovian lime tree altar. They are in palaces and cathedrals. They occupy the land of stony silence and nervous calmness.
Not long ago, I saw them in the pictures of Magda Snarska.

 

Katarzyna Mlynarczyk