The childhood of Mariede’Medici
Marie de’Medici was born on her namesake day,
some-where about the second millennium of our era,
somewhere in the land of Italy.1
To spare her daughter
the trouble, her mother died when Marie-dear was
already weaned from breast, but still didn’t know the
rest. Her father married an old paramour, who was
still young, and as customary in such stories, they
lived long and happily after, thrice a day, for thrice the
three years, and died on the same day, because some
people just can’t hold their arsenic.
The sheltered life in her dear parents’ home was
replaced with the life of an orphan in the same house,
but under the custody of an uncle, who immediately
inherited his tasking seat on the Tuscan throne,
which traditionally moved from one sitter to another
through TOXICan reasons (tisk-tisk). In the wake
of his brother’s wake, the uncle married the granddaughter
of Catherine Medici, already being lost
between the branches of the family tree regarding
who was his new wife in relation to the other
granddaughters’ cousin of Catherine, meaning Marie.
The wedding was slow and sad, especially seeing
that the bridegroom had to abandon his proud
status of Cardinal and to become some Great Duke
or another. Then again, he got his rank without even
being a priest, so, basically, no cardi-nal changes took
place in this cardinal’s life.
As for Marie, her childhood ended at the age of 12,
and she could no longer keep living as a girl, who,
judging from the amount of dresses, had no less
than ten seasons a year, and believed that the whole
working week was for the weak. More than that, the
Land of Illusions didn’t offer her citizen-ship, despite
the long time our heroine lived there. Now Ma-rie
had to discover the abhorrent reality around her.
The horror of that strange, real life was that she was
from a very noble bloodline and a very rich family.
Besides, she lived in a castle that could make count
Dracula suck eggs duringhiswholeimmortal live.
The whole thing was very depressing and the dreams
of escaping from this hell went through an obvious
path: if you don’t work-you’re better off married off.
When her older sister Leonora followed the
abovemen-tioned algorithm, Marie was given a
friend with the same name as the departing sister,
perhaps to spare the child the trauma, or just to make
it easier to remember. Nursed on the same property
by the same pair of breasts, this Leonora was also
from a good family, thus had all the bad habits. Since
that time, the sisters by nursing became attached by
the hip, showing everyone that it doesn’t matter what
life sends, it’s how the girl spends.
The maidens made wreaths from the corpses of
flowers, fed the courts parrots and taught them all
kinds of phrases such as:” Possession is nine tenths
of the talking parrot”. At night, both fell asleep to the
sound of fairy tales about the enchanted prince who
kissed the sleeping ugly sheep to have it turn into a
beautiful swan.
When the young beauties grew up, their amusements
grew more interesting, prompting the court teacher
to mark their essays about “how I spent the summer”
not with a “B” or “C” butwith an “R” or even “X”.
Besides, the Gonzo gos-sips about the older sister in
the Gonsag2
hive poured honey into the already sweet
fantasies of the teenagers, making them realize that
a chastity belt doesn’t prevent cheating, but only one
way of it. As for the whole “no can do before you say
I do” business, the girls assumed it was more for the
old dames, who were whining about dining sans the
sixty-nining.
The concerned guardians stopped caring for
Marie’s hap-piness, which implied people who aren’t
properdon’t get to see her properly, and started an
actively advertising her through the high society,
hoping to organize a pre-wedding flash-mob. But
Marie just made a face, which before the birth of
Instagram could only mean a refusal.
She didn’t want the image of the perfect man, who’s
stout and hot, ready always to smooth things and
drinks nothing but water, meaning some laundry
iron. She also didn’t want a romantic, who kneels
and offers her his hand, to spare him-self the need
to resort to his own. As for the old soldier, who knew
not the words of love, she told him off tactlessly, due
to her strategic ways.3
The strategy of life according to Marie came down
to waiting for a prince on white horse, who turned up
to be Henry the 4th, king of France, on his dark steed.
The newly-minted august moved into his palace with
an oversized es-cort and an even more oversized
self-image and ambitions, but without any shame or
manners (basically, bringing only what he needed).
So now what was left of her plan is to do something
of such scale, that her name will forever be smudged
by history.
1 – Marie de’ Medici was born April 26th, 1575, in Firenze.
2 – The Gonsag coat of arms-a yellow and black striped
shield.
3 – This implies the candidates turned down by Marie de’
Medici, while waiting for the offer of the French crown.
Искусствоведение
2016 год № 3 (92) С О В Р ЕМ Е Н НА Я ВСЕМИРНАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА
Mariede’Mediciand Peter Paul Rubens
Once upon a time, when meaningless rulers forced
histo-rians to scribble dull memoirs about their
exalted life, Marie de’Medici ordered Rubens to
create the world’s most expen-sive and large-scaled
comic strip, starring her dearest self. Twenty four
canvases, depicting her life, were meant to be placed
on the empty walls of the newly-built royal habitat.
The Flemish artist of the baroque era sized up the two
long promenades of Luxembourg castle, estimated
that the sixty thousand franks were far below what
he believed to be a suf-ficient fee for his time and
began his smear campaign with five works drawn
in a narrow-screen definition. As if saying, let’s stick
thembetween the windows, so no one will frame him
for being narrow-minded.
Making sketches of crown-bearing ancestors was
any-thing butdifficult, simply by copying their faces
from other painters’ portraits. Meaning, here you go,
face up the faces, and file all complains about Marie
to her manufacturers. Still, the rest of the paintings of
the narrative cycle required a slight demonstration of
creativity, by stuffing them with symbolic details, as
requested by the main heroine and her first advisorthe
soon to be cardinal Richelieu. The treasurer
Maugis also worked his magic into the discussion,
most like-ly about high quality comics with his logo
on them,1
but these words didn’t made it through the
history to Stan Lee. So, the artist got VS and then
XO,2
and got to work on the patron’s face, shrouded
by mythology.
“Marie de’Medici as Minerva”, with angelic
monarch butterflies of both genders (or was it the
monarch with two butterfly-winged angels), the royal
scepter instead of the ex-pected pike and thestatue of
Nike instead of owl, was far from being like the wise
warrior goddess. And that’s despite the thick clue of
“make a knight” puzzle scattered at her feet.
Still, the queen approved the masterpiece, probably
think-ing:
“Who said the perfect womandoesn’t exist? I can
see it by myself… the lying bastards!”
The author indeed was highly complementing
the looks of the half-centennial dame,3
driven by
infamous woman’s log-ic: long hair needs to be cut,
short hair-to add length, curly hair has to see that
straight is great, and those smooth haired women
should just curl up and dye.4
So Marie’s flow-ing mass is even less real than the
rest of the picture. Then again, real-ism wasn’t expected.
Later, three of the pictures at-tracted flames,
so they were hanged around a fireplace.
In the “Destiny of Marie de’Medici”, Marie herself
had no part, visibly or lit-erally, but the three goddesses
of fate were already there, looking as if the national
program for weight loss implied that everyone
else’s loss was their gain. One goddess made the
thread of the future queen’s life, the other measured
it, and the third one… well, there was a little ethic
di-lemma: should the last Moira(the Greek goddesses
of Fate)have more of a chance to prove herself in
the field of scissoring, or should her daddy dearest,
Jupiter (also present in the drawing), keep his offspring
from playing with the sharp object, dangerous
both for her and the yet unborn queen. To resolve
the tension, Peter Paul de-picted something weird,
possibly sharp-ish, but hard to distinguish from the
background.
Immediately after this little lie, a huge “Triumph of
the Truth” is created, where it (meaning the Truth)
is raised by Chronos to Marie, with her grown baby.
The pre-sented Verity, according to the author,
should attest to the absolute peace made between the
mother and her son, who, as opposed to the religious
fear of his creator, wasn’t afraid to send his mother
to… whatever they had back then, instead of nursing
homes.
Therefore, the literally naked Truth is that the parent
and the child were constantly at each others’ throats
and the peace was just make-belief. Maybe that’s why
the naked maiden of Time tries time and time again
to break from the grip of the old and bold grandpatime
(is it me or did Ireally repeat myself here?),
wanting nothing less than to play the part of Oprah
in this family con-flict. Ever since then, despite the
significant drop in fatal outcomes of family conflicts,
people are in no hurry to call up the Truth as their
witness.
Bythe fifth painting, which ended up as a finale
for this royal edition, they ran out of spaces between
windows and the silhouettes above toilet doors
weren’t part of the deal, so the artist had to conform to
the standard format, which was set in the next pieces.
There was only a couple of centuries to go before the
invention of photography, but the author on-ly had
four years, and the dates had begun to press.
1 – «МС»-Maugis Claude, also the logo of«Marvel Comics»,
world’s most popular comic book company.
2 – VS-Valuable suggestions, XO-Exalted orders. Also
means quality of Brandy and Cognac.
3 – Bicentennial Man-by Isaac Asimov.
4 – Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, Peter Paul Rubens, 1622.
To be continued.
Marie de’Medici was born on her namesake day,
some-where about the second millennium of our era,
somewhere in the land of Italy.1
To spare her daughter
the trouble, her mother died when Marie-dear was
already weaned from breast, but still didn’t know the
rest. Her father married an old paramour, who was
still young, and as customary in such stories, they
lived long and happily after, thrice a day, for thrice the
three years, and died on the same day, because some
people just can’t hold their arsenic.
The sheltered life in her dear parents’ home was
replaced with the life of an orphan in the same house,
but under the custody of an uncle, who immediately
inherited his tasking seat on the Tuscan throne,
which traditionally moved from one sitter to another
through TOXICan reasons (tisk-tisk). In the wake
of his brother’s wake, the uncle married the granddaughter
of Catherine Medici, already being lost
between the branches of the family tree regarding
who was his new wife in relation to the other
granddaughters’ cousin of Catherine, meaning Marie.
The wedding was slow and sad, especially seeing
that the bridegroom had to abandon his proud
status of Cardinal and to become some Great Duke
or another. Then again, he got his rank without even
being a priest, so, basically, no cardi-nal changes took
place in this cardinal’s life.
As for Marie, her childhood ended at the age of 12,
and she could no longer keep living as a girl, who,
judging from the amount of dresses, had no less
than ten seasons a year, and believed that the whole
working week was for the weak. More than that, the
Land of Illusions didn’t offer her citizen-ship, despite
the long time our heroine lived there. Now Ma-rie
had to discover the abhorrent reality around her.
The horror of that strange, real life was that she was
from a very noble bloodline and a very rich family.
Besides, she lived in a castle that could make count
Dracula suck eggs duringhiswholeimmortal live.
The whole thing was very depressing and the dreams
of escaping from this hell went through an obvious
path: if you don’t work-you’re better off married off.
When her older sister Leonora followed the
abovemen-tioned algorithm, Marie was given a
friend with the same name as the departing sister,
perhaps to spare the child the trauma, or just to make
it easier to remember. Nursed on the same property
by the same pair of breasts, this Leonora was also
from a good family, thus had all the bad habits. Since
that time, the sisters by nursing became attached by
the hip, showing everyone that it doesn’t matter what
life sends, it’s how the girl spends.
The maidens made wreaths from the corpses of
flowers, fed the courts parrots and taught them all
kinds of phrases such as:” Possession is nine tenths
of the talking parrot”. At night, both fell asleep to the
sound of fairy tales about the enchanted prince who
kissed the sleeping ugly sheep to have it turn into a
beautiful swan.
When the young beauties grew up, their amusements
grew more interesting, prompting the court teacher
to mark their essays about “how I spent the summer”
not with a “B” or “C” butwith an “R” or even “X”.
Besides, the Gonzo gos-sips about the older sister in
the Gonsag2
hive poured honey into the already sweet
fantasies of the teenagers, making them realize that
a chastity belt doesn’t prevent cheating, but only one
way of it. As for the whole “no can do before you say
I do” business, the girls assumed it was more for the
old dames, who were whining about dining sans the
sixty-nining.
The concerned guardians stopped caring for
Marie’s hap-piness, which implied people who aren’t
properdon’t get to see her properly, and started an
actively advertising her through the high society,
hoping to organize a pre-wedding flash-mob. But
Marie just made a face, which before the birth of
Instagram could only mean a refusal.
She didn’t want the image of the perfect man, who’s
stout and hot, ready always to smooth things and
drinks nothing but water, meaning some laundry
iron. She also didn’t want a romantic, who kneels
and offers her his hand, to spare him-self the need
to resort to his own. As for the old soldier, who knew
not the words of love, she told him off tactlessly, due
to her strategic ways.3
The strategy of life according to Marie came down
to waiting for a prince on white horse, who turned up
to be Henry the 4th, king of France, on his dark steed.
The newly-minted august moved into his palace with
an oversized es-cort and an even more oversized
self-image and ambitions, but without any shame or
manners (basically, bringing only what he needed).
So now what was left of her plan is to do something
of such scale, that her name will forever be smudged
by history.
1 – Marie de’ Medici was born April 26th, 1575, in Firenze.
2 – The Gonsag coat of arms-a yellow and black striped
shield.
3 – This implies the candidates turned down by Marie de’
Medici, while waiting for the offer of the French crown.
Искусствоведение
2016 год № 3 (92) С О В Р ЕМ Е Н НА Я ВСЕМИРНАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА
Mariede’Mediciand Peter Paul Rubens
Once upon a time, when meaningless rulers forced
histo-rians to scribble dull memoirs about their
exalted life, Marie de’Medici ordered Rubens to
create the world’s most expen-sive and large-scaled
comic strip, starring her dearest self. Twenty four
canvases, depicting her life, were meant to be placed
on the empty walls of the newly-built royal habitat.
The Flemish artist of the baroque era sized up the two
long promenades of Luxembourg castle, estimated
that the sixty thousand franks were far below what
he believed to be a suf-ficient fee for his time and
began his smear campaign with five works drawn
in a narrow-screen definition. As if saying, let’s stick
thembetween the windows, so no one will frame him
for being narrow-minded.
Making sketches of crown-bearing ancestors was
any-thing butdifficult, simply by copying their faces
from other painters’ portraits. Meaning, here you go,
face up the faces, and file all complains about Marie
to her manufacturers. Still, the rest of the paintings of
the narrative cycle required a slight demonstration of
creativity, by stuffing them with symbolic details, as
requested by the main heroine and her first advisorthe
soon to be cardinal Richelieu. The treasurer
Maugis also worked his magic into the discussion,
most like-ly about high quality comics with his logo
on them,1
but these words didn’t made it through the
history to Stan Lee. So, the artist got VS and then
XO,2
and got to work on the patron’s face, shrouded
by mythology.
“Marie de’Medici as Minerva”, with angelic
monarch butterflies of both genders (or was it the
monarch with two butterfly-winged angels), the royal
scepter instead of the ex-pected pike and thestatue of
Nike instead of owl, was far from being like the wise
warrior goddess. And that’s despite the thick clue of
“make a knight” puzzle scattered at her feet.
Still, the queen approved the masterpiece, probably
think-ing:
“Who said the perfect womandoesn’t exist? I can
see it by myself… the lying bastards!”
The author indeed was highly complementing
the looks of the half-centennial dame,3
driven by
infamous woman’s log-ic: long hair needs to be cut,
short hair-to add length, curly hair has to see that
straight is great, and those smooth haired women
should just curl up and dye.4
So Marie’s flow-ing mass is even less real than the
rest of the picture. Then again, real-ism wasn’t expected.
Later, three of the pictures at-tracted flames,
so they were hanged around a fireplace.
In the “Destiny of Marie de’Medici”, Marie herself
had no part, visibly or lit-erally, but the three goddesses
of fate were already there, looking as if the national
program for weight loss implied that everyone
else’s loss was their gain. One goddess made the
thread of the future queen’s life, the other measured
it, and the third one… well, there was a little ethic
di-lemma: should the last Moira(the Greek goddesses
of Fate)have more of a chance to prove herself in
the field of scissoring, or should her daddy dearest,
Jupiter (also present in the drawing), keep his offspring
from playing with the sharp object, dangerous
both for her and the yet unborn queen. To resolve
the tension, Peter Paul de-picted something weird,
possibly sharp-ish, but hard to distinguish from the
background.
Immediately after this little lie, a huge “Triumph of
the Truth” is created, where it (meaning the Truth)
is raised by Chronos to Marie, with her grown baby.
The pre-sented Verity, according to the author,
should attest to the absolute peace made between the
mother and her son, who, as opposed to the religious
fear of his creator, wasn’t afraid to send his mother
to… whatever they had back then, instead of nursing
homes.
Therefore, the literally naked Truth is that the parent
and the child were constantly at each others’ throats
and the peace was just make-belief. Maybe that’s why
the naked maiden of Time tries time and time again
to break from the grip of the old and bold grandpatime
(is it me or did Ireally repeat myself here?),
wanting nothing less than to play the part of Oprah
in this family con-flict. Ever since then, despite the
significant drop in fatal outcomes of family conflicts,
people are in no hurry to call up the Truth as their
witness.
Bythe fifth painting, which ended up as a finale
for this royal edition, they ran out of spaces between
windows and the silhouettes above toilet doors
weren’t part of the deal, so the artist had to conform to
the standard format, which was set in the next pieces.
There was only a couple of centuries to go before the
invention of photography, but the author on-ly had
four years, and the dates had begun to press.
1 – «МС»-Maugis Claude, also the logo of«Marvel Comics»,
world’s most popular comic book company.
2 – VS-Valuable suggestions, XO-Exalted orders. Also
means quality of Brandy and Cognac.
3 – Bicentennial Man-by Isaac Asimov.
4 – Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, Peter Paul Rubens, 1622.
To be continued.