1594 was a tumultuous year for Jean Fantone
He was twenty-three and heartbroken. Marie, one of his models, had jilted him for a castrati and no longer deigned to be his subject. Jean was despondent and mortified since she had not only been his lover for two years but also his muse. They had most recently made love in the apse of Sainte Maie en le Foret and that experience was fresh in his mind when Maria walked out of his life.
Jean was incredulous and disconsolate and in his desperation began a new painting to help move him from the depths of his depression. Ultimately titled Gabirelle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs its subject was the newly pregnant mistress of King Henry the Fourth of France.
The painting, which now hangs in the Louvre, is curious not only because of its subject matter but also because of its representation. Gabrielle is presented nude in a bath; her sister sits nude beside her and pinches her right nipple with her left hand. The theme of left-handedness is echoed in the seamstress in the background sewing with her left hand, in Gabrielle holding Henry's coronation ring in her left hand, and in the painting hanging in the background in which there is the body of a naked person holding a red cloth over his penis with his left hand.
In Italian painting of the same era it was not unusual to have the theme of Sinistra: It was felt that left handed themed paintings suggested something nefarious, evil or just plain sinister. Jean Fantone was sending a not so subtle message to future art aficionados about the state of his mind after his loss of Marie's attentions.
Four centuries later Ralph stood in front of Jean Fantome's painting with a quizzical look on his face. He was listing quietly to his IPod shuffle, specifically a play list he had put together of music by French members of the Rosicrucian Order: Debussy, Satie, and Edith Piaf. He loved them all.
Ralph's experience was almost mystical. The painting had been supposedly painted by an unknown artist; it was unattributed. But Ralph thought there was something vaguely familiar about the painting. He had recently seen a psychic who had asked him if he believed in past lives.
"Yeah, why not.." he replied.
She suggested that he had lived in Paris in the 16th century and had been a successful painter with a tortured love life. It had given him pause at the time and now, standing in front of Gabrielle Estrées et une de ses soeurs, he felt a disconcerting echo of the past. There was something all too familiar of the gun metal blue of the painting's ancient frame.
After wallowing in front of the painting for half an hour Ralph left the museum and headed for Chateau Rouge on the right bank. It was a trip of ten stops, first East to Gare de l'Est then North to his destination. He had to negotiate only one change but that was enough. As he turned a corner towards
the magenta colored line he heard someone haranguing the Metro patrons.
"I have proof that Margaret Mead was a lesbian. She loved Ruth Benedict," shouted a bedraggled woman draped in scarves and wearing cowboy boots. She was pointing at a pile of papers stacked in a plastic crate from which hung a sign saying: MM was a dike, 1 euro. Ralph paused for a moment at once repulsed and curious. He tossed a euro into a large cup from Café Delmas, picked up the essay and moved on under the portal indicating his direction, Porte de Clingacourt.
She probably stole the cup when no one was looking, crazy putain, he thought. Café Delmas was one of his favorite spots for a reasonable breakfast. Ralph would walk to the Place Contrescape at least once a week, have petit déjeuner, and then amble down Rue Mouffetard marveling at the market.
On the Metro Ralph peeked at the paper. The epigram was a quote from Mead:
Women want mediocre men and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.
A strange but not totally unlikely choice for someone trying to make a case about Mead's supposed misandry.
Once he exited Chateau-Rouge he felt transported into a new world. There was a distinct African flavor to everything he saw, as if he had wandered into a part of the city he could not have dreamed existed. Rue Demean was clearly the center of the action: exotic vegetable and fruit vendors; musicians playing drums, rattles, and primitive harps; dashiki clad children romping in a running fountain; and an African Catholic Church. He wondered what the liturgy might be there recalling Missa Luba, an African mass he had heard in college.
Ralph's day had run the gamut of both time and distance. He had had the querulous experience at the Louvre that took him back five hundred years and now he found himself in a geographically distant place less than two miles from his 5th arrondissment studio apartment whose decor was predictably spare. Ralph did not spend much time there. Where else could you have such varied personal experiences than in Paris?
As he prepared to return home he noticed a bedraggled group of German tourists being shepherded along a narrow sidewalk by an officious uniformed guide in blue. She held her hand above her head waving a German flag so that her minions would not get lost. At the back of the group was a diminutive woman whose only job, Ralph assumed, was to keep stragglers from falling too behind. An accessory guide he thought.
He sat down on the steps of the church and opened his paperback, The Wisdom of Goethe. There he read a quote he contemplated until he arrived at his flat:
A person hears only what he understands.
He realized he was living in a world of preconception. The way to cope with it was to suspend his disbelief about everything.
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The words Louis used… send us your words you’d like him to use: editor@bonjourparis.com
Rosicrucian Order
portal
Goethe
accessory guide
putain
place du Château Rouge
decor
Margaret Mead
Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs.
gun metal
