Yes, she was a definite candidate.
“How do we tell?” she asked our group of twelve eager gallery-goers.
Holy buttercream, a Socratic method teach-in, now? It felt like I was back in med school. I hoped she wasn’t going to pick on me because I didn’t have a clue. “If we want to cheat, we can look at the title.” She laughed to herself (sense of humor—important for Joshua). “We call this painting Venus with Cupid, The Toilet of Venus or The Rokeby Venus, but we also know who we’re looking at because Velázquez gives us a large clue. Can anyone tell me what that is?”
Someone muttered something and she nodded enthusiastically. “That’s right—Cupid’s presence tells us this isn’t just any woman, admiring herself in the mirror. This is the goddess Venus.”
How do we know it’s Cupid? I wanted to ask. But I kept quiet. It was probably obvious. Our guide went on to tell us about Velázquez, and how the painting had been attacked by a suffragette.
“What I love about this painting,” Janet said, “is that despite Velázquez—a man—painting it for men to admire, to me, Venus has all the control in this picture. She’s admiring herself in the mirror. She’s seeing her own beauty and power reflected back to her. Some people argue that at that angle, she wouldn’t be able to see herself, but this isn’t a photograph. It’s a depiction of self-love. For me, this is a portrait of female confidence and power.”
I looked again at the picture. At the reflection in the mirror. At the bed clothes draped over the bed—voluptuous, just like Venus herself. She wasn’t the flawless model in magazines and on catwalks, but she was proud of what she saw in the mirror. She was pleased with who she was on the outside. But something told me she felt good about who she was on the inside too.
Any woman who felt like that about herself held real power.
Since the accident, my body had been a constant reminder of what I couldn’t do, of what I’d lost. I couldn’t help thinking I’d quite like to be Venus, to feel that good. That powerful. That free.
I pulled out my phone and took a picture, wanting to capture the feeling to come back to later.
After Janet answered questions, we moved on. I made sure I kept up with the group and managed to get into the front at the next painting.
“This is Bacchus and Ariadne,” Janet said. “Painted by Titian. It’s a great example of the diagonal composition of the baroque period and one of the most important paintings in the gallery. I can give you more facts about this painting, but what does it say to you? What do you feel when you look at this picture?”
“He’s in love with that girl,” I blurted out. “Crazy in love.”
Janet’s eyes lit up. “Exactly. Here Titian depicts the first moment that Bacchus sees Ariadne and falls in love right there and then. It’s the greatest depiction of love at first sight that’s ever been painted.”
But Ariadne didn’t look convinced. “Is Ariadne running away?” I asked, looking at the woman who was the object of Bacchus’ affection. “Is she . . . rejecting him?”
Janet turned to look at the picture. “I suppose I’ve never seen it like that before. The conventional reading of her posture is that she’s looking out, dismayed, at Theseus’ ship as he sails off, abandoning her.” She pointed at the barely-there brushstrokes indicating a ship on the far left of the picture. “But that’s the beauty of art—so much of it is open to interpretation. Maybe this is the moment Bacchus sees and falls for Ariadne, but it’s the moment before Ariadne returns his affection.”
The moment before she returns his affection. I took in a breath, drinking in the concept of love having some kind of linear evolution: a before, a during, and sometimes an after. It made sense. And I liked the idea that Ariadne didn’t like Bacchus just because he liked her. Okay, maybe it hadn’t taken her long to catch up, but she made her own decision about him. I pulled out my phone and took another picture.
“Art is as much about feeling as it is about seeing.” Janet grinned enthusiastically at her audience. “You don’t have to know about art to enjoy it or to learn something about life from it.”
The next picture was a depiction of Samson and Delilah by Rubens, just after they’d had sex. It was so raw and so real it made me blush. Samson’s tanned, muscular arms reminded me of Joshua. And from the look on Delilah’s face and the way her hand settled onto the satiated, sleeping Samson, I couldn’t help but think that she liked him more than she was meant to. I needed to pull her to one side and tell her to get her forcefield up pronto, or she was going to have trouble ahead.