Jean-Étienne Liotard, Swiss
“Check It Out. I Hooked Our Nanny Cam Up To This Monitor and Now I’m About To Catch My Wife Cheating on Me. The Irony? She’s the One Who Gave Me the Best Buy Gift Card,” 1757
Pastel on parchment
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// François Tronchin is rich and well bred;
he owns Rembrandt’s “A Woman in Bed.”
A bigwig in Geneva,
here he seems to perceive a
detail not concealed by her bedspread.
/// Tronchin’s gestures, expressive and skilled,
illustrate the girl’s story. It’s chilled
by the mystical doom
that befalls every groom
who would marry her; each one was killed.
/// The Apocrypha tells about Sarah.
Seven husbands’ dire fates ought to scare a
man from being her eighth,
but Tobias has faith
he’ll prevail and begin a new era.
/// François’ painting shows Sarah in bed,
looking up at Tobias with dread.
A foul demon has slain
every previous swain.
Her man did what an Angel had said.
/// Raphael told him “Burnt heart and liver
of a fish caught from the Tigris river
will banish the evil.”
Proving those who believe’ll
get the girl and earn great wealth to give her.
/// In that old Hebrew text you will find
that the fish left more organs behind.
Heart and liver’s not all;
using gall bladder’s gall
he cured Tobit, (his Dad), who’d been blind.
/// Bible stories can be hard to take.
(One might even suspect that they’re fake.)
The apocryphal kind
long ago were declined,
and do not top-tier Bible tales make.
/// Many ancient texts up for submission
to the Bible did not gain admission.
I don’t know why they chose
these and turned away those,
but agree or you’ll suffer perdition.
/// Rembrandt’s model for Sarah could be
someone known by him well. There are three
suspects: Saskia, (his spouse);
Hendrickje, (who kept house);
and the nursemaid. Experts disagree.
/// Just who posed for him is in dispute,
but the nursemaid, named Geertje, was cute.
Later on she would be
Rembrandt’s mistress, so she
is (to my mind) the choice most astute.
/// It’s not thought Rembrandt slept with all three.
(Surely not simultaneously!)
Liotard’s imitation
of the Rembrandt creation
makes the girl more alluring to see.
.