"I sell the Shadow to support the Substance." – caption of Sojourner Truth's cartes de visite (1864)
FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Studio of Likenesses, Quarter of Justice SUBJECT: Appearance of the inhabitants I have postponed this entry because I did not believe my own eyes, and an observer who does not believe her own eyes is a poor instrument. I will describe what I see and let the Bureau decide. The women of the Cité are seen in the medium in which the world kept them. Christine walks through daylight as a manuscript miniature: flat gold behind her, fine black outlines, the blue of her gown laid on in gouache. Hildegard has five small tongues of red flame above her head, exactly as in the frontispiece of her book, and she finds my staring tedious. Ada Lovelace is a watercolour, pale and transparent at the edges, and when she hurries the paper seems to buckle. Sor Juana is oil on canvas, varnished, with the faint craquelure of a painting that has hung in a cold church. Mary Wollstonecraft is painted in the dark, sober manner of a London portraitist, and she ha...
From the lore of Cité des Dames.