Lesley Jenike
Assistant Editor Caitlin Doyle: It’s a joy to present the first double feature in our miCRo series, a pair of interrelated flash essays, “The Rape of Europa” and “Incensing the Veil,” by Lesley Jenike. In these sharp-eyed and stirring pieces, we’re prompted to view art as a dance of veils, a titillating push-and-pull between obfuscation and exhibition. Jenike’s prose, similar to the artwork she describes, moves deftly from mystery to revelation as she explores the spiritual, philosophical, personal, and practical ways that art shapes our experience of the world.
She offers readers a glimpse of Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of America’s most famous art collectors, reveling in Titian’s Europa after she has purchased it for her Boston home: “Gardner was on her knees, rolling Europa along the Oriental rug as if it were a toy train. She was swinging like a girl from the white bull’s horns.” We’re also invited to imagine how Mary I of England might have interacted with Titian’s painting of the husband for whom her love remained unrequited: “Maybe Mary Tudor propped Philip of Spain’s portrait up on her bedside table and, beneath her comforter, let her hand roam around.”
Describing two paintings by John Singer Sargent that currently hang in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Jenike spurs us to reflect on the complicated genesis of the materials that artists use to create their work: “The history of watercolor is linked to the history of paper. The history of paper is one of prisoners and fugitives.” The final image we encounter, Sargent’s portrait of the museum’s founder (“Isabella Stewart Gardner is mummified by veils in Mrs. Gardner in White”), suggests that life and art, much like Jenike’s own exquisitely crafted “The Rape of Europa” and “Incensing the Veil,” are ultimately inseparable.
To hear Lesley Jenike read “The Rape of Europa,” click below:
The Rape of Europa
by Lesley Jenike
“Every inch of paint in the picture seems full of joy.”
—Isabella Stewart Gardner
This is how civilization began—with fire in the sky and an abducted lady.
Gardner’s art dealer wrote to tell her Europa was for sale:
“One of the greatest Titians in the world is Europa. Cable please the one word YEUP = Yes Europa, or NEUP = No Europa.”
“YEUP.”
Once the painting was hung in her Beacon Street home, Gardner exclaimed:
“I’m having a splendid time playing with Europa. She has adorers fairly on their knees.”
Gardner was on her knees, rolling Europa along the Oriental rug as if it were a toy train. She was swinging like a girl from the white bull’s horns. She was pretending to be Europa the way some kids pretend to be a nurse, a teacher, a soldier, a mother—lying on her back, her white robe up around her knees.
Philip II of Spain commissioned Titian’s The Rape of Europa. He married Mary I of England when she was thirty-seven years old. A portrait of Philip by Titian was sent to her in 1553. His skin in the portrait was very white—as white as his very white stockings. She was in love. He was not. She was a bad dresser, sour in the face. Her hysteria finally ruined things, and he ran away to Spain.
There’s a portrait of Mary I at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In it she has the look of someone bracing for attack. Of someone dragged by her hair across an ocean to start something new.
How does one play with a painting?
Maybe Mary Tudor propped Philip of Spain’s portrait up on her bedside table and, beneath her comforter, let her hand roam around.
Once back upstairs in her bedroom, after an hour of gazing at Europa, Gardner sat down to write a letter to her art dealer:
“Good night. I am very sleepy after my orgy.”
She had visions of Europa burning out her prose in a factory.
She had visions of Europa as a bootlegger’s daughter, star of the moving pictures.
She had visions of Europa licking hard candy.
She had visions of Europa terrified among the cattle.
She had visions of Europa with ropes and a crane bringing down a statue of Zeus.
There’s an Islamic tombstone, circa 1475, in the Cloisters of the Gardner Museum. As is the custom, there are no images of humans or animals; the stone’s embroidered with the eternal garden.
At night when visitors have gone, Him Whom God Has Exalted wanders the American woman’s palace—full as it is of faces—and wonders why he’s been abandoned here. He Who Has Been Martyred mourns for what he lost in eternity.
He sometimes wanders into the Titian Room. He sees stools and decanters, Christ and tumblers, busts and wallpapers. He stands before the painting on the far wall flanked by candelabra. He looks and looks. So they think this happened only to them? Come morning, he points his absent body the correct way.
To hear Lesley Jenike read “Incensing the Veil,” click below:
Incensing the Veil
by Lesley Jenike
John Singer Sargent arranged her, then painted her, originally in oil. Henry James wrote: “I know not who this stately Mohammedan may be, nor in what mysterious domestic or religious rite she may be engaged”—
Sargent later made a copy in watercolor—a medium some call fugitive for its risk of loss. It now hangs in the Blue Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The history of watercolor is linked to the history of paper. The history of paper is one of prisoners and fugitives.
A veil is a fetal membrane.
Women “take the veil” when they marry themselves to Christ.
Some women must be veiled in public while at home they are unwrapped like a gift every day, an everyday gift.
Flashes of mysteries revealed: a woman accidentally lifting a nursing cover on a park bench, a child with dress midtwirl, a tear in a pair of jeans, urine running down a leg.
They say it’s a “veil of tears.” Is it a “vale of tears”?
At twenty I was in love with a man who covered me with a sheet during foreplay, preferring to see my body that way. I was offended and/or turned on. Now at forty, I look away from myself.
My friend’s mother makes veils—long mantillas, short blushers, beaded birdcages, some speckled with hand-painted flowers and starred with crystals.
She makes her living from the ritual of obfuscation, then revelation.
My friend’s mother used her as a model, so as a teenager she pretended to be a bride, turning toward the camera, sometimes veiling her bright auburn hair, sometimes sitting at a vanity, her back to us, so we can see the gold comb her mother made, her face framed by the little tabletop mirror, her startled eyes catching our startled eyes.
One day my daughter will force herself to cry just so she can see how crying looks in the mirror. I did it. You did it too.
Some mourners will obscure the mirror with a veil. Some artists will obscure the tableau with a mirror because the perfection of Incensing the Veil is a ruse.
Like a white column the “stately Mohammedan” stands, embroidered by the smoke of her burning ambergris. She’s a bride if you want her to be, a holy woman. She’s a secular witch, a pious aesthetician.
She’s burning bile because it induces sex, because it clarifies the skin, because inside its fragrance she becomes the sperm whale. She burns her privacy for the viewer’s pleasure.
Obfuscation can be a blessing. Its razing can also be a blessing.
Sargent had an affinity for watercolor. He liked the freedom from paid portraiture. He could capture people and places en plein air.
Isabella Stewart Gardner is mummified by veils in Mrs. Gardner in White—another watercolor by Sargent. Her face seems to float above her disappeared body. She has just suffered a stroke and is on her way into the veil (vale).
Of watercolor, Sargent said, “Make the best of an emergency.”
Lesley Jenike’s lyric essays and poetry have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, At Length, Waxwing, and many other journals. Her most recent books are the poetry chapbook Punctum: (Kent State University Press, 2017) and the full-length poetry collection Holy Island (Gold Wake, 2017).
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