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So two weeks ago when I visited the @NPGLondon #PreRaphSisters show with the @ArtHistoryYork MAs and Prof. Prettejohn, we noticed that the label for Marie Spartali's "The Lady Prays-Desire" commented that "the quotation on the scroll is still to be deciphered." 1/
The watercolour painting of a woman with red hair, laurel leaves, and 'Renaissance' attire, which is also in the background of the Ford Madox Brown portrait of Spartali in the exhibition, shows the Lady Prays-Desire from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: 2/
The label and catalogue suggest its "naive Pre-Raphaelite quality," subverts the usual focus on beauty, instead "personifying not beauty but ambition" (159), while "Renown is also referenced by the owl of Minerva/Athena in the cartouche" as well as Spartali's Greek heritage 3/
That the inscription, not a quote, is in Greek--ancient Greek, at that--is unmentioned. It is only 'undeciphered,' presented as a mystery or a riddle. It's not. In fact, the first word is clearly ΣοΦία, or Sofia-- Wisdom, clearly referencing Athena's owl in the cartouche 4/
The second word, σπαρτίον, transliterates as 'spartíon' and is clearly a reference to her last name, Spartali, but has numerous different interpretations: Spartan, like the city-state, or Spartium, or a small cord. Tricky, but not impossible, and clearly some kind of pun! 5/
The final word is the difficult one: it looks like υρατει, but by asking someone who speaks Greek, @ArtHistoryYork PhD Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani, we sorted it out--it's κρατει, 'holds.' In about 3 minutes, by asking and a bit of judicious googling plant names, we had it 6/
It's simultaneously a literal say what you see, and a clever pun: Wisdom holds the Spartium. Wisdom in the figure of Athena's owl grasps a branch of Spartium, or Spanish Broom, also known as weaver's broom, Spartium junceum, common throughout the Mediterranean 7/
Not only is Athena the goddess of wisdom, but also of skilled work like weaving, primarily done by women. Spartali, like the Lady Prays(Praise)-Desire, "That by well doing sought to Honour to aspire" through her skilled artistic production. 8/
While, to be fair, the inscription was Greek to me (pun intended), it wasn't difficult to enlist help from fellow academics to work out the three words and apply some basic art historical, classical receptions knowledge to Spartali's work, and to recognise its sophistication 9/
A woman's use of ancient Greek at the time--even a Greek woman's use-- was not uncontested. See, for example Yopie Prins' Ladies Greek (Princeton UP, 2017), which takes its title from E Barrett Browning's comment about 'ladies' Greek, without the accents' 10/
Why am I so frustrated by this issue? In this day and age, it's so easy to reach out and find experts, assistance, and clarification on something like this, which demonstrates Spartali's sophistication, education, artistic intention, and conscious self-fashioning in her work 11/
Instead, the focus has CONSTANTLY returned to the primacy of the men and the performance of traditionally 'feminine' 'virtues' of gentleness or prettiness, of the artist as sitter to a man and in her work. 12/
It's aggravating as a feminist, to see such a major exhibition in 2019 not engaging seriously with the works of art except as illustrations of mere prettiness or images of a woman's relationship (usually sexual/romantic) to a more important man. 13/
Spartali made a direct link between herself (σπαρτίον, spartíon, Spartali) and ΣοΦία, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the arts--and war. It's not a general connection to her Greek heritage, but specific and loaded with historic precedents, both gendered and not. 14/
It's time to do better by historic women artists, and give them the intellectual credit for their work #PreRaphSisters @NPGLondon 15/15
With credit to the self-identified sisterhood of travelling art historians and classicists for their assistance and input on this material, @smeadleonard @RigantonaE @tinyhistorian @MarteStinis @Freya_Gowrley @MaddyPelling
