My Tango With Barbara Strozzi Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m tired of being afraid of everything. Show itto me when you get it, I want to know all there is to know.’
    I e-mailed her details to Catriona. Then I went online and ordered a personalised baseball bat from the Louisville Slugger gift shop in Louisville, Kentucky. The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, so this bat would have the Red Sox logo plus the engraving, in three lines:
    GENUINE
Barbara Strozzi

LOUISVILLE SLUGGER
    It would take a couple of weeks to get here.
    While waiting for the bat to arrive I’d be seeing Bertha (Bertha/Barbara) whenever possible, teaching my classes, and cruising for Page One. Until now I’d always put events of my own life into my novels. This time I wasn’t going to do that; whatever was happening with Bertha/Barbara and me would be kept separate from my writing.

2
Bertha/Barbara Strunk
    Here I am again, getting into something I’ll probably be sorry for. As always. What else can I do – lock myself up to keep from making mistakes? Why did I tell Phil to call me Barbara? There
is
something between me and Barbara Strozzi. What it is I don’t know. BS also means bullshit. Why did I kiss him the way I did? I guess I need to have a man wanting me. Pathetic.
    He left the CD with me, and after he’d gone I put it on and listened to it for a while but I couldn’t really get with it. The singer sounded either fretful or miserable or both; she sounded like a victim, which is not what I am. Although I make a lot of mistakes. With men mostly. Both short and tall.
    Professor Adderley is a good example of what I’m talking about. He taught drawing and painting at Humberside University and he also lectured on Art History. A big man, tall and broad with a beard. In his forties. He was very free with his hands and he liked toinvite girls to his studio for private sessions. He was looking over my shoulder one day when I was painting a costume model, a girl in a flapper dress. ‘You’re missing the essence of flapper,’ he said. ‘Flapper is free and easy but your painting is tight. You need to loosen up.’ I said I’d try. He had whisky on his breath. Later he stopped me in the hall and said, ‘You have a very good walk. If you could paint like you walk there’d be a big improvement in your work.’
    I said, ‘Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.’ I had a pretty good idea what was coming next. One evening he caught me coming out of the Union bar with a couple of pints in me and he breathed on me and said, ‘I’d like to paint you. Would you pose for me?’
    Some of his paintings were hanging in the halls – they were harsh and raw, with garish colours, something like John Bratby. I was curious to see how I’d look in a painting by him so I said, ‘OK. With my clothes on, right?’
    ‘Any way you like,’ he said. This was on a Monday and I agreed to come to his studio on Saturday. On Tuesday he did a lecture with slides on Caravaggio, Carracci, Gentileschi, and other fifteenth-century Roman painters. Orazio Gentileschi had a daughter, Artemisia, who was the first woman to paint historical and religious subjects. One of the slides was her
Judith Slaying Holofernes
. ‘Very strong,’ said Professor Adderley. ‘She learned a lot from Caravaggio. But the power in this picture comes from her own experience. She’dbeen studying with Agostino Tassi and he raped her. So she cut off his head in this picture and her rage made it one of the best things she ever did. She enjoyed it so much she did a second version, with Holofernes’s leg visible as he struggles while the maidservant holds him down. Did two more with Judith and the maidservant sneaking out with the head – all four paintings first-rate.’
    On Saturday I went to Prof. Adderley’s place. Middle of May but grey and rainy. Rode there on my bike with Marianne Faithfull in my head, singing:
    At the age of thirty-seven she realised she’d never
    Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair,
    So she