Table of Contents
Prologue 1
The Deceits of the Past 3
The City of Women 7
Their Little Hands, So Tender and So White 9
Cabinet of Curiosities 11
The Fault in Our Stars? 13
A Self-Portrait Is Never One Thing 16
1 Easel 21
The Liberating Looking Glass 23
The Equal of the Muses and Apelles 30
How to Paint an Apricot 42
1 Want to Be Everything 47
2 Smile 55
The Lodestar 56
They Call Me Madame Van Dyck 59
3 Allegory 75
A Story, Stilled 75
It's True, It's True 80
The Sun of Italy and the Gem of Europe 90
My Grey Hair 97
Self-Portrait Hesitating 101
4 Hallucination 111
I Do Not See the (Woman) Hidden in the Forest 112
There Are Things That Are Not Sayable 119
I Am the Subject I Know Best 128
5 Solitude 135
Fine and Fierce Things 136
The Strange Form 143
I've Scraped By, Up and Down 163
6 Translation 179
Tradition Thinks for You, but Heavens! How Dull! 180
To Be Known by Name 189
To Draw Seeing Every Feather 201
Self Portrait as Tahitian 211
7 Naked 223
Open to Everything 224
The Model Models for Herself 241
The Painting and the Painter 254
Epilogue 261
Notes 263
Acknowledgements 314
Illustration Credits 316
Index 318