Women Through the Centuries

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 405, 28 March 1947, Page 8

Women Through the Centuries

. Is a ilittie disconcerting tO an admirer of the calm and _ saintly Madonna of some Italian portrait to find that the model was-if a gross understatement may be pardonedneither calm nor saintly. So I listened in to the first of Dr. Eichbaum’s series of talks from 3YA on Portraits~ of Women Through the Centuries with some. ™misgiving, expecting to have my few remaining illusions rudely ‘shattered. They are still, happily, intact, The subject enormously wide one, particularly when literary portraits-a subject in itself-are included. But Dr. Eichbaum has avoided the pitfalls of generalisation and simply chosen particular examples. to discuss. The selection must have been an extraordinarily difficult one to make, and I found myself wondering how one would go about it. Mona Lisa, of course; but -how to choose from the rest of the gallery of great portrait painters? Which of Van Eyck, Reubens, Rembrandt-and what about. the others? In the field of literature things looked even worse, and when it came to choosing from Shakespeare I gave up. Dr. Eichbaum’s choice was pleasant and familiar-Chaucer, Raleigh, Herrick, Carew, and a sonnet from Shakespeare. How she did it I don’t know. The talk dealt superficially with painting and poem alternately, touching here on character, there on a detail of , dress. The attempt to link up artist and author was, I think, a pity, Van Eyck’s gentle Margaret has little to gain -from a comparison with Chaucer’s vivacious and voracious Wife of Bath ("Housbondes at chirche-dore she hadde fyve"); she, the baggage, wins every time. —