Miniature Portraits, La Princesse de Clèves, and the Rise & Fall of the Novel

This is a novel in which nothing much happens and yet because of it the world was never the same.

Princesses, Lovers, Saints, and Les Galeries des Dames

Before—well before—Forbes’s “World’s Most Powerful Women” lists and Vogue’s “Women in Hollywood” covers, there were the Galeries des Dames. Modeled after the classical compendiums of the great gods...

The Enduring Charm of the Spanish Infantas

For over 350 years, we’ve been enchanted by portraits of the Spanish princesses, the Infanta Maria Theresa (1638-1683) and her younger half-sister, the Infanta Margarita Theresa (1651-1673), as wel...

The Escapist Artist

“Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness.” That’s the great Harold Bloom who, as he would have said, had the “poor taste to leave us,” but thankfully he left beh...