This week we travel back to 18th century France with Portrait of a Lady on Fire! Join us as we talk about female artists, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, herbal abortifacients, flying ointment (aka "the armpit scene") and more!

Sources:

Female Painters:

Laura Auricchio, "Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France," The Met Museum (October 2004), https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/18wa/hd_18wa.htm Cath Pound, "The great women artists that history forgot," BBC (19 October 2016), https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161019-the-great-women-artists-that-history-forgot Heidi A. Strobel, "Royal "matronage" of Women Artists in the Late-18th Century," Woman's Art Journal 26:2 (2005-2006): 3-9. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3598091 Catherine R. Montfort, "Self-Portraits, Portraits of Self: Adelaide Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun, Women Artists of the Eighteenth Century," Pacific Coast Philology 40:1 (2005): 1-18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25474166 Laura Auricchio, "Self-Promotion in Adelaide Labille-Guiard's 1785 Self-Portrait with Two Students," 89:1 (March 2007): 45-62. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25067300

The Four Seasons:

Betsy Schwarm, "Why should you listen to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"? - Betsy Schwarm," TED-Ed YouTube (24 October 2016), https://youtu.be/Xcpc8VDsv3c "VIVALDI: "Four Seasons" Sonnets texts in Italian & English," https://www.baroquemusic.org/vivaldiseasons.html https://www.charlottesymphony.org/blog/vivaldis-four-seasons-poems/

Film Background: Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/portrait_of_a_lady_on_fire Ela Bittencourt, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Daring to See," The Criterion Collection (23 June 2020), https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6991-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-daring-to-see Mark Kermode, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire review - mesmerised by the female gaze," The Guardian (1 March 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/01/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-review-celine-sciamma "The Fine Brushstrokes Of 'Portrait Of A Lady On Fire'" NPR https://www.npr.org/2020/02/24/809112455/the-fine-brushstrokes-of-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire Hilary Weaver, "Portrait of a Lady On Fire Is A Queer Survival Guide To Self-Isolation," ELLE (28 March 2020), https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a31965622/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-self-isolation-coronavirus-guide/ Carlos Aguilar, "Love Dialogue: Celine Sciamma on Portrait of a Lady on Fire," (12 February 2020) https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/love-dialogue-c%C3%A9line-sciamma-on-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire Drew Gregory, "Celine Sciamma on "Portrait of a Lady on Fire," the Lesbian Gaze, and Queer TV That Gives Her Hope," Autostraddle (12 February 2020), https://www.autostraddle.com/celine-sciamma-on-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-the-lesbian-gaze-and-queer-tv-that-gives-her-hope/ https://www.telerama.fr/ecrans/regardez-le-brulant-portrait-de-la-jeune-fille-en-feu-de-celine-sciamma-sur-arte.tv-6966315.php

Herbal Abortifacients:

Boyce Rensberger, "Pharmacology," Washington Post, 25 July 1994, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/25/pharmacology/573a3a65-8038-482c-9097-0cf992d72929/ Londa Schiebinger, "Agnotology and Exotic Abortifacients: The Cultural Production of Ignorance in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149, 3 (2005) John M. Riddle and J. Worth Estes, "Oral Contraceptives in Ancient and Medieval Times," American Scientist 80, 3 (1992) John m. Ridde, J. Worth Estes, and Josiah C. Russell, "Ever Since Eve. . . Birth Control in the Ancient World," Archaeology 47, 2 (1994) Lucille F. Newman, "Ophelia's Herbal," Economic Botany 33, 2 (1979) BTM, "Early Abortifacients," Pharmacy in History 35, 2 (1993)

Flying Ointment: Karsten Fatur, "Peculiar Plants and Fantastic Fungi: An Ethnobotanical Study of the Use of Hallucinogenic Plants and Mushrooms in Slovenia." PLOS One 16 (1) 2021 David MJ Carruthers, "Lines of Flight: An Enquiry Into the Properties of the Magical Plant, It's Literature and History," Mosaic, an Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 48, 2 (2015) Clive Harper, "The Witches' Flying Ointment," Folklore 88, 1 (1977) Michael Ostling, "Witches' Herbs on Trial," Folklore 125, 2 (2014) Danielle Piomelli and Antonino Pollio, "In Upupa O Strige: A Study in Renaissance Psychotropic Plant Ointments," History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16, 2 (1994)