History Bitches Fieldtrip #6: Meridian Hill Park

Last Sunday, meandering back from lunch with George, he and I took a short-cut through Meridian Hill Park. As we caught-up, I paused to get a photograph of Meridian Hill’s Joan of Arc statue, the lone female equestrian sculpture in Washington, D.C. Paul Dubois’ life-size bronze figure depicts Joan,...

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History Bitches Fieldtrip #5: Mary Surratt's Boardinghouse and Mount Olivet Cemetery

Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt, c. 1850This Saturday, my friend George (of Bricktop podcast and Eater DC fame) and I drove out to Mount Olivet Cemetery; I wanted to photograph Mary Surratt’s grave. On July 7, 1865, Mary was bestowed the unlucky distinction of becoming the first woman executed...

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History Bitches Fieldtrip #4: Hillwood Estate, Museum and Garden

Several weeks ago, I visited Hillwood, the sumptuous, sprawling estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post. Marjorie wasn't just the spectacularly rich heiress to Postum Cereal Company (now General Foods Corporation), but a talented businesswoman, too. During her lifetime, she became the wealthiest broad...

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H.B. Fieldtrip #3-Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de' Benci (National Gallery of Art)

This May, we brought our students to the National Gallery of Art to see Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de' Benci; his only painting on display in the Americas. Though just as captivating as the Mona Lisa, scholars understand more about Ginevra than Leonardo’s most legendary subject. Born around 1457 or 1458, she was a member of the prosperous and cultured Benci family of Florence, Italy. Ginevra herself was a celebrated poet, though none of her work survives.

Leonardo painted Ginevra’s likeness in 1474, perhaps to commemorate her marriage to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini; she was 16 years old, and Leonardo just 22! The front of the portrait shows her seated before a juniper (ginepro in Italian), supposedly a pun on her name. On the reverse (it’s double-sided!) is a second juniper twig encircled by a garland of laurel and palm and the Latin inscription VIRTVTEM FORMA DECORAT (Beauty Adorns Virtue). Watch the YouTube video below for some commentary on the symbols’ possible connotations and unlikely “scandal” regarding them.

It’s a gorgeous piece of art (and you can actually see Leonardo’s fingerprint in the branches) celebrating a fascinating woman. Check it out if you're in DC!

Check out http://www.nga.gov/kids/ginevra.htm for a close-up of Leonardo’s fingerprint.