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If Mona Lisa is the smile, Madame Cézanne is the scowl. Hortense Fiquet, Paul Cézanne’s model turned mistress turned mother of his child turned metaphorical millstone around his neck, endures as a standard art history punch line—the muse whose misery won immortality through the many masterpiece portraits done of her. Or at least that’s how the joke usually goes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibition Madame Cézanne, which gathers together 24 of the 29 known portraits Cézanne painted of Hortense over a period of more than 20 years, tries to rewrite that joke as it hopes to solve the riddle of Madame Cézanne, aka, The Case of the Miserable Muse.
Every New Year, old yearnings to live better are reborn. And many who make New Year’s resolutions of the “less vice, more virtue” kind, need a higher-resolution picture of some relevant language and history. The “cardinal virtues” didn’t come from cardinals (and they’re not religious relics). Nor are the deadly vices just irrational restrictions. Ignoring this logic is expensive.