Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Judit Borbély: The Writer's Paintings and the Painter's Scenes

slightly Michaelangelesque squareness, her eyes of" other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great personage

—only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead, dead, dead. (The Wings 144) James's description of the portrait summarises all the pictorial details I have listed above, and it also shows his sensitivity to the deeper meaning, the hidden psychological message. The given Bronzino, which comes to symbolise mortality because the visible elegance and perfection cannot mask the character's overwhelming sadness, marks a moment of great significance in the novel. Milly's self-revelation is not limited to the facial similarity between the dead woman and herself but also implies their existential resemblance. Milly's identification with the Florentine lady means her understanding and accepting her fate, that she will soon die, as her final words suggest when she 'with her eyes again on her painted sister's

— almost as if under their suggestion' (148) says: 'I think I could die without its being noticed' (149). Thus the painting is not simply a visual detail, an attractive element in the background scenery but plays a very important role in the plot and also in characterisation. Besides symbolising Milly's doom and reinforcing the theme of there being a contrast between the visible reality and the underlying truth, the Bronzino portrait also serves as an organic link between past and present, the existence of which Henry James considered essential in a work of art. Let us turn now to the second type of ekphrastic scenes when James uses a painting as a starting-point to create a scene in the living present. The number of cases when a work of art is indirectly present is infinite from vague hints at pictures that the heroes happen to recall under the influence of an experience, to scenes which may remind the reader of well-known paintings. To illustrate the latter, let me mention he famous party in The Ambassadors given by Gloriani, the sculptor, the whirl of which with artists and '

gros bonnets of many kinds' (The Ambassadors 201) and, of course, the right femmes du monde enjoying the pleasant evening in the beautiful garden in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain bears a striking resemblance to Manet's Music in the Tuileries, the cavalcade of which shows the same presentation of elegance and status. Or, I can underline the noticeable similarity between the frontispiece to the first volume of The 127