Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Leonardo da Vinci

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I walked on the “Philadelphia Story” (’40) set just as they were shooting the last love scene between Katie Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. I must say they were both in the mood–especially Jimmy, who had suggestions for improvement until they’d taken five takes. After each he sheepishly exclaimed, “And I’m getting paid for this!” I congratulated him on the improvement of his love technique and asked him to light my cigarette. His hand shook so much he could hardly manage it.”
—Hedda Hopper (1940)

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.” —Greta Garbo, 1931
“There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.”
—Greta Garbo, 1931

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Hollywood Hair: Leda Styled By Leonardo da Vinci

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Four studies of Leda by Leonardo Da Vinci. In Greek mythology, the God Zeus transforms himself into a swan and travels to Earth to seduce a lady called Leda. She gives birth to two eggs that hatch to be Polydeuces and Helen.
Four studies of Leda by Leonardo da Vinci. In Greek mythology, the God Zeus transforms himself into a swan and travels to Earth to seduce a a beautiful lady named Leda. She gives birth to Polydeuces and Helen, AKA Helen of Troy. The date of this chalk and ink work is 1506, and executed while Da Vinci lived in Milan. The dimensions are 17.7 x 14.7 cm.  The completed “Leda and the Swan”painting is lost.

Years ago, on Shabbos evenings, when our children were little, I would frequently grab an art book, sit in my chair, and one of the kids would climb into my lap. We’d turn the pages, look at the pictures, and make up stories about the figures in the paintings.

Ariel, Z’TL, was intrigued by the Dutch painters of the Seventeenth Century: Jan Steen, Peter de Hooch, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. Offspring #2 and #3, girls, inclined to the High Italian Renaissance: Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo.

One memorable night, I opened a book devoted to the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci.

Offspring #2 was about 5 years old at the time, and after leafing through a few pages, she grew bored. She wanted lush colors, luminous light, and dramatic figures in mysterious landscapes. Leonardo’s drawings were too stark, too black and white. And Leonardo’s anatomy drawings… totally gross.

Then I turned to Leonardo’s four sketches for the head of Leda.

Offspring #2 nearly fell off my lap.

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