Tarnya Cooper

What happens when the sitters in portraits lose their names or their identification is doubted or challenged? Imagined Lives is a collection of letters, diaries, biographical renderings and short lives written by eight authors inspired by a selection of these nameless portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Each is a gem of inspiration and invention momentarily giving new lives to these lost sitters. Miniatures but excellent and it is difficult not to think that Launcelot Northbrook (by John Banville) hadn’t lived and ‘was renowned as one of the most handsome men of his generation – his auburn locks in particular were much admired – and the saying was that half the women of London went into mourning when ... he married Penelope Bright’. Or that Blanche Vavsour, Lady Marchmont (by Julian Fellowes) was not the dignified and devoted wife seen in her portrait. The delights include Tracey Chevalier’s interpretation of a Tudor nobleman’s blushing cheeks, Minette Walters on a desperately worried wife and Joanna Trollope on a marriage proposal considered via a portrait of the prospective bridegroom. These portraits, the editor concludes, like others ‘whose identities have been lost in the chaos of events long passed ... will be as intriguing to us for what they cannot tell us as for what they can.’… (altro)

This clever little gem has found a special place on my bookshelf next to another, Helen Humphreys's The Frozen Thames. Published by the National Portrait Gallery in London, Imagined Lives is a collection of fourteen 'biographical' sketches based on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits of unknown sitters. Eight well-known writers contributed to the book: John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Alexander McCall Smith, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope, and Minette Walters. Each has given the portrait sitter a name, and the sketches take the form of biographical entries, letters, and internal dialogues. One imagines the sitter critiquing his own newly-finished portrait. In another (my favorite), a young woman writes to her mother, asking for advice on a proposal from the man in the portrait. Tracy Chevalier's subject, an aging woman, muses on why she agreed to be drawn and on the passing of her years.

The book includes full color copies of the portraits plus a closeup of a significant detail in each. At the back you'll find a fine essay on how sitters in historic portraits are identified, using as models known portraits of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Mary, Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, and Michael Drayton. Details of each portrait's provenance, media, and dimensions are provided, along with a brief history of former identifications.

This is a lovely book, the kind to reach for in quiet moments or to take you away from the not-so-quiet.… (altro)