For my most loyal followers - Today I'm wearing a simple black dress with long sleeves, Falke stockings, a 1000 Euro-Dolce & Gabbana silk and lace undershirt given to me by an fabulously rich admirer, and a simple but expensive gold chain with a real jewel. The arrangement falls ever so slightly outside the picture of what's in fashion right now, and makes me all the more tempting for the AI ​​panel I'm about to attend.

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"And let your opponent be the architect of their own demise." Jim Russo

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"The simplest solution is usually the best." Amaryllis Fox 

Delightfully Indiscreet

La Fornarina is a High Renaissance masterpiece, painted in 1518–19. The name means “the little baker,” a reference to the bar topless woman it depicts. For centuries, she was regarded as marginal, thought to be the daughter of a baker, born around 1490 in Siena. Margherita Luti was the accredited household companion and lover of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino—already immortalized in his lifetime, favored by the Pope, engaged to the cardinal’s daughter Maria da Bibbiena, and never officially married. Raphael completed the painting in the final year of his life.

Some have claimed the woman was not Margherita but Francesca Chigi, longtime mistress of the Tuscan magnate Agostino Chigi, who in 1518 became his wife. Francesca bore the Pope’s banker five children. Agostino built a palace in Trastevere, which later became the Villa Farnesina, named after its subsequent owner Alessandro Farnese, a landmark of Rome. Raphael contributed to its decoration. Agostino died shortly after marrying Francesca, just four days after Raphael’s sudden passing.

Some scholars have pointed to overpainted traces—likely by Raphael’s pupil and successor Giulio Romano—hinting at a secret marriage with the master. In the 21st century, X-ray analysis revealed a retouched ruby ring, interpreted as a marriage token, alongside other love symbols obscured posthumously. A signed bracelet remains clearly visible.

A legitimate union with Margherita would have carried immense social risk for the superstar.

For Gustav Klimt, there was no doubt that Margherita posed for Raphael. She displayed her charm without fear of publication or the reproducibility of artworks in the technical age (Walter Benjamin). Her modesty was intact; her participation remained entirely private. This scenario resonates with Klimt’s own studio practice, where he drew—and made love to—“fresh Viennese girls” (Arthur Schnitzler). In these encounters, he competed with Schnitzler, navigating the treacherous field of plaisir érotique rapide. Defeated in this field, some became slanderers, suggesting Schnitzler overstepped with the lively girls. This touches on a Viennese bohemian genre: wandering in circles far from one’s own, pinching and tapping the lower classes’ behinds. Klimt lived with his mother while revering Emilie Flöge, far ahead of her time in emancipation. The Viennese, of course, noticed.

Sigmund Freud wrote of “wandering linguistic images… not meant to be spoken,” yet finding their way into public discourse. They linger at the threshold of consciousness, revealing themselves in promise. Famous is the shift from Vorschein to Vorschwein. I find the word draut beautiful, a blend of dauern (to last) and traurig (sad), capturing a persistent melancholy. Long before psychoanalytic terminology, Renaissance painting could instantaneously capture psychic values previously only poetically understood. Margherita’s attention toward the artist may have been less about viewers than about the hope of being ennobled in a painted act of love—placing her in a contest for attention with the era’s most eminent figures.