Muses & Marvels
So, you enjoy venturing off the path well-worn? Splendid, this is a quality we share.
Summoned by curiosity
A tribute to the coquettes and gentlewomen from whom our Roses Mystérieuses draw their inspiration. Who might they be?
Cléo de Mérode (Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode, 1875 – glistening on for eternity) is a living incarnation of the Belle-Époque. A divine dancer who performed on many a stage and would settle for no less than the very best, debuting at the Opéra de Paris. Cléo was an icon ahead of her time. A courtesan? After she declined the advances of Belgium's Leopold II, rumours spread like wildfire, as they do, and she fell prey to moralists and other lofty preachers… An independent woman in 1900, determined to live by her own word no matter the conventions and dogma of her era.
Not only a model for sculptors Rodin and Falguière, painters Degas, Toulouse Lautrec and Klimt, and the photographer Nadar, she also shared a friendship with Proust. A Queen of Beauty and the first woman whose photograph traveled the world, she remains etched in the minds of all and continues to inspire artists to this day.
Aymes’ muses
Olympe Pélissier (1799-ever perennial). This notorious Parisian demi-monde held court during the Restoration. She modelled for painter Horace Vernet and her suitors included men such as Eugène Sur or Honoré de Balzac with whom, by some accounts, she entertained a liaison. It is to Gioachino Rossini that she ultimately entrusted her heart in 1830 ... and wedded some fifteen years later. Oh, so relentless.
Carmen prevails as an archetype of romantic passion. Fierce, gentle, joyful, cunning, paradoxical, enamoured and unruly. With unmatched ardour, Carmen embodies the femme fatale and the idea of a liberty perpetually in motion. The myth of Mérimée’s unabashed and vivacious bohemian persists far and wide.
What teachings do we draw from ruby, peridot, diamond, sapphire, emerald, opal and other tanzanites? Surely that from the very depths of the netherworld, from its magmatic abyss, arise by some unfathomable blunder those unconventional beauties born of obscure mineral chaos.
Led by the creatures, we wander between these two antipodes, barely separated by a lining both porous and quaking : fascination & repulsion. Earthly yet unimaginable.
And thus the python went along with the creator, hound of Hades to his collection and devilish instigator. Before long, they crossed paths with the delicate mantis taken by furious hunger, the peacock of bold majesty, and a wealth of other chimera… Isn’t there but one leap we take with elation?