But Beauty Revealed is not a ‘self-portrait with … breasts exposed’

Photograph of Beauty Revealed watercolor painting on ivory, a portrait of a woman's vertically centered bare breasts surrounded by white flowing cloth, in an open hinged red box
Beauty Revealed, Sarah Goodridge, American, 1828. “According to descendants of the statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852), this miniature is a self-portrait Goodridge made for him.” Photo and caption details from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Whether Webster had any sexual involvement with [Goodridge] cannot be proved one way or the other,’ Webster’s biographer Robert Remini says cautiously, before adding: ‘although the fact that she sent him a self-portrait with her breasts exposed raises suspicions.’ ¶ But Beauty Revealed is not a ‘self-portrait with the [Goodridge’s] breasts exposed’; it’s a self-portrait exclusively of her breasts.”

Source: publicdomainreview.org

Updated November 20, 2023: Added the photo of the painting in its box along with the photo caption.

Liz Phair, Steve Albini & Me: The True Story of 1993, the Greatest Goddamn Year in Chicago Rock History

Liz Phair, Steve Albini & Me: The True Story of 1993, the Greatest Goddamn Year in Chicago Rock History Bill Wyman on the context of the “three pandering sluts” Steve Albini letter controversy in the Chicago Reader

B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989

The official trailer for B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989

Saw the film showing Wednesday night as part of the Chicago European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center; as I wrote on Twitter: “highly recommended look at lost world.”

The German Democratic Republic and its absorption into the Federal Republic are what have fascinated me, but this movie shows the (at least) equally peculiar and unique case of die eingemauerte Stadt–the walled-in city–of West Berlin, an island within the east, that, like the east, was also absorbed into the west.

calumet412:

Looking north from what is now Michigan Ave and Pearson, 1871, Chicago. 

The photo was taken from the Water Tower, its shadow in the lower right corner of the shot.

The ruins in the foreground are from the Lill & Diversy Brewery, once the largest brewer in the city. And yes, though now spelled Diversey, the street was named for this prominent beer maker.