A Valentine

And a poem

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Happy Valentine’s Day, pals! From me and one of my favorite paintings at the moment:

I have plenty of other thoughts about this Jean-Leon Gerome painting and its lore, like perfection and expectations put on women, but there’s also something romantic about an artist falling in love with his muse, isn’t there? 

It makes me wonder what a bronze version of this statue would look like? C’mere, Venus! Pst, pst, pst.

If you’re curious, you can read all about Pygmalion and Galatea. There are even poems about it! At least two by Robert Graves and another by Sarah Yerkes that I like better, which you can read part of below:

At last, he thought, he had found a way

to express the yearning that was with him night and day.

First off, her lovely hair appeared,

her curls were marble—cold. “How weird,”

he cried, forgetting she would be of stone,

and not of lovely, longing flesh and bone.

Until next time,

Jade