Sophia

     On the redoubtable Kim Dutoit's website Splendid Isolation today were pics of various female stars in relaxed legs akimbo poses.  The first one was of Sophia Loren.  This put me in mind of my salad days back in the early seventies when I worked in the lab for the portraitists to the rich and famous, Gittings Photography in Houston, Texas.  An unlikely location for the firm perhaps, but the R&F from around the world sat for them.

     This was an absolutely top-notch outfit that literally spared no expense in creating the richest and most finely detailed large portraits ever made.  They also did society weddings and portraits all over the U.S. and the world, but their high end signature portraits were flat out incredible, the finest in the land, and probably the world.  For the "big game" the images were captured on 8X10 inch negative film shot on Linhof view cameras with Zeiss lenses.  As many as fifty negatives were shot, the sittings alone cost several thousand dollars, 8X10 full color contact "proofs" were made, and the images destined for printing were selected by the customer.

  The largest prints, aptly named the Imperial line, were huge 40X60 inch dye-transfer prints.  Dye-transfer prints were extraordinarily difficult to make, in that size especially, and cost $1600 each at the time, within shouting distance of ten grand today.  It was not reality, it was very much heightened reality.  A weak comparison would be the difference between ordinary color movie film and the three strip Technicolor process, with which the dye-transfer print process shares some optical and chemical  similarities.  Nothing available today is remotely as rich, detailed, and utterly lifelike.

     For years a full length portrait of Sophia Loren was on display at the Gittings storefront in a local very tony mall.  One could not simply walk past it.  It captured her at the apex of her mature glory.  It glowed, it demanded, it absolutely required that one stand mute and transfixed by her stupefying beauty and keen intelligence.  The English language is simply not capable of describing the impact of that image.  The Bard his own self would struggle with the words.

     Sadly, high end dye-transfer portraits are no longer being done, commercially at least.  They are a casualty of the decline of formal portraiture in general.  A great pity.  

Christina

     At the moment TMC is playing Queen Christina, a biopic of the historical Queen Christina of Sweden.  All Hollywood bios are essentially fiction entire, but in this case it is particularly egregious.  Casting Greta Garbo as Christina was about as appropriate as casting Jerry Lewis as Othello.  Naturally in almost all cases the actress chosen to play a historical figure is much better looking than the actual person being portrayed.  No one expects anything different but, perversely, Jerry Lewis would have been a better choice to portray the real Christina's looks.

     Christina was, by all accounts, a seriously ugly woman.  On the far side of bonkers as well, which was unfortunate, but all too common among European royalty.  She may have been a lesbian, she was certainly mannish enough, but she also might have been entirely asexual.  Vasty speculations have explored the issue, inconclusively, but she was most definitely was a nut, a real royal whackjob, fruity as a nutcake.  She converted to Catholicism, moved to Rome and oversaw a boundary stretching solon.  She became rather influential, but she was still nuttier than a barrel of Skippy.

     It is fair to say that most children of major European royalty harbor bats in the belfry, if not now then historically.  Simply being an inbred child of a monarch back then was a reasonably effective method of boarding the train to crazy town.  Under different circumstances however....

     Different circumstances for Christina are explored most thoroughly in writer Eric Flint's 1632 alt-history series.  Do not laugh or sneer.  The series is one thoroughly researched, lengthy, and wonderful history lesson.  I can not recommend it highly enough.  In this complex and far ranging series, Christina's circumstances change radically, as does everyone's, and she is guided along a drastically different path than the one taken by the actual Christina.  The same can be said for the character of her father King Gustavus Adolphus.  All quite entertaining and endlessly informative.  Start with the first book, 1632, and go from there.  You will thank me.