1) Maybe twice a year I have professionals clean my house, because we all know how much I enjoy housekeeping. After some scheduling issues and a flat tire, this morning was the morning. I opened the windows, masked up, and mostly confined myself to my room for two hours. Afterwards I could enjoy that new house smell.
Madonna and a rather pugnacious-looking Child.
2) In the afternoon I met two friends at the Gardner Museum to see the special exhibition I’d read about and completely forgotten, Titian: Women, Myth, & Power. My previous two or three visits to the Gardner during the pandemic have been spacious and leisurely, but not this time. It was far too crowded for a pandemic. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the start of Christmas Week, Blithe Unawareness of Omicron, Titian mania, all of the above, or something else, but the entire place felt jammed, including the restaurant.
The reason for the season.
2a) The Titian show is marvelous. The six “poesie” paintings are hung in pairs on three walls, and the fourth is hung with portraits of Philip II (who owned them) and his bride Queen Mary I of England — Bloody Mary Herself. "The Rape of Europa and the portrait of Mary were acquired by Mrs. Gardner — hence the exhibition’s stopping here. You can see all the paintings here. It’s really something to see these works of art hung as a set, but there were so many people in there I felt constantly on guard. Because we all know that, besides housekeeping, I just love standing in the way.
2b) The museum, as always, was dressed in its best with flowers of Christmas reds and greens in the courtyard. Somehow the colors in the galleries seemed brighter, too. And getting to go through with rarely-seen friends and exchange new insights and old banter refreshed my spirit.
I wish I could have picked up a few rolls of this in the gift shop.
3) With the Christmas tree in my room, this evening I turned on the tree lights and had my cocktail hour sitting on the bed. It will not surprise you that I woke from an impromptu nap after almost two hours. And it was beautiful! In the words of the late Edith Piaf, je ne regrette rien.
I quite like my tree this year.