Alexandra Lapierre
Author of Artemisia
About the Author
Image credit: Alexandra Lapierre
Works by Alexandra Lapierre
Le Voleur d'éternité : La vie aventureuse de William Petty, érudit, esthète et brigand (2004) 28 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1955-11-14
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- France (birth)
- Birthplace
- Paris, France
- Places of residence
- Paris, France
California, USA
Rome, Italy - Education
- Sorbonne, Paris, France (études de lettres)
American Film Institute
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
University of Southern California, Los Angeles (MFA) (1981) - Occupations
- novelist
biographer
short story writer - Relationships
- Lapierre, Dominique (father)
- Organizations
- American Association of University Women
- Awards and honors
- Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier, 2005)
- Short biography
- Alexandra Lapierre was born in Paris, France, the daughter of writer Dominique Lapierre and his first wife, Aliette Spitzer. After studying literature at the Sorbonne, she went on a scholarship to study at the American Film Institute and the University of Southern California. She wrote screenplays, won several prizes at short film festivals, and received a second scholarship from the American Association of University Women, which enabled her to complete her master of fine arts degree at USC in 1981. She returned to live in Paris and published her first novel, La Lionne du boulevard (1984), which won the Prix du Premier Roman of the Fondation Paribas. Her subsequent works include more novels, as well as biographies, including those of Fanny Stevenson, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson (1993); painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1998); Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston (L'Excessive, 2010); and Maud and Nancy Cunard (Avec toute ma colère, 2018). Lapierre has won many additional literary awards and was appointed Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2005.
Members
Reviews
I gave this a good effort, but I just couldn't stick with it.
The story of Belle Greene is absolutely amazing - a black woman who passed herself and her family off as white serves as the librarian for JP Morgan and his son Jack Morgan building the amazing collection of rare materials for the Morgan Library in NYC. I gave this only 3 plus stars because it is probably too long, too much in detail regarding the rare books and manuscripts that I sometimes skimmed over.
Belle Greene's father was Richard Greener, the first black man to graduate from Harvard. He left his wife and children (girls and one son) very suddenly. This provided them the opportunity to move from Washington DC, drop the final "r" from their name and assume new identities as white. They claimed to be Portuguese aristocracy with the name of da Costa Greene. Belle takes a job at the Princeton library where she meets Junius Morgan, a nephew of JP Morgan. She and Junius become fast friends and he acts as a mentor to her. From there on she climbs the social and academic latter.
For years, Belle Greene and her family are able to maintain this family secret even promising never to marry and have children, least the child carry Black characteristics. Her sister does however marry and have a child who Belle assumes responsibility. Robert Leverage grows up believing he is fully white and has a career as a pilot in the service. When he becomes engaged to a young woman, her family hires a private detective to uncover the past leading to the disastrous suicide of Robert.
Belle's life was exciting and filled with many lovers and travels to Europe. Her influence on the Morgan Library is beyond compare; always believing that rare documents and manuscripts should be available to researchers and not locked up where no one can study them. She lead an amazing life. And what a completely sad and appalling story of the hate and prejudice of the family that caused Robert's death.
Good information to know, the book is just a bit too long and too involved but certainly well researched - great respect for the author.… (more)
Belle Greene's father was Richard Greener, the first black man to graduate from Harvard. He left his wife and children (girls and one son) very suddenly. This provided them the opportunity to move from Washington DC, drop the final "r" from their name and assume new identities as white. They claimed to be Portuguese aristocracy with the name of da Costa Greene. Belle takes a job at the Princeton library where she meets Junius Morgan, a nephew of JP Morgan. She and Junius become fast friends and he acts as a mentor to her. From there on she climbs the social and academic latter.
For years, Belle Greene and her family are able to maintain this family secret even promising never to marry and have children, least the child carry Black characteristics. Her sister does however marry and have a child who Belle assumes responsibility. Robert Leverage grows up believing he is fully white and has a career as a pilot in the service. When he becomes engaged to a young woman, her family hires a private detective to uncover the past leading to the disastrous suicide of Robert.
Belle's life was exciting and filled with many lovers and travels to Europe. Her influence on the Morgan Library is beyond compare; always believing that rare documents and manuscripts should be available to researchers and not locked up where no one can study them. She lead an amazing life. And what a completely sad and appalling story of the hate and prejudice of the family that caused Robert's death.
Good information to know, the book is just a bit too long and too involved but certainly well researched - great respect for the author.… (more)
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maryreinert | 1 other review | Sep 11, 2022 |
maryreinert | 1 other review | Sep 11, 2022 | Lists
Caucasus (1)
Eastern Europe (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 28
- Members
- 925
- Popularity
- #27,745
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 20
- ISBNs
- 100
- Languages
- 6
Artemesia is a comprehensive work of research about this remarkable artist. Book One 'The Great Adventure' covers the traumatic period of Artemisia's childhood and adolescence. It begins with her father's loving relationship and enthusiasm for teaching her everything he knew about painting; covers the death of her mother and Artemesia's subsequent role as assistant to her father now bad-tempered, abusive and ungrateful; and goes on to the complete breakdown of that relationship when the family honour (yeah, *sigh* I know) was besmirched by her rape by Agostino Tassi, a family friend who was also an artist.
The book devotes many pages to the ins and outs of the trial that eventuated when her father Orazio took Tassis to court because he had lied about the death of his wife and could not marry Artemisia. This humiliating exposure of what had happened, made messier by the fact that Artemisia had subsequently consented to a relationship with Tassi in the hope that he would marry her, included her torture to 'prove that she was telling the truth' (only to show some pages later, that torture failed to get the truth out of a 'witness' who was an abject liar). TBH I tired of it all. It seemed a rather heartless retelling in which the political and legal machinations swamped the real story of a young girl's trauma, her attempts to come to terms with it and the lack of support from anyone, and that includes the live-in female friend of Orazio, Tuzia.
Because that real story explains why, when she made her subsequent career as a successful artist, so many of her works feature violence.
Book Two opens with the marriage that was engineered so that her father Ortazo could offload the 'spoiled goods' and she's in Florence, seemingly happily married with one son and another baby on the way.
Far be it from me to argue with a scholar who spent years researching this book, but I fail to see understand how Artemisa could have had no notion of luxury when part of her father's scheming to restore their position after the embarrassment of a notorious trial was to parade her prowess as an emerging artist in front of Scipione Borghese (yes he of the Villa Borghese and its sumptuous gardens). I bet he was dressed in rare cloths! Look at those skirts in Ottavio Leoni's portrait!!
Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (by Ottavio Leoni)
Yet this 'calm and softened' wife and mother, naive about luxury and power, produced the artworks you can see in the slideshow on my blog. Her works feature Biblical stories and mythological themes, and a shocking number of them feature women as victim and women wielding knives in revenge. Influenced at first by Caravaggio, she eventually developed her own naturalistic style of dramatic realism.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/02/04/artemisia-1998-by-alexandra-lapierre-transla...… (more)