Learning with the U3A – after retirement

The Virgin and Child with St Catheriine and others

A wonderful painting of over 500 years ago and a “Dark Lady” Feminist of 411 years ago … these are the things we learn about in the U3A Art and Literature Group, tutored by the extraordinary Grace Carmichael:

1. Just imagine, 411 years ago, a voluptuous young woman Emilia Lanier was a favourite companion of Queen Elizabeth I – she was one of the gayest young women in the inner court.

Emilia Lanier was much more than that …. She is thought to be possibly the mysterious Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, She was the first woman in England to publish books of her own poetry, written to seek wealthy patrons.

She could in fact be also thought of as the Germaine Greer of her day – a public feminist long before outspoken feminism. This is what she wrote about men in 1597:
Forgetting they were born of woman, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women they would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a final end of them all, do like vipers deface the wombes wherein they were bred.

Despite all the hazards of Elizabethan England, including poverty, plague, and persecutions Emilia lived to the ripe old age of 76. She was some woman.
2. It is the oldest master work in the Queensland Art Gallery’s collection - The Virgin and Child with Saint James the Pilgrim, Saint Catherine and the Donor with Saint Peter.
Thought to be from 1496, Artist unknown. Egg tempera or a tempera emulsion on a gesso ground on oak panel. Purchased by the Gallery Foundation in 1980 with funds from the Utah Foundation.
We were told of this by group member Yvonne Butler, now living in Toowoomba, who for 15 years was a Queensland Art Gallery Guide. The painting is poignant for its expressive faces, the reality of the baby nuzzling into its mother’s cheek, the baby Jesus portrayed as a true baby in the way it is being cradled, St Catherine holding the ring of knowledge, and the little dog’s look of faithfulness.