Diana Huntress

by Gianni Callari

Overview

Nice, France.

Eric maturo orafo estimatore di Cellini e Botticelli, ama condurre una vita riservata tuttavia partecipa a gare estreme che lo attirano come una droga. Il suo ideale è la donna snella dal ventre piatto, colta, con l'anima pura.

La separazione da Nadine che non ha rispettato l'accordo di non avere figli e che ingannandolo, è rimasta incinta, lo ha profondamente ferito. Frequenta Noor, danzatrice del ventre, e vive con lei un periodo felice ma la giovane viene uccisa ed è sospettato del delitto. Un amico avvocato trasferitosi a Nice con la moglie e la figlia Charlotte, lo invita nella nuova residenza. Charlotte prepara la tesi di laurea su Petrarca ad Avignon. La giovane avrebbe vissuto volentieri in quell'epoca per la purezza dei sentimenti esaltati dai poeti del Dolce Stil Novo. Nasce un feeling tra Eric e Charlotte che, oltre ad incarnare l'ideale femminile, colpisce l'uomo per il candore dell'anima ma questi è tormentato dalla differenza d'età. La "Costellazione del Perseo", gioiello realizzato per l'amata gli darà il coraggio...Con uno stratagemma, Charlotte riuscirà ad estirpare da Eric la dipendenza dalle gare estreme, inoltre scoprirà l'assassino...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475973648
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/05/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	118
File size:	2 MB

Read an Excerpt

DIANA HUNTRESS

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By Gianni Callari

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Giovanni (Gianni) Callari and Massimiliano (Max) Callari
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7363-1

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Chapter One

Space The Globe The European Continent France The Côte d'Azur Nice

This is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities of Europe. The historical side of town is known as Old Nice, and the modern part of town offers attractions such as La Tour Bellanda, the Marc Chagall Biblical Museum, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Museum Jules Cheret, the Museum of Art and History, and the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas.

Nice is also known for the Promenade des Anglais with its unmistakable, comfortable blue chairs scattered throughout the very long and elegant seaside boulevard; for the Casino Ruhl; for the Square André Masséna with the seven gigantic human figures created by Jaume Plensa, each of them illuminated at night; and for the department store Gallerie Lafayette.

The city and surrounding areas have been chosen as locations for moviemaking in many cinematographic productions. Some famous movies shot at this location are To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, La Nuit Américaine directed by Truffaut, The Transporter, and Ronin with Robert De Niro. Nice is also twin-city to two major U.S. cities, Miami and Houston.

I think that the people of the region, those called les azuréens, are all friendly, optimistic and fortunate, in part due to the positive impact of the enviable climate. The coast has a southern exposure and is bathed in sunshine from sunrise to sunset, facing a deep blue sea from whence a sea-breeze blows and mingles with the gentle land-breeze from the mountaintops. Even the winter weather, with its rainy or cold, windy days, is quite tolerable because this open area has the beneficial effects of a mild sea temperature and ample sunny spells.

Nice La Belle

"... and this painting is titled Tempête à Nice, a work completed by Henri Matisse in 1920.... Ladies and gentlemen, the visit is over, and on behalf of the museum's management we wish you all a nice day." Eric is accompanying his young niece, Andrée, and her husband George, who is originally from New Zealand; the young couple is visiting the Museum Matisse. They live in London and have stopped in Nice for a few days, then will continue their honeymoon in Italy.

"If you go to Florence, go visit the Museum of the Bargello. There is a wonderful Minerva in bronze by Cellini" Eric recommends with particular enthusiasm.

"If Uncle says so, it's something we cannot miss!" Andrée says to George.

"We will obey!" agrees George with a smile.

"Before you leave, stop by the jewelry store. There are two packages for you, my wedding gift to you," says Eric to the young couple.

"Thank you, Uncle. You're great!" says Andrée, hugging Eric with affection.

"But now, let's become commoners. Follow me to a little place in the harbor where you can eat excellent giant prawns. They call them carabineers!" summons Eric.

Andrée is particularly fond of her uncle. Through her husband, George, a publisher by profession, she managed to find a rare edition of a publication on jewelry art in medieval Europe.

She added to the itinerary this stop in Nice especially to hand over the book to her uncle, but also to receive the gift that Uncle Eric would surely have for them.

Eric is fifty-five years old; he is a goldsmith, engraver and jewelry designer. He follows in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather. He is a lover of beauty and likes to lead a private life. For several years he has, gladly and with great satisfaction, spent many sleepless nights in his laboratory working on a special project he keeps secret.

Goldsmithing is the art of working with gold, silver and platinum, to create bracelets, rings, necklaces and various art objects. It is closely connected with jewelry-making because gems, from diamond to topaz, from emerald to rubies, need to be mounted and supported by castings and cradles made from precious metals.

Gold is usually the metal of choice because its malleability and flexibility make it fairly easy – with experience – to work with, and it is also indestructible. From ancient times, the way to achieve utilization of this precious metal has been through fusion, while the techniques used for processing it are to chisel, filigree, mold, and cantilever. The chisel, in particular, is a tool resembling a small scalpel which allows the craftsman to work the hard stones and the various metals to compose the decorations and all the trimmings.

Eric is a connoisseur and admirer of the works of Benvenuto Cellini, an artist who led an adventurous and dissolute life, and was often banished from the city for his misdeeds. He was a goldsmith, engraver, sharpshooter, sculptor and writer. Cellini was known far and wide for his fights, escapes, lovers, and even a "daring" escape – as it was defined by historians – from the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, where Pope Paul III had ordered him locked up. Benvenuto's name was chosen by his father because he was expecting a girl, but a second male in the family was always il Benvenuto (well-received in Italian)!

Nomen omen, destiny in the name. In fact, in the courts of many rulers and popes, Benvenuto Cellini was a well-received artist, called on to make precious works of the goldsmith's art.

Chapter Two

The work by Cellini that attracts Eric in a very special way is the Nymph of Fontainebleau, housed in the Louvre. He is fascinated by that masterpiece of content and technique to the point that, every so often, he gets a strong and mysterious urge to see it again and cannot help but go to Paris to admire it once again.

The semicircular sculpture is unique for its monumental size, which measures more than four meters in length and two meters in height. It is a bas-relief in bronze, the preferred material of the artist. The Nymph was the artist's first large-scale bronze. He used the cire perdue, or lost-wax, process, casting the sculpture in several parts which he then assembled. This is a risky and laborious way of assembly which can cause the work to be damaged, even destroyed in some parts.

The represented nymph is Diana, the Goddess of Hunting. The sculptor accentuated the mouth of the nymph with a clear line below it, the curve in the middle of the lower lip, the dilated pupils, the manner in which the eyelids are drawn, and the tiny stripes indicating the hairs of the eyebrows. The body is slender and sinuous; the lissome body, and in particular the abdomen, is set off by tight parallel folds of drapery and volutes that represent water. The austere beauty of the face recalls antique sculptures, yet this stylized nude is redolent of sensuality.

The work was carried out at the request the French monarch Francis I, a great Renaissance patron of the arts who sponsored the school of Fountainbleau, near Paris, to promote the production of paintings, sculptures, frescos, furniture and other objects to enhance the culture of the Renaissance. Indeed, talented artists from all over Europe came together in that place to express their personality, skills, and artistic expression.

The bas-relief has been defined as an ode to feminine beauty, with this elongated, lissome, naked body surrounded by nature, flora, fauna, and water.

During his stay in Paris in the first half of fifteenth century, Cellini was a guest artist at the court of King Francesco I; the king commissioned him to decorate the Tympanum of the main entrance known as Porte Dorée of the Palace of Fontainebleau. The relationship between the sovereign and the sculptor deteriorated, though, and the work was never installed. Two years after the king died, Cellini left France. Eventually, Philibert Delorme of Lyons put it above the entrance to the Château of Anet, built for Diane de Poitiers, King Henry II's mistress.

The theme of this work of art was taken from a fresco by Rosso Fiorentino, a painter from Florence whose stage name was Giovan Battista di Jacopo. The fresco depicts the legend after which Fontainebleau was named: while out hunting, one of the royal hounds, called Bliaud (at times modified to Bleau), discovered a spring. Hence, it was named the Fountain of Bliaud. As in Greco-Roman art, the spring was personified by a nymph leaning against an urn.

In fact, Diana the huntress, protector of the nymphs, is lying next to the forest animals and has her arm around the neck of a stag, one of Francis I's emblems, a sign of auspicious welcome. The goddess Diana, whose name comes from Latin and means light, was a young virgin who was devoted to hunting and was considered the guardian of the nymphs, the young maidens avowed to chastity.

Eric compares and equals the beauty of the Diana sculpted by Cellini, to that of the Venus painted by Botticelli. The Birth of Venus is a work of large dimensions, a tempera painting on linen canvas made around 1485, which can be seen at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

For the graceful face of Venus, the artist, inspired by the female figure of the fourteenth century, chose the model Simonetta Vespucci, a beautiful but short-lived blonde girl who died at the age of twenty–three. Her extraordinary and unmatched beauty and candor were described and praised by the poets and artists of the time who had the occasion to see her.

The bodily form of the goddess, emerging from a shell, is clear, decisive, elegant, physical beauty, the expression and externalization of moral and spiritual qualities of inner purity, concepts and meanings that were expressed clearly by Plato's philosophical doctrine.

The long blond hair of Venus is made of gold, applied with a brush to bring out the shine and to give a soft and delicate sense of waves and harmony to the flowing hair. The goddess is impregnated by the breath of Zephyr, not by a sexual act, thus her purity remains intact. This Venus is a valuable interpretation of the female figure, a moral and universal ideal of beauty. Beauty not as it currently stands, not just outer beauty.

Other artists have expressed in their works great praise and exaltation of the female body by identifying and taking as the ideal model the goddess of beauty, driven by the concept of spiritual beauty and outer beauty, sculpting and finely working the hard marble, hollowing, removing from the block the superfluous matter, caulking, polishing. These sculptures include the Venus who holds the apple, located in Copenhagen, by Bertel Thorvaldsen, a Danish sculptor who when he arrived in Italy changed his name to Albert; the Venus of Callipygian, which is located in Naples; the Venus Pudica who covers her breast and belly with her arm, located in the museum of Athens; the Venus de Milo sculpted by Alexander of Antioch, located in Paris; and the Venus Italica, by Canova in Florence.

The goddesses are nude. The nudity of Diana and Venus are like an ode to purity, to the unadorned simplicity of the soul, because a pure soul does not need ornamentation. Both goddesses stand for innocence and chastity. Divine grace represented in extreme beauty, devoid of human passions. Purity in beauty and beauty in purity.

They represent the innocence of woman's ethereal soul, intangible, soft, yet like a thorny flower it pierces the body of the spectator, ruthlessly penetrating to touch his living soul, throbbing with vitality, strength, power and supernatural energy, to bring forth purity. Human action with divine effect.

A woman with these inner qualities is admired for her beauty. She is heard, breathed, touched and perceived. She is loved at a distance, the way a work of art is admired.

Chapter Three

Nadine was Eric's partner, with whom he lived and from whom he has now been separated for a while. She, a twenty-seven year-old Parisian woman with naturally long blond hair, is a much-esteemed dance teacher. He first met her after the ballet Giselle performed at the Gautier Theater by a touring company; she had a minor role, a young terpsichorean with the sacred fire of dance inside her, with a dream of making a gleaming career to become famous.

That night after the show, it suddenly began to rain and Eric had lingered to drink at the bar in front of the side-exit of the theater reserved for artists and professionals. The rain mixed with hail increased and made great noise when falling on the tin roof above the door. Each girl coming out of the theater in some way or another solves the issue of the rain, from the occasional rickety umbrella to the old cloak offered by the guard; others more fortunate were picked up by car or offered a ride to their colleagues.

Only Nadine remained without a ride. This great dancer who was able to obtain, after who knows how many tries, a contract to continue with the show the coming nights. Eric thought it a shame to leave her stranded and risk her catching a cold or something worse.

In one gulp, Eric swallowed the whiskey in the style of Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the OK Corral, jumped in the sporty car, and, with a skillful maneuver which violated the rules of the road, positioned the vehicle on the other side of the road. He grabbed the girl by the arm and firmly pulled her – kidnapping style – into the cab of the Jaguar without her being aware of the action. The heavy downpour had nonetheless managed to bathe her face and long hair, now literally dripping water onto her knees.

"This is not a kidnapping, and I apologize, but I could not shout across the street since I don't know your name, and I would have looked like a fool who wanted to pick-up girls," Eric assured her.

The girl, a little confused and trying gain her composure in obvious embarrassment, said, "Yes. Okay, okay. In fact, I want to say thanks ...! My name is Nadine...."

When they arrived at their destination, the girl's house, it suddenly stopped raining. "Could we meet again tomorrow?" asked Eric brazenly.

"All right. I'll call you at 9 a.m., if that's okay ...," replied Nadine.

"No, I'd prefer to be the one to call you. The wait makes me anxious, and this way I am sure that there will be a call ...," said Eric. And from that meeting, their love affair began....

"Ballet and dancing are not the same thing; ballet is more refined, a profound interpretation.... The dancer with her rhythmic movements interprets the music, following the cadence and the harmonious flow of the melody, stepping with light footsteps, her movements like the flame of a candle when it flickers moved by a gentle puff, by a breath, by a sigh. Believe me, they are not the same thing. The tree said once: the shadow is for everyone, but the fruits are only for those who love me ... and dancing is the shadow."

Eric won the girl over with his manner of sly storyteller, seductive snake-charmer, mellifluous magic-flute player, in short, a charismatic figure able to capture the attention of others, heard and followed by others, as it's happened in history with people like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Eric was very much in love with Nadine. The separation took place a few years later, and for a very specific reason, Nadine broke the agreement they had made when they started their relationship, namely not to have children. Eric was the one who'd suggested the ban for a simple and personal theory: he is convinced that pregnancy is detrimental to the silhouette of women with a particular physique, whose destiny is to sacrifice themselves and not become mothers.

He is a supporter of the cult of women with the flat belly. This is the first feature he seeks in a woman's physical appearance because this is the main feature of his ideal feminine image. He is not the only one to have this preference, but for Eric it's an important issue; he is manic and obsessive about it. He loves a woman not only for her physique but looks to her as a companion with whom he can talk and share everything, someone to admire for her intelligence, ability and sensitivity, thus the body, bearer of these qualities, must be a worthy and valuable guardian.

Nadine had all the features Eric admires in a woman, and she respected the agreement, and they were good together. Both were satisfied with the activities they shared, and everything was going smoothly until the day of deception. Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Nadine decided, for ulterior motives, to deceive him in order to get hold of his assets by demanding marriage after the baby was born. To satisfy her insane and morbid possessiveness, she would convince him and so have him forever. But her ploy was not successful because Eric's reaction was different from what she'd expected, and he immediately walked away.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from DIANA HUNTRESS by Gianni Callari Copyright © 2013 by Giovanni (Gianni) Callari and Massimiliano (Max) Callari. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

INTRODUCTION....................ix
THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER....................xi
Chapter I....................1
Chapter II....................5
Chapter III....................11
Chapter IV....................17
Chapter V....................21
Chapter VI....................27
Chapter VII....................31
Chapter VIII....................36
Chapter IX....................44
Chapter X....................47
Chapter XI....................52
Chapter XII....................59
Chapter XIII....................62
Chapter XIV....................68
Chapter XV....................71
Chapter XVI....................75
Chapter XVII....................77
Chapter XVIII....................79
Chapter XIX....................83
Chapter XX....................86
Chapter XXI....................91
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS....................99
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR....................101