As I start to write these notes, I invoke the help of the nine sisters, the daughters of Memory and Thunder, to help with inspiration and remembrance: the muses. The Ancient Greeks, like many other cultures throughout the ages, considered creativity – creation – a gift beyond the ordinary, sacred and mysterious. Inspiration in humans was regarded as assisted by divine intervention. Poets, musicians, philosophers and scientists received guidance from gracious women residing on Mount Parnassus.

In modern art history, the muse is a woman close to the artist who acts as a source of inspiration, a model, a collaborator, and a provider of spiritual and material support. Reflecting social structures, the muse is usually a woman, excluded from artistic life and practice, while the artist is usually male. While some muses were content to be idealised and immortalised in artwork, the modern muse chose to break out of the limited mould assigned to her, that of an inspirer, in order to become the creator. The path to that other kind of immortality was not smooth.

Line of beauty

Beautiful women have always inspired painters to immortalise them on canvas, and it would not come as a surprise that the first qualification required of a muse is/was beauty. From Botticelli to Picasso, from Rubens to John Currin, the parameters of physical beauty are continually in motion, varying by culture, epoch and individual artist.

Simonetta Vespucci was considered the most beautiful woman of her time – the 15th century – and place – Florence. Known as La bella Simonetta, it is believed she was the model for several painters, featuring most famously in Botticelli’s Primavera and The Birth of Venus. Elegant facial features, symmetry, pale skin tone, hair colour and volume contributed to her aesthetic appeal. She tragically died at the age of 22, just one year after being proclaimed ‘Queen of Beauty’ at the jousting tournament of 1475, a fact that ensured her eternal youthfulness.

A spiritual relationship

The muse may or may not be a real person, and it is possible the artist has actually met her. It is part of the romanticism and the mystery surrounding the muse that she may be a real person or just an image, an apparition, a spiritual entity. Dante Alighieri loved Beatrice (Portinari?) all his life, and scholars are still in disagreement over her true identity. As beautiful as she is virtuous, Beatrice remains a symbol of courtly love and divine grace, a guide and inspiration for Dante.

Beatrice re-emerged in a painting by Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, modelled on his wife and muse Elisabeth Siddal. An artist and a poet, Siddal produced more than 100 works and was a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters before she met Rossetti, who forbade her to model for anyone else.

But often a muse worked her charms and inspired more than one artist. Elena Ivanovna Diakanova started her career as the muse, critic and wife of Surrealist poet Paul Éluard; they met in a sanatorium in Switzerland when they were both seventeen years old. During the marriage, the couple spent three years in a ménage à trois with German painter Max Ernst, an arrangement that suited Gala more than her husband. The marriage disintegrated terminally when the couple visited emerging artist Salvador Dalí, and Gala became his muse. She may have been, as some labelled her, more monster than muse, but Gaia could certainly spot talent.

Dalí became her project; she dedicated her efforts and managerial skills to their joint enterprise. Gaia was interested in money and men, and Dalí, who apparently abandoned the Surrealist dream to become ‘Avida Dollars’ (the nickname given to him by fellow painters), eventually provided her with plenty of the former and gave her the freedom to pursue the latter.

The muse becomes the creator

Reclining nude on a recamier, attended to by a black maid bearing flowers, Manet’s Olympia gazes directly, almost challengingly, at the viewer. The same woman is seated naked in the centre of another Manet painting, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Her bent leg and elbow resting near her knee create an illuminated triangular focus to the composition. Relaxed, almost detached, the woman turns away from her fully dressed companions to stare uncompromisingly at the viewer. The model is Victorine Meurent, an accomplished artist. She was a professional cancan dancer, performing in New York with a troupe; she sang, she played and taught the violin and guitar. Above all, she was a talented painter whose work was exhibited at the prestigious Salon several times – including the 1876 Salon, when Manet’s work was rejected by the jury. Despite her success as an independent woman artist, Meurent is primarily remembered as Manet’s model and muse.

It was not unusual for an aspiring artist to start her apprenticeship as a model, observing and learning the master’s methods and techniques, especially if they couldn’t afford formal training. Some women became as famous as their teacher and mentor (lover or husband) and occasionally surpassed them, despite the obstacles presented by their master and a patriarchal society. But the path was long and full of obstacles. The list of artists who remained in the shadow of their partner is longer than the firmament of success.

In her early 20s, Dora Maar had already established a photography studio; her work was included in Surrealist exhibitions and galleries in Paris – she was one of the few photographers to exhibit. She was also politically mature and an anti-fascist activist. When she began her tumultuous relationship with Picasso, Dora Maar put her own career on hold. Instead of photography, she dedicated her time to painting, and especially to collaboration with Picasso on the work on Guernica. She shared with Picasso her knowledge of photography and politics and taught him the cliché verre technique. As Picasso’s main model, Dora was often represented weeping, as a symbol of human suffering – perhaps an expression of her response to his physical and emotional abuse.

Born in the same year, on the other side of the ocean, another Surrealist photographer and muse, Lee Miller, had a more successful career. She came to Paris to study photography with Man Ray and became his lover and muse, as well as his student. Thanks to promotional efforts by her son, who collected her photographs and letters, Lee Miller's work as a fashion and war photographer is well known today. In the last couple of years, a biopic film, Lee, directed by Ellen Kuras, and a solo exhibition at Tate Modern have further renewed interest in her life and work.

Muses are immortal

On a cold January day in 1920 in Paris, a beautiful young woman threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, killing herself and her unborn child. Jeanne Hébuterne was 21 years old and eight months pregnant; her lover, Amadeo Modigliani, had died two days previously, and she could not face life without him. Modigliani’s muse, Jeanne, was also a promising artist.

Assistant, collaborator, muse and mistress of Rodin, Camille Claudel – a talented and successful sculptor herself – spent the last 30 years of her life in a psychiatric hospital. Following her abusive relationship with Picasso, Dora Maar suffered years of mental health issues and abandoned photography.

Elisabeth Siddal and Edie Sedgwick (Andy Warhol’s muse) died of an overdose, 110 years apart.

As divine beings, the muses do not age and do not die. The inspiration sparked by real-life muses, and often their own creative work, makes them immortal too.

Notes

Camille Claudel: rediscovering a brilliant sculptor.