I was exploring Google’s Arts & Culture app and the #selfie is a brilliant way to allow people to engage more with artworks. Sadly, I could not find my art doppelganger as my location does not allow the feature. However, I know my doppelganger is Gustav Adolf Mossa’s Elle. Here is she is all her unscrupulous glory, the femme fatale, Elle
Gustav Adolf Mossa, Elle, 1905, Oil and gilt on canvas, 80 x 63 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice
Depicting the epitome of 19th century beauty, Elle has milky white skin and a curvaceous figure. However upon closer inspection, Mossa has included stark clues which make Elle a lethal beauty. Her necklace is embellished with murderous weapons: pistol, dagger, and poison capsule. Elle’s head is crowned by a halo, inscribed with a quote from the Roman poet Juvena “hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” “What I want, I order, my will is reason enough.” Here, it highlights, the capricious nature of the femme fatal, she is not driven by a logical motive, a reaction to something. Instead, she behaves so, she crushes the mount of corpses, because she simply wants to. The murderess’ legs show bloody imprints of her victims’ hands, a testament to her erratic devastation. Her eyes too, while holding the viewer’s gaze, are impassive, contrasting with the bloody contortions of dead beneath her.
Next to skulls are two ravens are sitting on her head. Since medieval times these scavengers are considered birds of death. However, in Nordic mythology, the ravens Huginn (from Old Norse “thought”) and Muninn (Old Norse “memory"or “mind”) fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to the god Odin. They are keepers of knowledge and secrets, similar to the pre-Christian symbolism of the snake.
Elle depicts another animal; a black cat in her lap. The black cat, associated best with witchcraft and ill-fortune, symbolises the dark nature female sexuality, as well as the Elle being a keen, nocturnal huntress.