Friday 30 December 2022

1533) Joyce Redman

Joyce Olivia Redman (1915 – 2012). Anglo-Irish actress. She received two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in the 1963 film Tom Jones and the 1965 film Othello.

- "Diminutive, dynamic English stage actress with distinctive dark auburn hair..." https://www.picturesthattalk.com/death.php?deathid=333
- "The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93..." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/may/11/joyce-redman
 

 

1532) Albert Finney

Albert Finney (1936 – 2019). English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer (1960), directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in the theatre. He maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.

He is known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Two for the Road (1967), Scrooge (1970), Annie (1982), The Dresser (1983), Miller's Crossing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), Erin Brockovich (2000), Big Fish (2003), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and the James Bond film Skyfall (2012).
A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Silver Bear and Volpi Cup awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984), and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich (2000). He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical film The Gathering Storm.
 
- "Somehow his red hair, unusually long and wavy, made him look younger than in Charlie Bubbles, filmed three years earlier." https://books.google.it/books?id=KSCUDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT98...
 

 

Wednesday 28 December 2022

1531) Phyllis Calvert

Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill (née Bickle; 1915 – 2002), known professionally as Phyllis Calvert. English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.

In the words of an article by Michael Brooke for the BFI's Screenonline website: "Most of the time she drew what looked like the short straw, playing the 'good girl' in films that revelled in the exploits of her wicked opposite number, and it says much for her talent and charisma that she was able to hold attention in what must have seemed thankless parts – she herself acknowledged that 'I do think it is much more difficult to establish a really charming, nice person than a wicked one – and make it real'."
 
- "...the redheaded Miss Calvert was one of the cornerstones of Gainsborough Pictures..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../phyllis-calvert-87-virtuous...
 
- "Unaccustomed as it is to forthright speaking, Hollywood is in a pleasant dilemma over a red-haired Englishwoman named Phyllis Calvert." https://www.nytimes.com/.../phyllis-calvert-redhead...
 

 

Saturday 24 December 2022

1530) Ann Barr

Isabel Ann Barr (1929 – 2015). British journalist and writer involved in coining the terms Sloane Rangers and Foodies, in the early 1980s.

She began working in journalism working for John Anstey at the Telegraph Magazine and for Robert Harling at House & Garden, as well as helping Hugh Johnson, her cousin's husband, with his World Atlas Of Wine. She worked as a secretary at The Times and as a sub-editor at House and Garden magazine and the Weekend Telegraph magazine. She was features editor of Queen, then Harpers & Queen for which she was the deputy editor from 1971 to 1985. With Peter York, she co-wrote The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook which sold over a million copies. She followed up with The Official Foodie Handbook in 1984, co-written with Paul Levy. She was then Features editor of The Observer.
 
- "... had a pale face and red hair as a child..." https://thisquirkylife.com/tag/the-invisible-woman/
 
- "A pale-faced, red-haired child, widely known as Pannie, Ann Barr spent the whole of the Second World War in Canada." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Ann-Barr-journalist...
 

 

Thursday 8 December 2022

1529) Janet Munro

Janet Munro (born Janet Neilson Horsburgh; 1934 – 1972). British actress. She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and received a BAFTA Film Award nomination for her performance in the film Life for Ruth (1962).
Munro starred in three Disney films: Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Other film credits were roles in The Trollenberg Terror (1958) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961).
She was the daughter of Scottish comedian Alex Munro (real name Alexander Neilson Horsburgh) and his wife, Phyllis Robertshaw. She used her father's stage name professionally.

She was the first adult actress to be given a five-year contract by Walt Disney and the first English TV star to be importet by Hollywood. 


- "Disney found the emerald-eyed, auburn-haired Gaelic beauty on his casting tour of Ireland and England last winter."  https://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/.../march-2020...


- "Auburn hair" https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0613130/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

 


 


1528) Nancy Walker

Nancy Walker (born Anna Myrtle Swoyer, 1922 – 1992). American actress and comedian of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director. During her five-decade-long career, she may be best remembered for her long-running roles as Mildred on McMillan & Wife and Ida Morgenstern, who first appeared on several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later became a prominent recurring character on the spinoff series Rhoda.

Her last film was Murder by Death (1976), where she starred along with two other red-haired actresses, Maggie Smith and Elsa Lanchester.
 
- The caustic, diminutive Walker (in a gray wig, a rare departure from her signature red hair)..." https://neptsdepths.blogspot.com/.../oh-what-character...
 
- "A long-faced, red-haired petite actress..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../nancy-walker-69-of-rhoda-and...
 


 

Wednesday 23 November 2022

1527) Marie Tharp

Marie Tharp (July 30, 1920 – August 23, 2006). American geologist and oceanic cartographer. Along with geologist Bruce C. Heezen she produced the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor and Mid-Atlantic Ridge.


"With her red hair and tailored tweed suits, Marie Tharp reminded a lot of people of Katharine Hepburn.."


Oceanographer Bill Ryan described her as "a flaming redhead with a wide smile."



(Google Doodle dedicated to Tharp, showing
her at work with her red hair)

Tuesday 22 November 2022

1526) Cara Williams

Cara Williams (born Bernice Kamiat; 1925 – 2021). American film and television actress. She was best known for her role as Billy's Mother in The Defiant Ones (1958), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and for her role as Gladys Porter on the 1960–62 CBS television series Pete and Gladys, for which she was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy.

Williams married Alan Gray in 1945; they had a daughter, Cathy Gray, but the marriage ended after two years. Williams then married John Drew Barrymore in 1952. The marriage was troubled and they divorced in 1959. Their son, John Blyth Barrymore, is a former actor. Her third husband was Los Angeles real-estate entrepreneur Asher Dann; the couple remained together until his death in 2018, aged 83.
 
- "They both possessed red hair and the ability to contort their faces to comedic effect..." https://www.nickiswift.com/.../the-tragic-death-of-the.../
 
- "On her lunch hour, Cara is told by a wig salesman that her natural red hair should be replaced by a brunette wig, which Cara ultimately purchases." https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=jack&p=203...
 
- "Her red hair and colorful costumes also looked great in Technicolor." https://thetinseltowntwins.wordpress.com/.../rip-cara.../
 
- "Her comedic flair and red hair drew comparisons with Lucille Ball." https://www.amiannoying.com/(S(t3mhpspzaaa2vwv3fmvexost))/view.aspx?ID=53509
 

 

Monday 14 November 2022

1525) Isabella of Aragon

Isabella of Aragon (1470 – 1524), also known as Isabella of Naples. Duchess of Milan (by marriage) and suo jure Duchess of Bari.

A member of the Neapolitan branch of the House of Trastamara, her life was characterised by the political crises surrounding the Italian Wars. Isabella often found herself torn between her native Kingdom of Naples and her marital home of the Duchy of Milan, causing her to suffer personal and political difficulties. After a disastrous marriage and lack of support in Milan, she received the Duchy of Bari as her personal property. This change in circumstances gave Isabella the opportunity to form her own court as well as build up political support and security against the ongoing wars. These reforms along with her interest in arts and literature, resulted in Bari undergoing revival and refurbishment. During this period, she also concentrated on the education of her daughter Bona, who became Queen of Poland.
She was the second child of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria (who became King of Naples in 1494) and his wife, Ippolita Maria Sforza.
The only daughter from her parents' marriage, Isabella had two brothers: the elder was Prince Ferdinand (who would succeed their father to throne in 1495 but died one year later in October 1496) and the younger was Prince Piero (who was Lieutenant General of Apulia and Prince of Rossano, but died young of an infection following leg surgery on 17 February 1491). The siblings were raised alongside their cousins, the children of Eleanor of Naples, who included Isabella and Beatrice d'Este. Isabella had a particularly close relationship with the latter, developing into something of a sisterhood.
In 1480 she married her first cousin Gian Galeazzo Sforza, heir of the Duchy of Milan. They had four children: Francesco (1491-1512), Ippolita (1493-1501), Bona (1494, 1557, who became queen of Poland) and Bianca (1495-1497).
 
Isabella's appearance is somewhat disputed, due to the scarcity of her certain portraits. Some contemporaries describe her as particularly ugly.
She has also been suggested as the subject of da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
 
Lunette of Isabella of Aragon in the house of the Atellani, Milan. One of the few certain portraits.  

 
Here are some possible portraits of Isabella. For more information, see here
 
Lady with a Flea Fur, by Bernardino Luini


Portrait of a Lady, by Ambrogio de Predis

Virgin and Child, by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

Madonna Litta, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci

Possible portraits of Isabella and her husband Gian Galeazzo

 

Saturday 5 November 2022

1524) Nellie Melba

Dame Nellie Melba (born Helen Porter Mitchell; 1861 – 1931). Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early 20th century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town.

Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. Failing to find engagements in London in 1886, she studied in Paris and soon made a great success there and in Brussels. Returning to London she quickly established herself as the leading lyric soprano at Covent Garden from 1888. She soon achieved further success in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, and later at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, debuting there in 1893. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera.
During the First World War, Melba raised large sums for war charities. She returned to Australia frequently during the 20th century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house built for her near Melbourne. She was active in the teaching of singing at the Melbourne Conservatorium. Melba continued to sing until the last months of her life and made a large number of "farewell" appearances. Her death, in Australia, was news across the English-speaking world, and her funeral was a major national event. The Australian $100 note features her image.
 
- "Neither depicts the young Melba, with the electricity of her auburn hair and lively eyes, her majestic profile and frank mouth..." https://mahlerfoundation.org/.../contempora.../nellie-melba/
 
- "You cannot tell from the black and white images here that this lady had auburn hair nor that she was highly spirited with sparkling eyes..." https://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/dame-nellie-melba-at...
 


 

Thursday 22 September 2022

1523) Christopher Chataway

Sir Christopher John Chataway (1931 – 2014). British middle- and long-distance runner, television news broadcaster, and Conservative politician.

 

- "During his four-year international career as a runner, Chataway, nicknamed the Red Fox because of his ginger hair..." https://www.theguardian.com/.../19/sir-christopher-chataway
 
- "... with 300 metres to go, three men charged past him - the red-headed Christopher Chataway of Great Britain..." https://www.theguardian.com/.../nov/23/guardianobituaries
 
- "Chataway, his red hair bouncing with each jaunty stride, moved into the lead." https://books.google.it/books?id=fs7PCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT167...
 

 

Friday 16 September 2022

1522) Frances Clara Cleveland

Frances Clara Cleveland Preston (born Frank Clara Folsom; 1864 – 1947). First Lady of the United States from 1886 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897 as the wife of President Grover Cleveland. Becoming First Lady at age 21, she remains the youngest wife of a sitting president.

She was originally given the first name Frank, in honor of an uncle, but later decided to adopt the feminine variant Frances. A long-time close friend of her father, Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland met his future wife when she was an infant and he was twenty-seven years old. Cleveland proposed marriage to Frances in the spring of 1885 and they were married the following year, in the Blue Room of the White House. Cleveland was aged forty-nine, Frances, twenty-one.
The Clevelands had five children: Ruth (1891–1904), Esther (1893–1980), Marion (1895–1977), Richard (1897–1974), and Francis (1903–1995). British philosopher Philippa Foot was their granddaughter through Esther.
After her husband's death in 1908, Frances Cleveland remained in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1913, at the age of forty-eight, she married Thomas J. Preston Jr., a professor of archaeology at her alma mater, Wells College. She was the first presidential widow to remarry.
 
- "First came her coif, lovely auburn hair swept up from the forehead..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../a4a9bdf4-dd4b-11e3...
 

 

Thursday 15 September 2022

1521) Mary Curzon, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston

Mary Victoria Curzon, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston (née Leiter; 1870 – 1906). British peeress of American background who was Vicereine of India, as the wife of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India. As Vicereine of India, she held the highest official title in the Indian Empire that a woman could hold.

She was born in Chicago, the daughter of Mary Theresa (née Carver) and Levi Leiter, the wealthy co-founder of Field and Leiter dry goods business, and later partner in the Marshall Fields retail empire. On her father's side, she was of Swiss-German descent.
Mary was introduced to London society in 1890. She met a young man, George Curzon, a Conservative Member of Parliament who was thirty-five years old, had been representing Southport for eight years, and was heir to the Barony of Scarsdale. They were married in 1895.
Mary Curzon and her three daughters are considered to be part of the inspiration for the fictional characters Lady Grantham and her three daughters, particularly in respect to the inability to produce a male heir, and the importance of a woman's virtue in the Downton Abbey television series written by Julian Fellowes and produced by ITV.
 
- "She had a complexion of most delicate pink-and-white and her long hair was a shade of auburn with Titian glints." https://archive.org/.../2015.458978.Curzon---The-End-Of...
 

 
 
PS: please note that sometimes Mary Curzon is described as black-haired, like in the Wikipedia page about her.

Tuesday 13 September 2022

1520) Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke

Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke, 2nd Earl of Montgomery (1621 – 1669). English nobleman and politician. He was the son of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, and his first wife Susan de Vere.

His father and his uncle William were the 'incomparable pair of brethren' to whom the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected works was dedicated in 1623.
His paternal grandmother was Mary Sidney, sister of Philip and Robert Sidney.
 

 

1519) John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer

Edward John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer (1924 – 1992). British nobleman, military officer, and courtier. He was the father of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the maternal grandfather of William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.

In 1954 Spencer and Frances Ruth Roche, the younger daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy, were married in Westminster Abbey. They had five children, but the marriage was not a happy one and, in 1967, Frances left John to be with Peter Shand Kydd, an heir to a wallpaper fortune in Australia, whom she had met the year before.
 
- "He was slim and tanned, his red hair slicked back to frame his high forehead and his well-define features." https://books.google.it/books?id=22M-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT15...
 


 

Sunday 11 September 2022

1508) Charles, Count of Angoulême

Charles of Orléans (1459 – 1496). Count of Angoulême from 1467 until his death. He succeeded his father, John, and was initially under the regency of his mother, Marguerite de Rohan, assisted by Jean I de La Rochefoucauld, one of his vassals.

Charles commissioned the luxuriously illustrated Heures de Charles d'Angoulême.

Charles married Louise of Savoy, daughter of Philip the Landless and Margaret of Bourbon. They had two children: Marguerite of Angoulême and François of Angoulême, who became King of France as Francis I.
 

 

Saturday 3 September 2022

1517) Diane de Poitiers

Diane de Poitiers (1500 – 1566). French noblewoman and prominent courtier. She wielded much power and influence as King Henry II's royal mistress and adviser until his death. Her position increased her wealth and family's status. She was a major patron of French Renaissance architecture.

Her parents were Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint Vallier, and Jeanne de Batarnay. She became a keen athlete, and kept a fit figure by riding and swimming regularly, remaining in good physical condition for her time. She was educated according to the principles of Renaissance humanism, including Greek and Latin, rhetoric, etiquette, finance, law, and architecture.
On 29 March 1515, at the age of 15, Diane was married to Louis de Brézé, seigneur d'Anet, Count of Maulévrier, and Grand Seneschal of Normandy, who was 39 years her senior. He was a grandson of King Charles VII by his mistress Agnès Sorel and served as a courtier to King Francis I. They had two daughters, Françoise (1518–1574) and Louise (1521–1577).
Shortly after her marriage, Diane became lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. After the Queen died, she served in the same capacity to Louise of Savoy, the King's mother, and then Queen Eleanor of Austria.
Based on allusions in their correspondence, it is generally believed that Diane became the mistress of future king Henry II in 1534, when she was 35 years old and Henry was 15.
Despite his occasional affair with such as Philippa Duci, Janet Fleming, and Nicole de Savigny, Diane remained Henry's lifelong companion. For the next 25 years, she was one of the most powerful women in France.
When French experts dug up her remains in 2009, they found high levels of gold in her hair. It is suggested that the "drinkable gold" that she "reportedly" regularly took, believed to preserve youth, may have ultimately killed her.
 
- "Artists and poets alike have been unable to agree on Diane's hair color. I had always thought that it was strawberry blonde, a color between red and blonde, because of a locket at Anet." http://diane-de-poitiers.blogspot.com/.../dianes-hair.html
 
- "Two waves of reddish-golden hair showed from a snood of black silk mesh encrusted with pearls." https://lostpastremembered.blogspot.com/.../beauty-brains...
 
 
Diane de Poitiers' lock of hair



Painting by the school of Fontainebleau, 1590

Painting by the schoold of Fontainebleau

 

Friday 2 September 2022

1516) John Cairncross

John Cairncross (1913 – 1995). British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was alleged to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. He was also notable as a translator, literary scholar and writer of non-fiction.

According to The Washington Post, the suggestion that John Cairncross was the "fifth man" of the Cambridge ring was not confirmed until 1990, by Soviet double-agent Oleg Gordievsky. This was re-confirmed by former KGB agent Yuri Modin's book published in 1994: My Five Cambridge Friends Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller.
One of his brothers was the economist Sir Alexander Kirkland Cairncross (a.k.a. Alec Cairncross). The journalist Frances Cairncross is his niece.
 
- "But his broad Scots accent, red hair, rather bad-tempered personality and lack of social graces distinguished him from most of his contemporaries at Cambridge." https://www.cliomuse.com/imitation-game-turing-bletchley...
 
- "Cairncross... was a clever, rather frail-looking Scotsman with a shock of red hair and a broad accent." https://spartacus-educational.com/SScairncross.htm
 
- "That temperament, combined with his surname and his red hair, may better explain the nickname." https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../02684527.2022.2065613
 

 

1515) Rufina Pukhova

Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova (1932 - 2021). Russian memoir writer.

She was the last wife of Kim Philby, a KGB double agent who rose in rank through British Intelligence along with the Cambridge Five. She met Philby through George Blake. Pukhova and Philby married in 1971. She is the author of The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years (2000). Pukhova was born in Moscow to a Russian father and a Polish mother.
Before meeting Kim Philby, Pukhova worked as a copy editor in Russia.
 
- "Rufina was a red-haired beauty of 38 when she met Kim... She is now 61, with her red hair thinning." https://www-independent-co-uk
 
- "The funeral, attended by about 200 mourners led by Philby’s red-haired Russian wife, Rufa..." https://www.latimes.com/.../la-xpm-1988-05-13-mn-3510...
 

 
 
(PS: as you probably know, the name Rufina comes from the Latin rufus, red-haired).

1514) Christine Ell

Christine Ell. Owner of the club “Christine’s” in the Greenwich Village, which she started in around 1918/1919. She was also a member of the Prvincetown Players.

Ell was the illegitimate daughter of a Danish serving girl and a German army officer. When she and her family came to America, she was placed in service by her mother and step-father, then forced into factory work when she was still a child. Seduced by her step-father, a laborer named Lockhaven, Ell left home when she was 14 and moved to Denver, where she became a prostitute. Inspired by the lectures of Emma Goldman, Ell followed her back to New York.
She married Louis B. Ell, whom she loved, but had extramarital affairs with the two O’Neill brothers.
Charlie Chaplin cast her as “Louise, a Maid” in his 1947 film Monsieur Verdoux (1947).
According to historian Paul Avrich, the original of Anna Christie (from the 1921 play Anna Christie, by Eugene O’Neill) was Christine Ell. She is in part also the model for Josie Hogan, from another of O’Neill’s plays, A Moon for the Misbegotten.
 
- "Described by her friend Agnes Boulton as “tall and voluptuous, with the ugliest face ever seen on a woman … and the most gorgeous, the most wonderful pile of red–gold hair..." https://www.jeweltheatre.net/.../Character-Josie-Hogan.pdf
 
- "... she became friendly with Christine Ell, a flamboyant redhead who had just opened a self-named restaurant..." https://books.google.it/books?id=6e-GshOGqsIC&pg=PA149...
 
- "There Christine Ell, a cheerful red-headed woman whose husband was the stage carpenter for the Provincetown..." https://books.google.it/books?id=AdRw9A2a8K8C&pg=PA135...
 
“Interior with Group of People around Red-Headed Woman,” by Charles Demuth (1919). Ell is the red-headed woman.  

 
 
A photograph of a painting by Charles Ellis showing, from bottom left to right: James Light, Charles (“Hutch”) Collins, Christine Ell, “Jig” Cook, and O’Neill

 
 
Christine Ell as the maid Louise in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux

 

Thursday 1 September 2022

1513) Alan Berg

Alan Harrison Berg (1934 – 1984). American talk radio show host in Denver, Colorado. Born to a Jewish family, he had outspoken atheistic and liberal views and a confrontational interview style.

At age 22, Berg was one of the youngest people to pass the Illinois state bar examination and he went into practice in Chicago. However, he began to experience neuromuscular seizures and had become an alcoholic. His then-wife, Judith Lee Berg (née Halpern), convinced him to quit his practice to seek help. They moved to Denver, her hometown, and he entered rehabilitation voluntarily. Although he completed his treatment, he continued to be plagued by seizures. He was ultimately diagnosed with a brain tumor. After it was surgically removed, he made a full recovery. For the rest of his life, Berg wore long bangs to hide the surgical scars.
Berg was murdered by members of the neo-Nazi group The Order.
 
- "As a youngster, he had bright red hair and a temper to match." https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/alan-berg
 
- "He was flamboyant to say the least; six foot four, skinny as a post, with a shock of red hair, and long bangs, combed forward to cover a scar that he had from brain surgery." https://www.dailykos.com/.../-The-Nazis-Assassinated-My...
 

 

Monday 29 August 2022

1512) Angélique Paulet

Angélique Paulet (1592–1651). French précieuse, singer and lute-playing musician, one of the habitués of the famous literary salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet.

She often performed at the assemblies of the Chambre bleue by singing and playing the lute.
She was the daughter of the financier Charles Paulet, one of king Henry IV of France's secretaries. According to Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, Henry IV was assassinated (by François Ravaillac) while on his way to visit her.
The musical instrument angélique, which first appeared in Paris in the 17th century, may have been named after her.
 
- "... she was called La Lionne rousse and La belle Lionne because of her red hair and proud poise." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ang%C3%A9lique_Paulet
 

 

Sunday 28 August 2022

1511) Thomas Stafford

The Hon. Thomas Stafford (c. 1533 – 1557). English aristocrat involved in two rebellions against Queen Mary I.

He was the ninth child and second surviving son of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford and Ursula Pole.
In 1553 he travelled to Poland, obtaining the recommendation of King Sigismund Augustus who requested Mary restore him to the Dukedom of Buckingham.
Augustus's appeal appeared to have no effect. When Stafford returned to England in January 1554 he joined the rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt; this arose out of concern of Mary's determination to marry Philip II of Spain. The rebellion failed and Thomas was captured and briefly imprisoned in the Fleet Prison before fleeing to France. There, he intrigued with other English exiles and continued to promote his claim to the English throne.
Stafford was beheaded for treason on 28 May 1557 on Tower Hill, after imprisonment in the Tower of London. Thirty-two of his followers were also executed after the rebellion.
 
The portrait below is by Giovanni Battista Moroni.
 


 
 

Saturday 27 August 2022

1510) Isabella Jagiellon

Isabella Jagiellon (1519 – 1559). Queen consort of Hungary. She was the oldest child of Polish King Sigismund I the Old, the Grand Duke of Lithuania and his Italian wife Bona Sforza.

In 1539, she married John Zápolya, Voivode of Transylvania and King of Hungary. At the time Hungary was contested between Archduke Ferdinand of Austria who wanted to add it to the Habsburg domains (see Royal Hungary), local nobles who wanted to keep Hungary independent, and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent who saw it as a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. While Isabella's marriage lasted only a year and a half, it did produce a male heir – John Sigismund Zápolya born just two weeks before his father's death in July 1540. She spent the rest of her life embroiled in succession disputes on behalf of her son. Her husband's death sparked renewed hostilities but Sultan Suleiman established her as a regent of the eastern regions of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary on behalf of her infant son. 
The region developed as a semi-independent buffer state noted for its freedom of religion. Ferdinand, however, never renounced his claims to reunite Hungary and conspired with Bishop George Martinuzzi who forced Isabella to abdicate in 1551. She returned to her native Poland to live with her family. Sultan Suleiman retaliated and threatened to invade Hungary in 1555–56 forcing nobles to invite Isabella back to Transylvania. She returned in 1556 and ruled as her son's regent until her death in 1559.
Her siblings were Sophia Jagiellon, Sigismund II Augustus, Anna Jagiellon, Catherine Jagiellon and Albert Jagiellon.
 
by Jacopino del Conte

Isabella Jagiellon Holding a Fan, after lost original by Titian or Jacopino del Conte

Isabella Jagiellon Holding a Zibellino, by Jacopino del Conte