Gary Kirkpatrick
Portrait of a Sicilian Woman
This is a portrait of Deva Cassel (Rome 2004) in her role as Angelica Sedara in the Leopard, a 2025 television series. She played the daughter of a small town mayor who used his daughter’s stunning beauty to climb the social ladder. This was an effort in which she willingly participated, developing a character increasingly frightening. Aside from her beauty, I did this portrait because of the connection we have with the Leopard.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote The Leopard, published posthumously in 1958 after rejections by several publishers. It is the story of his grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, and the changes brought about by Sicily’s unification with Italy following Garibaldi’s 1860 invasion. In 1959 the novel won Italy’s highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012 the Guardian named it as one of the top ten historical novels of all time. The 1963 movie, starring Burt Lancaster, premiered in 1963 to wide acclaim. I have read the book, seen the movie and the series.
We met Lampedusa’s nephew in Rome in 1999. At the time Gigi was writing a book. My wife was hired to help him write English, which was not native language, Italian. Anyone who’s tried to write professionally in a foreign language knows how difficult a task this is. Very few, such as the Ukrainian/Polish born Joseph Conrad, has been able to do so successfully.
For more context:
Most days Gigi and his wife took us to a roadside bar to have a granita, in this variation an shaved iced coffee topped with thick whipped cream. Locals like our hosts as well as truck drivers passing through loved to stop at this bar for a serving of their coffee granita. At night his wife often made pasta using the fresh herbs from their garden. One night she made pasta palermitana. You pan fry breaded fresh sardines – being just small fish of a number of varieties – and then stir them into the pasta. It was quite the treat. We have since lost touch with this couple.
Going by train from Rome to their house in Modica we crossed the Messina Strait. Aboard the ferry we walked to the bar, where we saw what turned out to be arancini. Neither of us knew what they were but now an arancini stand is always our first stop when in that part of Italy. For those who suffer having never had the pleasure, an arancino is a rice ball. There are many variations. One is stuffed with shredded beef and tomato sauce, coated with corn flour and then deep fried as they all are. The corn flour gives an orange glow, thus it the name ‘arancino (singular) and ‘arancini’ (plural),’ ‘arancia’ being the Italian for the fruit of the orange tree. On the way back to Rome we had a great view of the smoking Stromboli volcano. There is a piping hot calzone-like stuffed bread named after the volcano.
Villa Szyja Światłowski,City Culture Park, Lodz
watercolor 21 x 30 cm/8.3 x 11.7′
This traditionally styled watercolor is a painting of the Villa of Szyja Światłowski, in Lodz, Poland. It was moved to its current site in 2008 as a notable example of the “świdermajer” architecture, a local style of wooden architecture. It was originally built at 18 Scaleniowa St, Ruda Pabianicka as a summer resort. It was fully restored in its current location.
The house is attached to the Central Museum of Textiles, together with relocated period houses beginning with the homes of 19th-century craftsmen. There is also a church and a tram stop building.
The initials FK are on the rear door lattice, representing the first owners of the house, Fajwel and Frajda Kossowski. It was always owned by Jewish families. After the Kossowskis, it was occupied by the Werners (1912–1920), Rozenbergs (1920–1921), Ciuki’s (1921), Birenbaums and Szotland’s (1921–1922), and lastly the Światłowski’s (1922–1939). http://www.muzeumwlokiennictwa.pl/public/informacje/about-villa,366
The Central Museum of Textiles is on the same site. It was established in 1960 at The White Factory, a complex of classic buildings erected by the family of Ludwik Geyer in the years 1835 – 1886.[1] It is considered one of the most beautiful and unique monuments of industrial architecture in Poland.” There is a four-wing mill, the Boiler House, two dust and two water towers. https://visitlodz.com/lodz-city-culture-park/ On the top floor is a large collection of some mighty ugly Communist era clothing. Elsewhere there are numerous examples of mechanical looms and other textile machinery.
Attempted theft of the crown of Empress Eugenia de Palafax y Kirkpatrick
The most famous Kirkpatrick is in the news. Thieves tried to steal the crown of Eugenia, Napoleon III’s third and last wife. Interrupted by guards, they left the crown behind. The crown has eight gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-heist-items.html Photo from the NYT article.
In a stunning raid, thieves broke into the world’s most visited museum at 9:30 am. They escaped with eight extremely valuable items of jewellery. Using a lift to enter, they cut through a window. After threatening the guards, who closed down the area, they cut into the cases, leaving four minutes later. The gallery alarms were broken but per France’s culture ministry the museum’s other alarms sounded and security forces were notified. A crown of the empress Eugénie was also taken, but was recovered damaged near the museum after the thieves seemingly dropped it. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7nrlkg0zxo
Back in Time
What amazes me about living in Valencia is how much is going on. We were back from Poland in time to: 1) attend a special performance of a traveling orchestra and chorus. They served up a fabulous Handel concert including seven operatic singers and a large chorus. 2) have a rice dish at the paella festival in the main plaza (Plaza del Ayuntamiento) and a Patatas Bravas (fried potatoes with a slightly spicy garlic mayonnaise sauce) festival at the port. 3) One of my large paintings for the Dones (Women) of Picanya was exhibited at the University of Valencia, where it joined its permanent collection 4) While we at the exhibition, nearby some fifty thousand demonstrated against the Provincial administration for its president’s failure to issue warnings in the floods of a year ago. 5) We attended the fund raiser organized by the International Women’s Club which the wife helped organize and to which I contributed a painting. They raised $7000 for several charitable organizations. 6) We’ve had numerous outings with friends and regular acquaintances, including intercambios (Spanish/English language exchanges). I probably missed something.
The Paella Festival
In English we typically refer to paella loosely as yellow colored rice with various meats and or seafood. In Spanish the generic term is arroces,” that is ‘rice dishes.’ In this area there are five main variations: Paella Valencian with chicken and rabbit, “Senyoret” (the Valenciano spelling). It is fish based. The shellfish is pealed for your convenience, making it less messy than the next one: ‘Mariscos.” Its shellffish is not pealed. Then there’s meloso, a soupy variation, and these days you can get a “vegetariana.” These were popular at the festival, except meloso, normally served just in winter, as is ‘arroz al horno, a rice dish baked in the oven and since it is not cooked in that big flat pan (called a “paella” in Valenciano) it is not technically a paella but it is an arroz.
There were a dozen or so other rice dishes I’d never heard of. One was ‘arroz de puchero.’ Puchero is a beef stew. Another was “Winter boneless chicken with fava beans.” I had one with smoked pork and boletes mushrooms, which has a very long stem. There was one with stewed pork and mushrooms in a brothy rice, not soupy like meloso and not dry like most rice dishes. I saw one with just mussels. It was not colored yellow- I’d never seen a white paella before.
If you can find a copy of Penelope Casas’ book The Foods and Wines of Spain you will find about 50 recipes. Each region has its own versions. The one Americans are familiar with comes from Galicia. It has seafood and meat along with red peppers and green peas. It is one of my favorites.
Musicaeterna Choir and Orchestra
One of the several concerts we attended was extraordinary, the best of its sort I’ve had the privilege to attend. The “Musicaeterna Choir and Orchestra) https://musicaeterna.org/ is a touring Russian group organized by its conductor Teodor Currentzis. Aside from the excellent orchestra there were seven singers, all women except one. The choir must have numbered 50 or more.
The operatic singers all entered and exited the stage at a dirge pace. The chorus filed in silently from four entrances, two at audience level and two from the area above the stage. It was all to dramatic effect. The vocalists were of all different sizes and shapes, from a tiny mezzo-soprano to the hefty prima donna whose bosomy boom knocked you off your.
Then came the hefty male, only a weight class below a sumo. Did he knock us over with the magnificent base you’d expect? Nay! He hit us with a falsetto, blasting his way through demi-semi-quavered crescendo after crescendo.
Meanwhile the first violinist’s lanky blond limbs and arms gestured like a rock bassist’s, as Teo flipped that baton when he had one while his tall self pointed here and there until the next singer arrived. Then he stood in the singer’s face while mouthing the words, baton flying still. The singers didn’t flinch, so obviously used to this odd behavior. Violating the normally staid norms was clearly part of the act.
Gary Bob says check them out!
The Demonstration
Here’s a good video of the demonstration
And last but not least, the exhibition:
The Poznański Palace in Łódź
Gary Bob says check this place out! (see last paragraph)
Izrael Poznański’s Palace is worthy of ranking with the most beautiful palaces of Europe. It was built from the profits of his fabric factories which used cotton in its many hundreds of mechanical looms. The palace is L-shaped. Mansard roofs, normally only see in France, dominate the exterior, along with numerous embellishments and top notch sculptures. There was a large botanical garden with some rare specimens. The Poznański family evacuated before the outbreak of the war. The Germans used the palace as its headquarters. The palace is now the museum of the City of Łódź.
“The thirty-six two-metre (sic) figures on the roof of the palace symbolise (sic) the power of the contemporary industry, trade, wisdom, and success; in their hands, they are holding attributes of hard work: cogwheels, bales of fabric, chains, hammers, etc. Among them, we can find workers, spinners, Hermes – the god of trade, protector of merchants, and Athena – the goddess of wisdom and art, adept at weaving.” https://muzeum-lodz.pl/en/o-muzeum/historia-palacu/
Inside there is a ballroom, a mirrored chamber and a garden with a glass ceiling. The Neo-Baroque dining and ball rooms are by the Łódź artist and painter Samuel Hirszenberg.
Our first in visit to Poland in 1998 https://garyjkirkpatrick.com/czech-epublic-to-poland-798/ This is from the emails I was sending out at the time, before there was such a thing as a blog.
Strolling Poland: My Short Book https://garyjkirkpatrick.com/visiting-poland-book/
About Gary Bob:
When we lived in Dallas back in the middle ages, a guy who called himself Joe Bob Briggs wrote a column for a counter culutre newspaper that also published Molly Ivan’s columns. His tongue in cheek reviews of drive-in movies were an absolute riot. A typical review summary might read: “No dead bodies. One hundred seventeen breasts. Multiple aardvarking.[a] Lap dancing. Cage dancing. Convenience-store dancing. Blindfold aardvarking. Blind-MAN aardvarking. Lesbo Fu. Pool cue-Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Tané McClure. Joe Bob says check it out.” By referring to Joe Bob I mean to imply that the palace decor is so way over the top that despite its excellence (for which his review movies were NOT known) that it deserves a bit of pull down. After all it all came at the expense of under compensated laborers working in a dangerous, unhealthy environment. Joe Bob had quite the career following his fu-filled frolics back in the mid-80’s. The palace is not large for a building of its type. The interior friezes are top notch but they are big and numerous out of all proportion to its overall size.
Woman at the Piano
These are preliminary to a possible larger painting to once again look at music. Strong blocks of color contrast against the shades of black in the piano and the colored shapes of the background. Even though version 1 is quite rough it’s still quite lively and perhaps even more so than than Version 2, which took quite a bit more effort.
The Jewish community of Lodz
Lodz is a Polish city seventy five miles southwest of Warsaw. Jews, mostly craftsmen and traders, settled in the Old Town section towards the end of the 18th century. Larger influxes came in 1793 and again in the middle of the 19th century, attracted by the rapidly expanding textile industry.
In 1825 Germans were invited to help industrialize the city. They championed the “Zagirez Treaty,” requiring that Jews live only on the southern edges of the city. But in 1862 the Jewish community obtained the right to purchase land and build anywhere in the city. Many more Jews came to work in the huge fabric factories. By 1914 175 such factories were Jewish owned. As a result of these developments Lodz had the second largest number of Jews in Poland, behind only Warsaw.
Following the invasion of Poland, the Nazis began to round up and deport this large and prosperous community. The Radegast train station was the major debarkation point. Today at the Radegast Memorial you see the bare wooden train cars the Nazis jammed full of people who could not sit for the duration of their journey, freezing in the cold months and boiling in the hot sun of summer, before they were enslaved or murdered.
You enter the memorial’s hall to find yourself in a long, large tunnel. On the walls they inscribed the names of victims, recounting the forced labor, starvation and other acts of inhumanity imposed upon these innocent victims. the horrific cruelty of which our species is capable.
The result: the Jewish population plummeted from 265,000,, constituting about one third of the population, to about 27,000 by the end of the WWII.
To the ever lasting shame of the Polish people, Poles inflicted post war pogroms on the remaining Jews. Polish soldiers, police officers, and others assaulted 7 Planty Street in Kielce. The house was occupied by about 160 Jewish holocaust survivors. They killed 42 and wounded 40, falsely accusing the occupants of child kidnapping. Another 2000 deaths occurred elsewhere in the country.
Never bear false witness.
Never forget.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lodz-poland-jewish-history-tour
Illustrations in pen and ink
Here are some of the illustrations from travels over the past twelve months.
Dylan: Then and Now, portrait in Conte
I did this drawing after watching Dylan, the movie. He stands in history as an important song writer and musician. Bob Dylan was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. The prize was awarded in 2016.