ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between Gertrude Stein's visual self and her writing, concentrating on one of the photos taken by Alvin Langdon Coburn and on 'Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia.' In one of the Coburn photos Stein can be seen in her Paris studio, sitting in a high Renaissance chair, facing the viewer with an expression of intensity and gravity on her face while a loose velvet garment drapes her body. In fact, the portrait hinges on the two women's overt or implicit acting out of the fantasy of Renaissance patronage, appropriating the intersection of art and seduction surrounding portraiture. A refined collector like Dodge is prone to the same malaise of the common woman who can afford only low quality goods—very likely never a work of art—and after her purchase falls prey to dejection at having spent her hard won money on inferior bric-a-brac.
