Word: genevi
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When Massine's company first got to Perugia, a Rome newspaper ran a picture of French Ballerina Geneviève Lespagnol going through her rehearsal paces in ballet tights. Since she plays the Virgin Mary, the picture created quite a stir. A deputation of five Dominicans came around to keep an eye on rehearsals, but the company's directors managed to reassure them...
Intently and seriously, Mère Geneviève studied the space for which she will design the stained glass. The brief journey from her convent at suburban Meudon involved a rare trip into the outside world for the 62-year-old nun who has spent 34 years of her life behind convent walls. Yet in the outside world she is fast becoming a celebrity. Artists and connoisseurs of Paris compare her work with that of Rembrandt, Durer, Goya. French countesses drive out from Paris to the convent at Meudon where she painstakingly turns out her strong, tortured etchings...
...chosen was not easy for Geneviève (the name she took as a nun, from the patron saint of Paris). Says the abbess: "Geneviève wanted to arrive all at once. She tried too hard." The rigorous austerities of the Benedictines, whose daily Mass begins at 5 a.m., broke her health;for 22 years she remained a novice...
Faith with Terror. Benedictine nuns specialize in making church ornaments, vestments and altar cloths. Geneviève's work was skillful, but it puzzled and confused the sisters by its harsh turbulence. One day an art collector named Dr. Paul Alexandre came upon some of Genevieèe's work at a church sale. Impressed, he began to buy it whenever he could; eventually, he slipped a book of Rembrandt sketches for her through the grill of the convent. Later, he sent her a printing press and etcher's tools...
Slowly and laboriously, cramped by rheumatism, Mère Geneviève perfected her technique of etching. Last year she completed her major work to date: a series showing the 14 Stations of the Cross, bound together in parchment with four other etchings. When Modern Painter Marie Laurencin saw the pictures, she was so enthusiastic that she begged the editor of Figaro Littéraire to let her announce her discovery. Her verdict: "[They have] the faith of the great primitives shining in each of their faces, with a terror that recalls only Goya." Almost overnight, Mère Genevi...