Pauline (17)

Pauline is not the princess; she is not the queen: her role and the role of her servants goes beyond mere title. What she chooses to do is unopposable (her brother owns the continent) and while her power is identifiable as something massive massive, she herself remains undefined.
She waits for us there, smirking, perky breasts taunting us. She knows that she cannot be labeled, cannot be confined to an emotion, nor a single societal role. She needs not flight, as Apollo and Daphne, so serene is her prowess. Needs not the grimace and strain of David to flew her immense power. And so, her story is told in the stillness. In the light of this single candle, We approach her from behind, in the darkness beyond her grace (freshly carried from the baths in the sturdy arms of her extra-tall and especially exotic African bath servant). The golden light surely laps over the dark grey speckles emitted in shadow from the darker doorway we have entered from.
If we know of her, the featureless backside on that highly fashioned turkish cushion together would be a glare enough to humble us as we approach from the darkness. If she is new, then already her pomposity is a disturbance: we wonder in frustration why she deserves such a glorious position in the Borghese Gallery, reclining there without a myth or wreath to her name. Either way, Pauline elicits an extreme response.
But all of these presumptions as to her character are only confirmed as we round her hair, or her toes, and center in upon her two faces: the blank glower coming from her relaxed yet poignant cheekline and the cocky laughter of the two nipples on her bare chest.
Nothing moves. Though the pillow is soft, soft and enveloping as the whiteness it is made of, it remains still, holding her weight as though a pillar fashioned of marble. Her gown almost begins to flow, but it too is caught in the cold calm of its mistress. Here on the edges of the fabric, intricate detailing attempts a dance to free itself of the frozen nature so present on the rest of the relatively smooth figure. But all is under her control. Nothing will move, no candle, no tapestry, no foolishly soft pillow. No subject - this includes her husband Camillo - will move...until she does. And meanwhile, in the flicker and wave of the liquid-orange flame, Paulina's cool control, her wicked emotions dance like fire over the statue. The tension she creates is the same stone that holds the room still.