Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

the addition of Dirck van Baburen’s The Procuress (1622) absent in this Vermeer
but present in others of his works, underscores the erotic tension that the Dutch
painter has played down in his painting. Second, the recreation is “undermined by
the fact that the only tune Alba can play is infantile” (ibid), which highlights the
ridiculous nature of the whole enterprise. Finally, the mise-en-scène also includes
another Vermeer woman, the Woman in the Red Hat, who in the film is instigated
by van Meegeren to impede a relationship between Alba and the widower twins,
Oliver and Oswald. These three major changes not only intensify and multiply the
erotic tensions of Vermeer’s painting, but also highlight the gender roles by
emphasizing how the woman, who in the film is an invalid with an amputated leg,
is at the mercy of the man’s desire which she fulfills against her will.
It should be noted, however, that not all animations of images are
examples of dramatic ekphrasis. For example, Julie Taymor’s Frida (2002) also
animates many of Frida Kahlo’s paintings by having the protagonist(s), mostly
Frida herself, literally step out of the frame after a static representation of the
framed picture. However, here the animation of the picture does not contribute to
a filmic interpretation of the picture or scene but merely serves to anchor Frida’s
works within her biographical experiences.
A literary reinterpretation of the original image through an extended
montage of a tableau vivant occurs in Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel Goya oder Der
arge Weg der Erkenntnis. The novel has several different types of ekphrases of
Goya’s El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters; Capricho 43). The second one, which occurs in part three of the novel,
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