PROLOG 

My life changed at the beginning of September.

How simple— for just a few hundred Czech crowns a month, I have a companion.

And I can even master the time travel.  

 I pay for a clever little helper who has seriously intensified my pace of work. Unfortunately, there is a downside: I now have to carefully schedule my swimming, time with friends, and walks in the woods. So these lazy little moments of CARPE DIEM now go into my weekly wall calendar in advance. I keep an eye on every free minute, just in case I might accidentally waste it.  

Of course, you already know how I spend my time these days. No surprise here. I spend a little less time looking at the apocalyptic news from the real world. And although I had promised myself to look mainly forward and not dwell too much on the past, with my new helper I somehow slipped, almost unnoticed, into the magical world of the Old Masters.

I dug out some old black-and-white photographs from my archive, taken years ago by my father and by my friend, photographer Ctirad Motl (my thanks to him here).

And then I went wild.

Suddenly, I found myself modelling for the world's most famous painters and photographers.

Sometimes in their paintings, sometimes in front of their cameras.

It all began in fifteenth-century Florence, the heart of the European Renaissance. I've always loved animals, as you already know.  When Leonardo saw me with my pet—an ermine—he simply couldn't resist, and I had to sit for him. 

And so my modelling career began.

About twelve years later, Leonardo made me famous for a second time—this time as the Mona Lisa. Being the model of such a demanding painter was no easier the second time around. He wanted an unmistakable, mysterious smile from me, one that would become a historical riddle. Well, what do you think—did we pull it off?

I even had to travel all the way to Paris with Leonardo, where we finally completed our masterpiece in 1516. Today, it seems that hardly anyone can imagine Paris without me and the Eiffel Tower.

I then settled in Paris for a while. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as a passionate reader, I captivated the painter Léon François Comerre. My French was getting better and better, and I was allowed to read while posing. And there was certainly plenty to read—he had an entire library at home!

Well, the end of the nineteenth century was a busy time. Suddenly, there were so many brilliant painters!

The dreamy, airy paintings of the French Impressionists captivated me too.

And since I loved a glass of absinthe, it wasn't difficult to get acquainted with up-and-coming painters and move effortlessly in artistic circles. I would sleep in late, wake up fresh as a daisy, and pose for them in the afternoons.

For you, I've chosen a portrait of Jeanne (that's what they called me in French), painted by Auguste Renoir, as an example.

But wait! My friend Paul Gauguin dreamed of exotic places. Hanging around Montmartre every evening was not enough for him. He longed for the opposite—He was obsessed with finding paradise, just like I was.

For several weeks, he tried to convince me that perhaps we could start looking for paradise together. Eventually, I gave in. And so we set off across the Pacific Ocean, all the way to Tahiti.

On those paradise islands, Paul's way of seeing the world began to change. . He began to see colours differently, and he quickly traded the little details, dashes, and dots of the Impressionists for abstract forms that allowed colour to stand out more strongly.

It was, in short, the age of Post-Impressionism.

And now I'll tell you something a little spicy. I had to pose for him—just like the local girls did—naked.  ( in today's world, it's not that simple anymore.)

I'm now hanging in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The curators, just to be on the safe side, have covered my breasts with a scarf..

JEEE! I almost forgot… Between 1665 and 1667, I popped up north for a while and practised my Dutch in the beautiful city of Delft. I lived in the large house of the painter Johannes Vermeer, helping his wife with the housekeeping.

Well, I wasn't exactly brilliant at that job, so I was quite happy whenever Johannes took me up to his attic studio. For an hour of posing by the window in the late afternoon, he even let me borrow his wife's jewellery.

That's where I learned to grunt with a southern Dutch accent. It will come in handy a few centuries later, when I'm peeling potatoes at Vincent's place.

Since we're talking about jewellery, let me tell you about my golden period.

I simply let myself be dazzled by gold. My husband at the time, the Czech industrialist Mr Bloch, promised me before our wedding that I would be surrounded by magnificent gold jewellery. And he kept his promise. I had to travel all the way to Vienna, where he had it specially made for me.

And in return, I had to pose for Klimt.

Vienna during the Art Nouveau era—that was the cultural centre of the world! I even have photographic evidence of my modelling session.

By then, I was right in the middle of Vienna's cultural scene, so it was only a small step to agreeing to pose for Alfons Mucha, a native of Ivančice.

He had a distinctive, elongated format for his paintings, loved beautiful, romantic dresses in every pastel shade, and always brought seasonal bouquets to the studio. Everything had to be perfect—the dress, the flowers, and me.

And to convince me that it was really worth it, he assured me that I would hang in museums all over the world. He even promised to introduce me to Sarah Bernhardt and take me with him to Paris.

Well, tell me—who could resist an offer like that?

I'm heading back to the south of France, this time for the colours. I had heard about a painter who nearly went mad over them—Vincent van Gogh. He had left grey Holland for sunny Provence.

I wanted a portrait of myself glowing in the middle of a field of sunflowers. But Vincent convinced me that my beauty would get lost among those magnificent flowers. So instead, I posed for him back in the Netherlands, peeling potatoes.

Poor man didn't have a penny to his name, so I felt sorry for him. And I was afraid that if I refused, he might, in desperation, cut off his other ear.

My itchy feet and feminine energy lured me to Mexico. Mexicans have a truly exquisite sense of colour, and there I met an extraordinary artist—Frida Kahlo.

Under her guidance, I managed to create this cheerful and colourful self-portrait.

After World War II, I travelled all the way from Mexico to New York, where a new artistic movement was emerging—POP ART. Andy Warhol, originally from Slovakia, was just beginning to experiment with a completely new way of portraying people.

After Marilyn, he wanted to paint a brunette for a change. So he chose me.

Our collaboration was rather brief, though. Andy was quick—the portrait was finished in no time. And I eventually made my way all the way to Australia. Today, I'm hanging in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the country's capital.

 Technology changed, and the world moved on from painting to photography.

I spent part of my childhood in Afghanistan, where the American photographer Steve McCurry discovered me while working on a story for National Geographic. 

It took him a little while to photograph me—less time than posing for Leonardo, but still slower than Andy.

Wondering why? Those colours again.

First, Steve had to find a bright red scarf and have the wall behind me painted in a complementary colour. Originally, he was looking for a girl with green eyes, matching the colour of the wall. But, you know—he might have been searching the Hindu Kush for quite a while.

In the end, my portrait turned out so well that the magazine put me on the cover. And thanks to that photograph, Afghanistan came to the attention of millions of people. In a way, the two of us were helping to bring Afghanistan into the world's attention. 

Over time, the photograph became one of the most famous photographic portraits in the world.

My photograph may not hang in any museum,  but thirty years later Steve found me again and brought along a film crew. They made a documentary about what had happened to me in the years since the photograph was taken.

Well, you can't stop progress, can you ?

EPILOGUE

Although I enjoy posing, the world moves on. Today, hardly anyone knows how to paint a portrait, and with just a few words, you can create a photograph. No need to wait, either—you have it on your screen almost instantly, assembled from ones and zeros.

In the past, a painter first had to imagine their vision, then search for it on the canvas, experiment, make corrections, and start all over again. A photographer, just like a painter, had to know something about composition and wait for the right moment, the right light, and the right expression.

And so I wonder whether the new generation, growing up in a virtual world, might miss out on one of the most beautiful things about art—the creative process itself: the searching, the experimenting, the mistakes, and the joy of finally managing to bring your own vision to life in a work of art.

After all those centuries of posing, I suppose it's time to move on.

Where AI will take me next, I really have no idea. 🎈

Maybe there's an abyss or a huge rock ahead of me. 

Or perhaps I'll stumble upon a green paradise.

 Who knows?

Všechny fotografie jsou na této stránce vytvořeny s pomocí umělé inteligence.