‘Countess’ set for Norton Simon

The Norton Simon Museum recently unveiled a luminous painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, as part of a bicoastal art exchange. “A Lady Writing,” one of only 35 Vermeers known to have survived, will remain on view in Pasadena through Feb. 2.

But the museum is already looking forward to its first loan from another East Coast partner.

That will be “Comtesse d’Hausonville,” a three-quarter-length portrait by French neoclassicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres from the Frick Collection in New York. The image of a dark-haired woman in a blue silk gown, accompanied by two preparatory drawings, will be displayed at the Simon from Oct. 28, 2009, through Jan. 24, 2010.

Ingres was a leading artist of his day (1780-1867) whose portraits reveal his skill at draftsmanship and love of sensuous beauty. In the Frick picture, a 51 7/8 -by-36 1/4 -inch oil on canvas, he depicted the 27-year-old Louise-Albertine de Broglie in what Frick curator Colin B. Bailey calls “a tour de force of verism.”

Ingres spent six months on the painting and was delighted by its favorable reception, Bailey said -- particularly a politician’s note to the sitter stating, “M. Ingres must be in love with you to have painted you this way.”

The Norton Simon Museum loaned a Rembrandt to the National Gallery last year and planned to send five paintings to the Frick in October 2008, but that show was postponed.

Instead, Jacopo Bassano’s “Flight Into Egypt,” Peter Paul Rubens’ “Holy Women at the Sepulchre,” Guercino’s “Aldrovandi Dog,” Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s “Birth of St. John the Baptist” and Francisco de Zurbaran’s “Still Life With Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” will be on view in New York from Feb. 10 through May 10.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

From: Culture Monster: All the arts, all the time

For more, go to: latimes.com/culturemonster

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LA PLAZA

Ending violence against women

Posters such as the one above popped up on bus stops and billboards along my route to work across central Mexico City.

They feature men well known in Mexico -- journalists, sports personalities, actors and singers -- asking that their fellow males stop beating up and abusing women.

The captions on this poster say: “From man to man, more respect, let’s learn to listen to and work with women. Let’s be more fair, more like men,” and “Punches? Against a woman? Never!”

The campaign is being run by the National Women’s Institute in conjunction with the Nov. 25 International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It is great to see men on the side of treating women fairly in Mexico.

Amnesty International reports that nearly one in every four women in Mexico has suffered either physical or sexual aggression at the hands of an intimate partner. Some of the posters for this campaign claim that one in every two women is a victim of physical, emotional or sexual violence.

But it’s interesting that the minds behind this campaign chose to put men at the front of it. Do Mexican men need to be told by other Mexican men to stop beating up and abusing women? Is it not enough that women denounce the high levels of abuse and violence against females all the time? The idea behind the campaign, says the accompanying press release, is to fortify values and attitudes that favor eliminating violent behavior toward women and discrimination against them. But the message that some might take away from this is that only men have the authority to do so.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

From: La Plaza: News, links & observations about Latin America from Times correspondents

For more, go to: latimes.com/laplaza

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BABYLON & BEYOND

A handshake, then trouble

Two old men -- an Arab and a Jew -- shook hands in passing. An uproar quickly ensued.

Israel and Egypt made peace in 1978, but that historic treaty has never felt right to many Egyptians. So when Mohammed Sayed Tantawy, the grand sheik of the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo, shook hands recently with Israeli President Shimon Peres, the Arab media spun into collective titter.

The handshake took place at an international religious dialogue conference last month in the U.S. The United Nations-sponsored meeting was intended to promote understanding between different faiths, but the handshake, which was photographed and circulated, highlighted the animosities and divides defining the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“Shaking hands with the president of an occupier who usurped a Muslim land cannot be justified. The problem is that people consider Tantawy’s positions as representative of Al Azhar,” Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian Ali Laban told the Al Jazeera website.

For his part, Tantawy said he didn’t recognize Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: “I shook his hand without knowing what he looked like,” the sheik told the Egyptian media. “The handshake was in passing . . . because I don’t know him to begin with.”

Sayed Askar, a senior Azhar cleric, told the Arab media that the sheik “uses a void justification, which is that the Egyptian regime is in a state of peace with the Israelis. He considers himself a state functionary and sees no problem in receiving or shaking hands with the Jews.”

One critic suggested Tantawy should hire better handlers the next time he heads to an international gathering.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

From: Babylon & Beyond: Observations from Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Arab world and beyond

For more, go to: latimes.com/babylon