PORTRAIT OF JIM AMARAL AS AN ARCHEOLOGIST be its tomb. If sex seems momentarily to insinuate its claims, it will soon be reduced to impotence. Before the death that lies in wait, only writing, like its hieroglyphic metamorphosis, can offer her the eternity that is forbidden to the flesh. Here again, Isabella d’Este is presented as a creature of flesh and blood. e care she took in maintaining her beauty and, over time, in restoring it through creams and makeup, is well known. So much so that Pietro Aretino, that snake tongue, denounced the cos- metic excesses of which she was guilty. is Pompeiian atmosphere, between sex and ashes, alludes spontaneously to the oneiric universe of Jensen’s Gradiva ⁴. e read- er will recall that in that novel, a young German archeologist, Nor- bert Hanold, is obsessed by the image of a young woman he has seen on a bas-relief from Pompeii. After buying a reproduction of this young woman, whom he calls Gradiva, the young man has a dream in which he believes he sees her on the streets of long ago Pompeii before Vesuvius buried the town. When he returns to the place, in real life, he sees Gradiva in person. Later he will realize that the young woman was actually a beloved friend from childhood. In this manner, the young archeologist begins to return his lost love to the ruins of the ancient necropolis. at allows him to bring her back to life in his dreams, according to the analysis Freud set forth in his famous essay. A death and a burial enable him to establish the scenario for a resurrection, according to the structure of Jensen’s novel. is nar- rative device sheds light on Amaral’s drawing based on Da Vinci’s. All Isabella’s living traits have been eliminated: her luxurious hair, her silky clothes, her imperial gaze. All that remains is a pale profile punctuated only by a mouth. Of the portrait of the Beautiful Lady, all that remains is a marble profile, a shadow in Plato’s cave. But the operation’s success derives from the artistic act that resurrects the lost object of love, as Proust did. Amaral does not abandon a theme before working on its dif- ferent facets. He thus returns repeatedly to Isabella d’Este: Isabel- la d’Este Projecting her Death ( ; FIG. 226 ), Isabella d’Este in Tears (  ; FIG.227 ), or even Landscape with Isabella d’Este Descending (  ; FIG.225 ). Both these titles clearly convey the associations those canvases are meant to awaken in us: Isabella descending, like Eu- rydice, into the underworld of the dead, Isabella possessed by the obsessive dream of her own death. e semantic bundle is dense and suggestive. e idea of landscape, so evocative for Mantegna, is fo- . Portrait of Isabella d’Este, ‹€€-Š……. Leonardo da Vinci (Italy, ‹Š”). Sanguine and pencil on paper. Phot. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musee du Louvre) / Thierry Le Mage. . Landscape with Isabella d’Este Descending, €ƒ†. Š×š€ cm, pencil and watercolor on paper.