Nabokov's works include many references to painters and paintings, real and fictitious. A number of these passages refer to existing painters and their work. However, some of the paintings referred or alluded to may be nonexistent. In this section, the relevant passages are presented (in a chronological order) and an attempt is made to match or link these descriptions with the individual works of these painters. (Painters who are mentioned without a specific reference to their work are not listed in this appendix.)

‘La Venezia’.

Page 92: ‘the portrait of a woman by Luciani’.

Artist: Fra Sebastiano (Luciani) del Piombo, c. 1485-1547, Italian.

Title of work: Portrait of a Young Roman Lady, c. 1512, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Page 100: ‘Flemish canvas with the Holy Family in the foreground, against a smooth, limpid landscape’.

Page 101; ‘a Madonna with an azure corona, by the delicate Raffaello’.

Artist: Raphael (Rafaello Sanzio) 1483-1520, Italian.

Title of work: Madonna in the Meadow, 1505 or 1506, Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna Comment: Raphael painted many Madonnas, several of them against a blue sky. The selected one has a sky of a tender blue.

Page 101: ‘Bernardo Luini … His best Madonna has long, caressingly lowered eyes, and her apparel has light-blue, rose-red, misty-orange tints. A gaseous, rippling haze encircles her brow, and that of her reddish-haired infant. He raises a pale apple toward her, she looks at it lowering her gentle, elongated eyes – Luinesque eyes’.

Artist: Bernardo Luini, c. 1481-1532, Italian.

Title of work: Madonna with Child, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Page 101: ‘the foggy, yellow skating rink of one of the Dutchmen’.

Artist: Hendrick Avercamp, 1585-1634, Dutch.

Comment: Avercamp painted many winterscapes. Some of them have frozen lakes and rivers of the same amber colour as the sky above, as The Delights of the Winter, c. 1610 (Mauritshuis, The Hague) which shows many skaters as well.

Mary

Page 36: ‘Böcklin's The Isle of the Dead’.

Artist: Arnold Böcklin, 1827-1901, Swiss.

Title of work: Island of the Dead

Comment: Böcklin painted five variations on this theme, all with the same title, Die Toteninsel. The

first version (1880) is in the Kunstmuseum Basel.