“Researching my thesis. The proposal is due next week and I’m looking for examples.”
“Of what?”
“Influencers.”
He blinked at her. “Excuse me?’?”
“It’s a four-syllable word, Knightley. Not Latin.” She stopped in front of another painting.
“You’re looking for influencers in European Paintings and Sculpture.”
“Yes.”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “And what exactly is the topic of your thesis?”
She straightened from where she had been reading a plaque on the wall, a smug grin on her pink lips. “It’s called: ‘The Birth of the Influencer: Art Patronage from the Renaissance to Today.’?”
“What?”
She looped her arm in his, directing them forward as she spoke. “So, you know what an influencer is, right?”
“I’m thirty, Woodhouse. Not a hundred.”
She patted his hand. “Okay, then you know how they’ve built an entire industry around the idea that brands sponsor social media content. Some of these people are making millions of dollars by taking photos of food or beauty products or whatever and posting them. But their careers only exist within that ecosystem. There are no influencers without sponsorship.”
“Okay.”
“So how is that any different from the patronage of the arts that drove the entirety of the Renaissance? Like, they had the Catholic Church, and we have coconut water, but when you think about it, they’re both spending money on imagery created by others that advances their own interests. So why not examine them in the same terms?” She stopped and turned to him. “It’s brilliant, right?”
She stared up at him and bit her lip, trying to hide her excited smile as she waited for his reaction. He had to admit, he would have scoffed if anyone else had tried to describe the idea. But there was something about her sincerity that gave him pause. His gaze slipped from her green eyes to her lip caught there in her teeth, and he felt something tighten deep in his gut.
He looked away quickly and cleared his throat. “It’s… interesting.”
She sighed and started into the next room. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘genius.’?”
He chuckled and followed her.
Another gallery opened in front of them, the walls lined with another array of artwork. Knightley knew this room, if only because of the painting staring at him from the opposite wall.
“I think that’s my favorite piece in this place,” he said.
Emma stopped, looking up at the painting that held his attention: Gustav Klimt’sMäda Primavesi.
It was large compared to the others on the wall, its colors vibrant and almost otherworldly even from across the room. But it was the subject that made Knightley pause, just as it had on every other visit for the past decade: a young girl standing in what appeared to be her bedroom, one hand on her hip as she stared defiantly at her audience. It was as if they were merely her subjects. A small queen ruling over her own small kingdom.
“She’s always reminded me of you,” he said.
Emma tilted her head to the side, taking in the canvas. “How so?”
Knightley paused, suddenly at a loss of how to articulate it. “This small girl that doesn’t know she’s small.”
She turned to him, an eyebrow arched high on her forehead as if she was offended.
He chuckled. “I just mean… she commands the room. The confidence… Klimt didn’t shy away from it. He celebrated who she was, proved how being confident and bold was something beautiful.”
Emma’s gaze returned to the painting.
“I wonder if he painted her again as an adult,” Emma said, more to herself than to him.
