In The Midst of Madness, This Portrait of a Belgian Noblewoman

Meet the Baroness Catherine de Baré Comogne and her "sex weapon," whose portrait I will sadly never own.

Everything is sort of horrible at the moment. To escape reality, I have been obsessing about how I might decorate a very small apartment on a good street in Paris that I may or may not be moving into some time in the next few months. It’s one of those apartments that is like a puzzle, or maybe a riddle: can I have a bed and also a place to sit, work and…