Emma Hamilton was not herself an artist. She was instead an actress by profession, but she would become the model of choice for a number of important artists of her time. Her career as a model actually began long before when the was still a child, and it was her beauty throughout her life that was the prime lure for various artists who wished to capture her on canvas. She would also be known for her part in a romantic scandal involving Lord Nelson, though her amoral exploits were also well-known long before that particularly celebrated instance came into being. She was also a close friend to the Queen of Naples, Marie Caroline, the sister of Marie Antoinette. The affair and other matters pertaining to Emma Hamilton would become matter for a number of books, novels, and films, some accurate and some highly inaccurate. A recent example is The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag, which drew on the story of Emma and William Hamilton for inspiration without trying to be a simple novelization of their lives. The novel offers an interesting portrait of the woman and her time and relates her to the art world of her time. It also serves as an interesting document in itself given that it was written by Susan Sontag, herself a noted critic of aesthetics. The story of Emma Hamilton appears to serve largely as a rationale for Sontag to reassess certain of her own ideas concerning aesthetics, the role of intellectuals in society, and the role of art in history.
It should be noted that Sontag does not treat her characters merely as vehicles for her ideas, and she does a good job of creating real characters on the page. The novel begins in Naples and for the first half tells the story of Emma and the Cavaliere, a British nobleman who is also the ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He is an art collector and noted connoisseur, and he becomes enmeshed with his nephew's former mistress, Emma, and marries her. Later, she will take up w...