Saints, stories, and allegories

Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations. Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.
~Diane Ackerman

I winged it for Art Thursday and ended up with a selection of European paintings from the 1500s and 1600s featuring interesting women (and one skull).

Vanitas Bust of a Lady
1688
by Catharina Ykens II, Flemish painter

Artemisia Drinking Wine Mixed with the Ashes of her Husband, Mausolus
1620s
by Filippo Tarchiani

Saint Catherine
circa 1505-10
by Fernando Yanez de la Almedina

Dulle Griet (Mad Meg)
1640s
by David Teniers the Younger

Allegory of Fortitude
circa 1568-72
by Michele Tosini