Pictured here with Hemingway at his home in Cuba is Adriana Ivancich, member of an aristocratic Venetian family. From the moment he met this young girl during his Italian stay in 1948, he was smitten, and for several years he carried on a platonic flirtation. The advent of Adriana marked the end of a dry spell in Hemingway's writing, and their relationship became the basis for the May-December romance portrayed in Across the River and into the Trees. Adriana also seems to have had a part in the making of one of Hemingway's masterpieces, The Old Man and the Sea; it was her stay with the Hemingways in late 1950 that provided the energizing lift that the writer apparently needed to begin this tale.
Hemingway with Adriana Ivancich
Unidentified photographer / Gelatin silver print, circa 1950
Image courtesy Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
