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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0036 National Gallery</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A ‘School of..’ painting, it’s sometimes on display, <br>sometimes in the ‘Secondary Collection’; rather like<br>its subject, it’s subject to circumstances<br>beyond its own control. But this is no pupil’s homage<br>to the master; quite the contrary. He’s telling us<br>something very clearly – but, he’s just not telling us exactly<br>what he’s telling us - as might a living artist tell<br>for a curator’s fussy footnote; all the ‘program’; <br>it’s art, you have to look…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So shall we start from foreground? It’s a horizontal canvas, <br>a road runs straight across; in the middle of the road<br>a golden-haloed, blue-robed saint is being stabbed. <br>The helmeted pair of ruffians<br>are clearly sent by secular authority<br>to do the deed; this we may guess. The saint<br>at this sharp freeze-frame moment, leans slightly back –<br>not aback in reaction or retreat; but rather, <br>to make it easier for the knife to do its work.<br>Had the painting been two centuries later, <br>the gesture would be called ‘Baroque’: <br>he, leaning back, open hands, as if he’s yielding up<br>an acquiescent soul; surrendered faster than a prayer, <br>faster than a plunging knife. Might we so wish to go? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">His priest companion (they wear the Order's colours) <br>will I think be questioned sharply by the Order’s Governor: <br>is he simply fleeing for his life? <br>Is he running off for help? But that’s not likely, since<br>there are would-be witnesses right by the roadside there; or<br>does he in his wisdom know that what will be, will be? <br>(In which case, did he really need to flee?) <br>That’s something, someone at the time would know; <br>It adds to the irony – we’re disturbed; the victim’s not…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And now a further very visual paradox: right beside the road, <br>two woodcutters are at work; swinging their axes, quite oblivious -<br>not, as hoping to be spared, as in ‘didn’ see nuffin, gov…’; <br>maybe they knew they weren’t the target? It’s more as if<br>they represent a world apart; chopped trees an allegory<br>of life cut down to other world's decree; <br>but did the artist have to make this quite so blatant? <br>Another disturbing paradox still unresolved.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And then, in this strange painted layer-cake<br>of world on world, the top, green layer: <br>the sloping verdant hill, serene in the lush and dreaming, radiant<br>peace of summer nature undisturbed; here, nothing untoward<br>has happened; ever might; beauty’s unimpaired.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From this strange layer-cake of art, we’ll take<br>some indefinable visual memory out into the street - </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">saints live, saints die; man’s work goes on; and nature, simply, is.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>