You Are A Fifteenth-Century Flemish Painting. What Is Your Name?
You are a big grand triptych, richly oiled, new beautiful in Ghent. Big shadows, careful hand, full of foreground, smeared with blending, the best smell in church, and a big fabric on your head, velvet heavy, perspective caught and cracked open, plane shattered, wet on wet on oak. You are gilt gilt gilt, emblem added, finger-blotted, over a big guild, merchants looking at you, new merchants emerging. It is the fifteenth century and the merchants are emerging. The merchants are emerging out of the fifteenth century. They are a new class. The new class of the fifteenth century is here, and they’re merchants, and they want art. The merchants are kicking their way out of the fourteenth century and linking elbows until they turn into leagues and market towns. The merchants are wrapping dense fabrics around their foreheads and thinking about acting on behalf of a principal. The merchants are spilling out of lines of credit and offering a courier service and they want tall paintings of their wives Barbara, with the long neck, symbolism in. The merchants’ hats are lined with fur and swollen with religious allegory, and you are covering it with your art mouth, your loom-whirring body, your multi-paneled hands. Your lines are precise, your strokes brushed through with Dutch-rich winter power, you are replacing land with money, you are technology already, you are big sad smart and Italy is too far away to kick-start you. What is your name?
Your Birth Month
January The Three
February Pastoral
March Adoration of
April Portrait of
May The Judgment of
June Sleeping
July Shepherd With a
August The Test of
September Death of
October The Temptation of
November The Bath of
December Madonna of
Birth Day of the Week
Sunday Ages of Man
Monday Solomon
Tuesday Self-Portrait
Wednesday Leda’s Children
Thursday Woman Inspired by Lucretia
Friday Study in Carnation
Saturday Receiving the Stigmata
Accompanied By [choose one]…
With a Woodcock
Truth, Folly, Allegory, Minerva, and Time
A Knight, Sleeping
An Egg
The Holy Family, passant
Bathsheba (allegorically)
The Seven Tears of Merciful Theseus
A Sparrowhawk
Mary of a Bigness
Cherubs
Pursued by The Deluge
Saint John the Baptist as a Boy (small)
Jethro’s Daughters Holding a Mirror
[Image via]
portrait of self-portrait! accompanied by egg, no doubt
Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia, Accompanied by the Pursuit of a Deluge