0036 National Gallery

A ‘School of..’ painting, it’s sometimes on display, sometimes in the ‘Secondary Collection’; rather like its subject, it’s subject to circumstances beyond its own control. But this is no pupil’s homage to the master; quite the contrary. He’s telling us something very clearly – but, he’s just not telling us exactly what he’s telling us - as might a living artist tell for a curator’s fussy footnote; all the ‘program’; it’s art, you have to look… So shall we start from foreground? It’s a horizontal canvas, a road runs straight across; in the middle of the road a golden-haloed, blue-robed saint is being stabbed. The helmeted pair of ruffians are clearly sent by secular authority to do the deed; this we may guess. The saint at this sharp freeze-frame moment, leans slightly back – not aback in reaction or retreat; but rather, to make it easier for the knife to do its work. Had the painting been two centuries later, the gesture would be called ‘Baroque’: he, leaning back, open hands, as if he’s yielding up an acquiescent soul; surrendered faster than a prayer, faster than a plunging knife. Might we so wish to go? His priest companion (they wear the Order's colours) will I think be questioned sharply by the Order’s Governor: is he simply fleeing for his life? Is he running off for help? But that’s not likely, since there are would-be witnesses right by the roadside there; or does he in his wisdom know that what will be, will be? (In which case, did he really need to flee?) That’s something, someone at the time would know; It adds to the irony – we’re disturbed; the victim’s not… And now a further very visual paradox: right beside the road, two woodcutters are at work; swinging their axes, quite oblivious - not, as hoping to be spared, as in ‘didn’ see nuffin, gov…’; maybe they knew they weren’t the target? It’s more as if they represent a world apart; chopped trees an allegory of life cut down to other world's decree; but did the artist have to make this quite so blatant? Another disturbing paradox still unresolved. And then, in this strange painted layer-cake of world on world, the top, green layer: the sloping verdant hill, serene in the lush and dreaming, radiant peace of summer nature undisturbed; here, nothing untoward has happened; ever might; beauty’s unimpaired. From this strange layer-cake of art, we’ll take some indefinable visual memory out into the street - saints live, saints die; man’s work goes on; and nature, simply, is.