- Saint Lucy lost her eyes, then they were restored. This is a detail of a painting by Francesco del Cossa, in which Lucy has two sets of eyes, one set here on this branch she holds. (The others are in her head, gazing over at these because who wouldn't gaze at these?)
Last night I finished Ali Smith's novel How to Be Both—and now I am going to read it again in reverse order.
"Who says stories reach everybody in the same order? This novel can be read in two ways," the book says right at the start.
Depending on the copy you buy—the printing was randomized—you either first encounter the story of a real-life 15th-century painter, or you first encounter the story of the teenage British girl whose mother has died shortly after they've gone to visit the works of that real-life 15th-century painter.
Or you can choose. The book also says right at the start:
"In one version, EYES precedes CAMERA. In the other, CAMERA precedes EYES. The stories are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order. Eyes, camera. Camera, eyes. The choice is yours."
The book is plain terrific. Smith has the language and the wit and the heart. But my god, the paintings.
The artist is Francesco del Cossa. His people and gods and animals and planets are right on the edge of two spectacular eras in art. They're rooted in the Gothic, in those cool gorgeous golden-haloed icons of old. But they buzz with warm pagan humanism, too. They're the very dawn of the Renaissance.
And they are odd. So fantastically odd!
For instance: In the world of del Cossa, there is a great big slimy snail in the middle of the Annunciation.
- Mary to Gabriel: My, that's a big snail you've got there.
Saint Lucy often holds her eyes on a platter, but del Cossa transforms them into surrealistic flora. Below is the whole portrait that's excerpted above.
- Francesco del Cossa's Saint Lucy.
In How to Be Both, the mother of the teenage girl first sees a del Cossa painting from afar, online. She tracks down what she can about the artist, but there's not much, really only one surviving letter from him in which he asks the duke he's working for to pay him more than the others because he believes he's better. From what I can gather from reading about the various artists who worked in that palace, del Cossa was better. The duke said no.
Here's part of the work that del Cossa wanted more for. This is the vision that inspired the mother and daughter to take their final trip, and this is also the picture that made novelist Smith look up from her art magazine and declare that she had to see it for herself, and write a novel about it.
- When Venus triumphs, there are threesomes.
Del Cossa's paintings are full of details. Above, you might be able to make out the man in the lower right part of the upper right band of action. He's wearing red. He's groping the crotch of a woman wearing aquamarine. There's another woman on his arm. They have an audience. All right, then.
I cannot offer you a better art rabbit hole for this holiday week. Some possible avenues to follow:
This is Ali Smith telling the story of her discovery and voyage.
This is a meditation on that singular snail.
This is the technical saga of restoring the worm-eaten del Cossa painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
