Realism Over Flattery
A story about a painting from 1472.
The painting, which was relatively small, only 15 by 11 inches, had been hung in a secluded side gallery in the interior of the museum. On the map he had taken from a stand near the front desk, it was marked as Gallery 11. It had two entrances, both on its southern wall, which both connected to the same larger gallery, labeled, naturally enough, Gallery 10. Thus, standing inside the room, he had the sense of being in some hidden grotto of an ancient stone complex, an effect compounded by the slate-gray color with which its walls (and only its walls, not those of any of the surrounding Galleries) had been painted. The centerpiece of the grotto was an Ugolino polyptych, which took up the northern wall. Opposite this, hanging on the southern wall, between the two doorways, was a circular Botticelli depicting the Virgin and Child, with John the Baptist, who looked strangely child-like himself, intruding into the scene from the left. There was a bench positioned between these two pieces, and he sat on it and looked at them, and at the Pesellino on the eastern wall, a dense and vivid rendering of Melchior crossing the Red Sea. He did all this before returning to look again at the small painting he had first noticed when entering the gallery, which was hung in the northwestern corner of the gallery, beside a larger painting of around the same period, to which he paid no attention at all. It had been installed on a panel which protruded slightly from the wall, as if the curators had been afraid it wouldn’t be noticed otherwise.
The small painting, he learned from the wall label, was by Memling. It was a portrait of Gilles Joye, a canon in Bruges. The label also tells him that Joye was a composer, and was reprimanded by the church for living with a woman, and that Memling “favored realism over flattery.” As evidence for this, it points to the faint lines around Joye’s eyes, and it’s true enough: the man looks a little more tired and worn than one might expect. He has a long, pinkish face, with a large nose and small ears. He does not look like a type of person, but like a unique and specific man. He wears a simple fur robe. The delicate bristles of the collar are exactingly detailed, without insisting upon themselves. In the bottom left corner of the frame, his hands can be seen folded in prayer. On his left ring finger he wears two rings. The crest visible on the upper of the two matches the crest painted directly onto the image’s frame, on the middle left. Along the top and bottom of the frame, the year of composition and Joye’s age at the time have been indicated in Latin: 1472 and 47, respectively. The lettering looks like bronze or brass, the sort of characters used for inscriptions on tombs, but it is, of course, just paint.
He spends a long time looking at the painting of Joye. The expression on Joye’s face is mute, unreadable. He is looking diagonally outwards, roughly in the direction, extrapolating outwards into the real space the painting has been hung in, of the Botticelli Virgin and Child. He looks as though he is looking at nothing – which, of course, he is. Memling has painted him, atypically, before a featureless black void. Looking at this painting, the gallery seems to become very quiet around him. He stands and looks. He tries to ignore that his legs are tired and gently aching, as they always are in museums. It is an ache he is accustomed to. It is not important. Looking at this small painting, he feels that he is experiencing something which is important, although he cannot name it.
He thinks, This was a man who died more than 500 years ago.
He thinks, This man was a composer, and he was reprimanded by the church for living with a woman, and his hands are folded in prayer.
He thinks, There is only a black void behind this man.