Doing The OED

I promised I'd blog the photo taken today on our visit to the Oxford English Dictionary. I was crouching so the Shorter OED display could be seen. All in all I think a very enjoyable visit.

Thios i Lar an Ghleanna

Nuala O'Faolain (1942-2008)

On Saturday, Nuala O'Faolain died. I've only just seen it as I looked this morning through the Irish Times online. Right now I am listening to her stunningly poignant interview with Marion Finucane, broadcast on April 12. Her talking about her room, saying goodbye to it, her books, her curtains, will break your heart in two. It has mine.

Read obits here here here & here. Then read Are You Somebody? (New Island Books, 1996).

For the rest of today I'm going to listen to Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, and then to Thíos i Lár an Ghleanna, the words of which I leave you with:

Thíos i lár an ghleanna, tráthnóna beag aréir
Agus a' drúcht 'na dheora geala 'na luí ar bharr an fhéir,
'Sea casadh domhsa an ainnir ab áille gnúis 'gus pearsa,
'Sí a sheol mo stuaim 'un seachráin, tráthnóna beag aréir.

Agus a Rí, nár lách ár n-ealaín 'gabháil síos an gleann aréir,
Ag éalú fríd an chanach agus ciúnas ins an spéir,
Órú, a rún mo chléibh, nár mhilis ár súgradh croí 's nár ghairid,
Agus a Rí na glóire gile, tabhair ar ais an oíche aréir.

Do chiabhfholt fáinneach frasach, do mhalaí bhán', do dhéad,
Do chaolchoim álainn mhaiseach agus glórthaí caoin' do bhéil,
Do bhráid mar chlúmh na heala, do shúil mar réalt' na maidine
'Gus faraor gur dhual dúinn scaradh, tráthnóna beag aréir.

Dá bhfaighinnse arís cead pilleadh 'gus labhairt le stór mo chléibh,
Nó dá bhfaighinnse buaidh ar an chinniúint, char mhiste liom fán tsaol,
Shiúlfainn leat fríd chanach, fríd mhéilte ar chiumhais na mara,
'Gus dúiche Dé dá gcaillfinn, go bpógfainnse do bhéal.

CJ Sansom, Revelation (London: Macmillan, 2008)

CJ Sansom has a doctorate in history from the University of Birmingham and is making jolly good use of it. He writes historical crime fiction. His detective is a lawyer called Matthew Shardlake who is working during the reign of Henry VIII. Revelation has just been published, the fourth in his a series of mysteries featuring the hunchback sleuth. I really enjoy this series and find these novels rather gripping. The plots are extremely good and Sansom sets up his stories within the wonderfully claustrophobic reign of Henry, where each wife is being beheaded one by one, and allegiances are shifting constantly. This creates a dynamic of mistrust and disquiet throughout that serves constantly to keep the tension levels high.

Revelation is the longest of the novels in the Shardlake series. In this novel Sansom is doing something a little different in that it is a crime with a distinctly modern edge. An old and trusted friend of Shardlake is horrifically murdered right at the heart of Lincoln's Inn. His widow asks Shardlake to help and he presents himself at the inquest to find out what happened. When the inquest is hushed up with indecent haste, it becomes obvious that greater powers are at work and he is duly brought before Cranmer who tells him that it appears not to be an isolated murder. Shardlake and Barak are taken into the confidence of the Archbishop. Their nervousness revolves around the king's recent interest in the widow Lady Latimer, Catherine Parr. These murders have a reformist edge and might be intended to throw an unfavourable light on her followers. But how can this be? The murders escalate quickly and a pattern begins to develop. It seems, in sum, that a serial killer is on the loose and he is constantly a step ahead of their every move. Can they act quickly enough to stop the escalation, and how can this be kept from the king. Not only is the novel fascinating for the usual historical, contextual detail, but they way that Shardlake and Dr Malton try to get inside the mind of the killer is also wonderful. They are proto-profilers, on the one hand trying to understand the killer and on the other trying to help a young man who has become paralyzed with guilt and remorse and in danger of getting himself burned at the stake for unauthorized preaching. Can they bring him round in time?

Dissolution (2003) is the first in the series of Shardlake mysteries. We are introduced to a hunchback lawyer who has been charged with a delicate matter. Thomas Cromwell is attempting to get the monasteries to accept the King as head of the church. Most are complying, but the political connections some of the monasteries have are, too, posing problems. So when the monastery of Scarnsee, on the Sussex coast proves difficult, a commissioner is dispatched to put some pressure on the abbot. Things begin to go very wrong when the commissioner ends up murdered, actually, beheaded, and the high altar has been desecrated with a sacrificed rooster. Cromwell needs to know what's going on, who killed the commissioner, and most importantly, he needs the abbot to sign papers relinquishing the monastery. So far so good. Shouldn't be too difficult to find out who did this. It is, after all, a closed-room mystery, more or less. And there aren't that many monks. But Shardlake gets a fright when people start to die around him, and he looks himself to be a target. With pressure mounting from Cromwell and a killer getting closer and closer to killing him, Shardlake desperately does not know who to trust.

Dark Fire (2004) is the second in the series and sees Shardlake return after having been left in peace for three years. A strange case comes to his attention. A young woman has been accused of murdering her young cousin, throwing him down a well. She has refused to say anything, and will soon be put under peine forte et dure in order to confess, to innocence or otherwise. But there's something odd about her silence that puzzles Matthew. The case is hopeless. She will die under the torture and the case will amount to nothing. Until, that is, Cromwell intervenes. He needs Matthew, known for his acumen and discretion, to investigate something. And he has put pressure on the judge to give him ten days grace to do so. The book proceeds, then, with the two stories running parallel (a common thread through Sansom's plotlines). Cromwell has been given to believe that some ancient formula for dark fire has been rediscovered in the cellar of St Bart's in London. He has even been given a demonstration of how it works. And he's convinced. Finding himself increasingly out of favour with the king, he sees this as his chance to become a trusted member of the inner circle again. Shardlake's mission is to find out how progress goes on Dark Fire and to get ready for the demonstration before the king the following week. Straightforward enough. Except, the very first people they interview, the makers of this dark fire, have been brutally murdered just moments before they arrive. And Shardlake, along with Cromwell's assistant Barak, must find out whether there is any substance to the claims for Dark Fire and just who is behind these brutal murders? The brutality of the killings, and the fact that Shardlake himself gets closer and closer to becoming his next victim, keeps the pace up, and all the while political chaos is gradually unfolding. Cromwell's grip is giving way and his impending downfall provides a brilliant backdrop for the denouement.

Sovereign (2006) is the third in the Shardlake series. The action is set in the Autumn of 1541 and the Progress to the North, culminating in the submission of the rebels in York. Shardlake has been entrusted with a secret mission to keep an eye on a prisoner with sensitive information. He must be kept alive long enough for questioning in the Tower and what information he has must be extracted from him (without killing him). When a glazier has a fall and makes some enigmatic remarks to Shardlake just before he dies, things begin rapidly to get out of control. The murders become more numerous and the King is ever approaching York. Can he work fast enough to find out what is going on and get to the bottom of these killings, and how does this prisoner fit in to the puzzle? This, combined with the intense interest in the snippets of information from the highest men in the realm all leads one to feel that there might be a lot more than is at first evident. A mysterious package of documents containing astonishing information is at the heart of the matter. Can he recover these cursed documents, and worst of all, what will happen if he ever finds out what is really in them? Sovereign is marvellous for the way it sets up some very implausible claims at the beginning of the novel that gradually become less and less so, until the truth is so shocking and the consequences so terrible, perhaps it is better to know nothing. A nice problem for a lawyer.

I've greatly enjoyed reading these novels and highly recommend them.

More Medieval Madness

So my friend Kate and I went to Bennett & Kerr today and once we got in the door we began to resemble Mr Nicholson(above). There are just so many goodies in this place that I cannot begin to tell you about. When the printed catalogue arrived it had me foaming at the mouth. Very few of the books I wanted were actually there, which was disappointing but probably a jolly good thing. Neither of us knew exactly the road, but Kate's excellent friend, Mr Sat Nav, knew the way and gently guided us all the way. We were warmly welcomed by Marion, who made us tea and let us wander around like crazy feral children. Every now and then there'd be a gasp and the sound of another book being thrown greedily onto the 'maybe' pile. This was duly transformed into the 'must have' pile. I was delighted with my haul. Curry's Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences; Boitani's Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame; Coopland's edition of Philippe de Mézières' Epistre au Roi Richart; E.G. Stanley's Continuations and Beginnings. Overall, a very good morning's work. Kate picked up some marvellous things, valuable and interesting stuff. But I shan't say more about hers. It might be mistaken for envy.

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

Watch the first episode of Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press aired on BBC 4 on Monday 14 April and now available on the new iPlayer service. It's a lot of fun.

The one wot didn't get away

At last. Mine. Mwha mwha. Gorni's edition of the Vita nova. The 'Wants' section of Abebooks really does work. The email telling me a copy was available came first thing in the morning and I couldn't get my credit card out fast enough. This is really very scarce and I am delighted to have it. The book is what the Italians delightfully call intonso, meaning the pages are uncut. The bookseller's description might have been interpreted as saying that this was a fault with the publishers, on a par with the small tear on the cover. But I didn't care. I was so afraid that it would get here I said nothing until it arrived and it now sits on my desk. I also ordered a copy of Luciano Rossi's edition of the by Guinizzelli, Nuova raccolta di classici italiani annotati, 17 (Einaudi, 2002 [ISBN: 8806152696]). Very happy to have this too. My next big(ish) purchase will be Rosanna Bettarini's splendid two-volume edition of Petrarch's Canzoniere, Nuova raccolta di classici italian annotati, 21 (Einaudi, 2005).

Now running around making final arrangements for our Light conference tomorrow and Saturday. Looking forward to it, or I would if I could sit for a minute.

Poetry Now 2008

Over the past few days I've been going out to Dun Laoghaire to the Poetry Now 2008 Festival. It has been very worthwhile. And old and good friend was curator this year so I was going as both a moral supporter but also a bog standard member of the public, interested in the readings. On Thursday, Belinda McKeon gave a wonderful introductory lecture, 'Poem Springing', and discussed the idea of readings, citing Larkin's suspicions of readings. It was about poetry and diversity, the work of the ear and the work of the eye. [On the Poetry Ireland website, on the calendar of events, they've listed Belinda as reading her poem 'Springing', which I thought was a rather poetic misreading for her introduction 'Poem Springing'].

I got to several readings. Bernard O'Donoghue, Antonella Anedda, and Jamie McKendrick. It was such a pleasure. O'Donoghue is one of my favourite poets writing at the moment. He writes so beautifully about leaving home, about Ireland, about an Ireland of the 1950s that I recognize in veins of my own childhood, and in my own returns home. He helps me make sense of that and teaches me so much about the things I know so well they are a mystery. Anedda's work I did not know but found myself delighted to know it, and she was well served in the beautiful translations of the wonderful Jamie McKendrick. McKendrick occupies a space of happy Italian memories for me and to hear him read again made me think a lot about that time.

Later that evening, CD Wright and Seamus Heaney read. Wright's work, again (I say red-faced), I did not know and found it difficult and interesting and I enjoyed the hard work of it. Heaney was what he always is in readings: memorable, beautiful, modest, extraordinary. He read some new stuff, which was marvellous to hear.

On Saturday, I got to the final reading of the evening, Henri Cole, Mimi Khalvati, and George Szirtes. Again, this was an introduction to the work of Cole and Khalvati, but I shall certainly be reading more. And Szirtes read with that Central European urbanity that his poetry so beautifully expresses, the sadness of an exile.

Undoubtedly one of the highlights for me was meeting Alice Lyons, the poet and visual artist who was responsible for the fantastic Staircase Project in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. We'd been introduced as neighbours, and a moment's puzzlement led to a spark of mutual recognition where I was identified as "Miglior Acque"! That's a first. It was a beautiful evening and I am glad of it.

Thank you Belinda for putting together a fantastic festival, and thanks to the poetry, for being so good.

In Bruges, dir. & written by Martin McDonagh (2007)

I don't think that I ever want to meet Martin McDonagh. I don't want to meet him because I do not want to know what a man like that is really like. A genius. An extraordinary playwright, who turns his hand to making a short film, and wins an Oscar, and who turns his hand to his first feature and comes up with In Bruges. It is not easy to take all of that in.

In Bruges is quite simply a marvellous film. I went with no expectations; I'd read no reviews, and heard one good report from a friend. I knew that Colin Farrell was in it, which slightly put me off, given the silly public profile he has. And then he goes and pulls of a performance that was sensitive and wonderful.

Two hit-men, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) hide it out in Bruges after a botched job that has resulted in the death of a child, an innocent bystander. They are to await instructions from the boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), but neither have any idea why they've been sent. Eventually, Harry telephones Ken and orders that Ray be killed, for killing the child. "You can't go 'round killing children, it's that simple", he says later in the film. But Ray has already hit rock bottom, and just as Ken is about to shoot him, he sees Ray lift a gun to his head. He stops him just in time, Ray sees Ken with the gun, and realizes that a hit has been ordered on him. They sit and talk it out. This is one of the very powerful scenes in the film, where Ray explains that he cannot go on living with himself for the death of the child. He breaks down, crumbles really, and it's quite something to see how Farrell controls it. Ken wants to give Ray another chance, a chance to make things right, to do something good and so lets him go. He then rings Harry to say that the job has not been done, and gets himself washed and dressed awaiting the furious, murderous, psychotic Harry to come and kill him. The way that Ken resigns to Harry is heartbreaking and I think that Gleeson does it beautifully.

There are several more twists and turns, and I won't go any further because they are rather enjoyable. That's what's so interesting about this film. There's a huge element of caper about it: Harry says to the hotel owner, as he and Ray, armed, are confronting eachother: "This is the shootout!". That kind of funny, meta-fictional, postmodern cleverness is nodded at, but not allowed to overpower. He's actually just telling her what they're doing, not making a comment on the characters' fictional self-awareness. It's something that postmodern never is, sincere. The film is shot in the beautiful city of Bruges, and the setting is a huge part of the story. Ray hates it, Ken loves it, and Harry has sent them there because of a childhood visit he remembers with nostalgia. The city is almost another character. McDonagh has taken the quiet anonymity of Belgium, more precisely its best preserved medieval city, as this wonderful, unnoticed, ancient place. Ray, narrating at the beginning, says that he didn't even know where Bruges was, there's a pause as the audience asks themselves the same, and then he says: "It's in Belgium". Harry's wife has the same question before he leaves, "Where is Bruges anyway?".

I suppose that is what the film is about, places we don't go, or places we don't notice anymore. Ancient places. Like the extraordinary scene where Ray and Ken walk around the art gallery enjoying the torturous hellish Bosch and those images of death handing a note to a man, his time is up. The literalness of their lives, shooting people for money, is given this deeper texture through the allegorical figures in the paintings and they are faced with deep questions of justice, innocence and guilt. We are not being asked to judge the two as hitmen, since we're assured that most of the people they kill are bad, or have killed themselves. Even the priest has done something. But the innocence life of the boy can never be brought back, the injustice, the sin of it is somehow absolute, irrevocable. And Harry orders the hit on Ray not because he's dangerous to him, but out of honour. Ray killed an innocent boy and so must die. Ken knows that he must sacrifice his life to give Ray a chance, and it is his love for Harry and his sense of honour that moves Harry and prevents him from killing Ken. And then Harry, the most furious man in the film, perhaps turns out the be the most honourable man in it.

Ancient, beautiful, unnoticed places: honour, justice, innocence, guilt. Like Bruges.

English as a Foreign Language, or I Can't Live Anymore

The Space Between Words: Further Thoughts on Garage

Last Friday Garage was released in the UK, with a premier at the Curzon Soho and a Question & Answer session with Lenny Abrahamson, Mark O'Halloran and Anne-Marie Duff. I went down for it and was looking forward to seeing the film again. The questions afterwards were interesting to compare with what had been asked in the Dublin Q&A session I went to. It also provided the opportunity to hear Mark, Lenny, and Ann-Marie Duff talk about their own experiences with the characters. While the Irish audience was concerned and responded to the death of the small town, the English audience was far more struck by the language of the fim, its rhythms and cadences. I think that was an interesting thing to see and confirms in my mind that its spareness and its linguistic purity makes it universal. This idea of linguistic purity, of a spareness that highlights the simplest of words as being the most profound was something that struck me upon a second viewing. Josie has a way of internalizing the language of others that is just fascinating. And his way of saying 'Now' was noted at the Q&A. It is a very Irish thing. It can mean, 'I agree', or 'I don't agree', or a host of other possibilities somewhere in between. The way that Josie's language can fill with significance, however, renders that now into something more elevated. It seems to create a temporality around him where a past and a future have collapsed into a continuous present of observation and reaction. His friendship with David is wonderfully expressed in a scene in which Josie comments on the colour of the sky and David looks up, agrees, and describes it as 'beautiful'. Later, in the bar, Josie asks the barman did he see the evening sky, and is told that there was no time to be looking out at the sky. Josie says that it was beautiful. The lyric sensibilities of the barman do not stretch to sharing the moment and so Josie simply shares it with us. David has given him a vocabulary to describe what he had already noticed. Josie, who is training David in, showing him how to run the garage, is being trained by David in how to describe the world around him.

There's much more to say. The physicality of Josie struck me again, and the way in which this adds to his reality, to his thereness, his facticity, if that makes sense. His face is as expressive as a stream in which each character watches both himself and a reflection of the world pass by. Everyone sees themselves, or a fleeting image of themselves, in Josie. His otherness is us.

Go to see this film. You will not be sorry.

Meet Jo Bach

Experts have reconstructed the face of Bach from his bones, according to a recent Reuters report. The Scottish forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson did the work, and he's rather interesting looking, really. Very expressive. Though it does look a little like he's listening to a beginner play one of his cello suites!
Interesting how we often desire to have a likeness, to search for a good likeness of the face, for our heroes. (See the recent attempts to reconstruct the face of Dante, for example)

Ernesto Illy (1925-2008)

Ernesto Illy, the grandfather of coffee, died earlier this month. He combined a scientific rigour to the development and making of good coffee with a flair for style. A PhD in chemistry, experience on the road selling coffee, Ernesto became managing director of Illy in 1956, the company his father had founded in 1933.

From the Times obit:

'For him, the water temperature should be between 90C and 95C and the coffee the sand-sized grinds of exactly 50 beans roasted at 220C, with 25ml to 30ml of espresso then extracted from it under 9 atmospheres of pressure. The temperature of the coffee to be sipped must be between 80C and 85C, and Illy even designed the shape of a cup for the ideal taste. Milk and sugar he regarded as contaminants.'

Other obits can be read here & here & here.

Dante and the Church & Dante and His Literary Precursors, Four Courts, 2007

My prive scilence over the past few weeks has been due to a hectic HT, but I thought I'd better send a flare up just so that you know I'm alive. Things have been busy here this term, both teaching and getting to interesting lectures. Caroline Bynum Walker gave a lecture at Schools last evening entitled "Visual Matter: Christian Materiality in the Later Middle Ages". Fascinating stuff. Last week Derek Pearsall came to talk about the C-Text of Piers Plowman, a new edition of which will appear with Exeter UP next year. Greatly anticipated.

In other news: I just picked up s/h copies of these two collections of essays, each originally comprising lectures delivered at the Annual Dante Lecture Series at University College Dublin. This lecture series is the main outlet for Dante research in Ireland and its organizers and participants, as well as the UCD Foundation for Italian Studies, are all much to be commended. Both of these collections merit attention. I'm still making my way through them, but I greatly enjoyed George Holmes' 'Dante and the Franciscans' (pp. 25-38) and Alexander Murray's 'Purgatory and the Spatial Imagination' (pp. 61-92), a very fascinating and broad account. I am next going to read Catherine Keen's 'Fathers of Lies: (Mis)readings of Clerical and Civic Duty in Inferno XXIII' (pp. 173-207).

The other volume on Dante's literary precursors has twelve essays. Again, I'm still making my way through it, but have already greatly enjoyed A. Teresa Hankey's 'Dante and Statius' (pp. 37-50, though I'm unconvinced) and Peter Hainsworth's excellent 'Dante and Monte Andrea' (pp. 153-177, and I am convinced). Next will be Claire E. Honess, 'Dante and Political Poetry in the Vernacular' (pp. 117-151).

I guess the appearance to two volumes at once must have to do with the RAE last year. One curiosity (as opposed to a criticism): The Dante and the Church convention for citing the Commedia is Petrocchi's edition, but in Dante and His Literary Precursors, it is to Sanguineti's new edition. I'd love to know if there were any philological reasons for the discrepancy. Also it uses Gorni's Vita nova, and De Robertis' Rime, but in the SISMEL edition of 2005 rather than the 2002 Edizione Nazionale published by Le Lettere, while the Church volume simply refers to the Ricciardi Opere minori for everything except the Commedia. So between the two volumes, we're getting everything, I suppose.

A McGonigle Watch at Appleby's

I recently became interested in the work of the McGonigle brothers, Irish watchmakers. I get e-mail updates, and they recently let us know that they had left a watch into Appleby's in Dublin for viewing. Since I had never seen one in the flesh, I thought I'd go in to have a look. There are two, including a beautiful platinum model. They are just beautiful, incredibly poised in design and with a really dynamic face. They feel really modern actually, and quite edgy. This is all the more remarkable considering that they are so traditional, crafted with painstaking attention to detail. They make, I believe, about four watches a year. Money would be vulgar to talk about considering the kind of watch we're talking about. It's a work of art. That's all. If you're interested I really recommend a visit to see this marvellous watch.

I should also say that the chap who looked after me there, and I did not catch his name, but I should have thought he's an Appleby, was extremely helpful and courteous and spoke with care and in detail about the watches. I greatly enjoyed the visit, and was given good reason to trust them.

Call for Papers: Light: Aspects and Approaches

Another wot got away

I thought I nearly had it. A tad over-priced, but I was willing. Postage cost a disgrace, but that's the way of it. And then a message, the bookseller regrets that this book is not in place: it may have been sold to a customer who walked in off the street, or the seller's database has not been updated. So that's that. I know it will come up again; it'll be in the window of a charity shop, or I'll find it online again and I'll be that person who walked in of the street and gets it in time. Patience with books leads to good collections.

It was Guglielmo Gorni's edition of the Vita nova for the 'Nuova Raccolta di classici italiani annotati', published by Einaudi, in 1996 (ISBN: 8806132253). I must admit I find myself convinced by his renumbering of the chapters. Numerology is always a tricky one to argue, because it's so flexible and can be made to perform incredible acrobatics for you that just work somehow, but the patterns around the number 9 are very stimulating and compelling. See too his article ''Paragrafi' e titolo della «Vita Nova»', Studi di filologia italiana, 53 (1995), 203-222 for an account. There's something very economical about his argument and his critique of Barbi's assertion that the divisions are inconsistent in the extant manuscripts is powerful. (Cf. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta, 'From Manuscript to Print: The Case of Dante's Vita Nuova', in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. by Theodore J. Cachey, William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, 1 [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995], pp. 83-114, for another view, of considerably more shaky philological foundation).

But I cannot complain. Lately I've been finding some lovely things here and there. Kenelm Foster's The Two Dantes (London, 1977), in lovely condition, and a very good pb of his Petrarch (Edinburgh, 1984). The former I found before a visit to Cambridge last week. I took it as a good omen for my journey, and it was indeed a good omen. While in Cambridge I found a lovely copy of Gordon's The Double Sorrow of Troilus (Oxford, 1970), and Barron's Trawthe and Treason: The Sin of Gawain Reconsidered (Manchester, 1980).

Francesco Petrarca, De insigni obedientia et fide uxoria, ed. Albanese (1998)

This gorgeous little facsimile of Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 991, prepared by the excellent Gabriella Albanese was published in 1998 by Edizioni dell'Orso (Alessandria); she is also responsible for writing an introduction. It appears to be out of print now, but I shall certainly keep my eyes open for it as I'd love to own a copy. The manuscript is rather unusual in that it comprises just 22 ff of Petrarch's Latin translation of Dec X. 10, the story of Gualtieri and his patient wife Griselda. Very few single volume 'monographs' of the work exist, being much more frequently compiled with other material into a miscellany. Its format is unusual, 18 cm X 12.5 cm, written in a humanist script that is light and spacious.

"L'elegante mise en page del testo, infatti, vergato in scrittura umanistica, a piena pagina, con uno specchio di scrittura arioso, di gusto classico, il formato decisamente moderno e 'petrarchesco' di «libretto da mano» ne fanno un maneggevole libro di lettura, scritto al contempo con eleganza e chiarezza, che ripete da vicino teoria e prassi della riforma del libro voluta e imposta da Petrarca negli ambienti delle più avanzate avanguardie umanistiche" (p. 39).

Perhaps most interesting is its unfinished iconographic programme, with blank spaces at key scenes. Albanese includes an analysis of these empty scenes and a comparison with other illuminated manuscripts with pictorial representations of these very moments in the text. This is a fascinating study and a fascinating manuscript and both are worth looking at carefully.

Theory of Everything

Apparently, a surfer named Garrett Lisi has just discovered the Theory of Everything. And central to it is E8, a very complex group of symmetries that if written out in tiny print would cover the size of Manhattan. Needless to say, I have not got the foggiest idea what any of this is about. I just think the picture is pretty.

But even more exciting, apparently, is that they've just figured out how to plug in an enormous blender in Switzerland called the Large Hadron Collider, and they can now actually test this guy's theory of everything. Isn't that amazing? Testing a theory of everything. I don't even know what that means, never mind what it might answer. But if you look at the picture you go a little dizzy after a while.

Renaissance Siena: Art for a City; National Gallery London, until 13 Jan

The National Gallery recently restored a triptych panel by the so-called Master of the Story of Griselda of the sequence for which he has become famous. The curator was so struck by its quality that he decided to put together a larger exhibition entitled Renaissance Siena: Art for a City, and the result is an extremely enjoyable collection of work. Siena was often considered the second city in Tuscany in terms of power and influence after Florence, and there is no doubt at all that this secondary position is reflected in the quality of the art it produced. But in a way that is what made this exhibition so enjoyable. You are seeing how a relatively normal Italian Renaissance city got on with creating its saints, its iconography, establishing its authority in artistic terms with the best artists it could grow at home and import from elsewhere.


What I went to the exhibition to see was those recently-restored panels detailing the Griselda story and it was certainly worth it for that. The panels are thought to have been produced for a double wedding in the Spanocchi family and would have decorated the nuptial bedchamber. It would seem that they were placed in a row as they are all lit from the left. The first panel details Gualtieri out hunting and seeing Griselda (left background, and left middle ground). He goes to Griselda father to ask permission for her hand in marriage (right background), takes her outside, has her stripped naked (left foreground), and then marries her in her sumptuous bridal clothes (centre).


The second panel details Gualtieri's supposed killing of their two children (left background), his seeking a divorce (under the left arch), showing her the forged papal bull giving him permission to divorce her (under the central arch) and her scandalous disrobing (under right arch). She goes home in her camicia, or undergarment, to her father who is waiting for her.


The third panel details the wedding banquet. Gualtieri has asked Griselda to return to the castle and prepare the household for his impending wedding (left background). She agrees and welcomes the wedding guests, including the supposed bride and her brother (far background). Under the far right arch Griselda speaks to Gualtieri, explaining that he should not test his new wife like he did another (i.e. her). Under the far left arch Gualtieri reveals that is was all a test, a test that she has passed, and he embraces her (rather awkwardly). The central two panels details the restoration of order and Gualtieri and Griselda's re-marriage and happily-ever-after moment.

These are fascinating panels, not just for the very interesting representation of marriage, such as is discussed by Christiane Klapische-Zuber in "The Griselda Complex", but also the marriage iconography being used in such a specific nuptial context (see Baskins on Italian cassoni etc). Also, the artist has clearly created a very uneven composition, where there is much skipping and jumping between scenes, where one is often unsure what is happening, where clothes and headgear must be read in order to understand who's who. These are such vital concerns in the story that it represents an interesting example of a rich textual background informing the visual tradition. The animals playing on the floor in the final panel provide a wonderful marginal commentary to the story too, with chained monkeys and bears and such looking at various characters. One wonders at the central panel and its use of a forged papal bull in the context of often delicate relations with Rome. The bull is the central point in the panel, the vanishing point, clearly indicating that it is upon this authority that Gualtieri acts. As the central panel it balances the two others, provides their centre of gravity, or their fulcrum. Interesting too is the theory that the final panel was produced first, in time for the wedding, and that he others were added later. In the Spanocchi house, then, the resolution came first, and the problems were represented later. Given that the wall would have been prepared to receive the panels in advance, a bride might well have had a sense of foreboding at the two empty panels waiting for a story, explaining how Griselda ended up like that. I am troubled too by the awkwardness of Griselda's embrace of Gualtieri in the final panel. It speaks volumes in a scene in which she says nothing.

Go to see this exhibition.