Fictional recollections?

In the Museé des Beaux Arts, Auden famously said that the Old Masters were never wrong*, but the meteorological wisdom of the 21st century avers otherwise. Last week I visited the excellent exhibit at the Jewish Museum, and there, next to a brooding landscape of van Ruysdael, I read that “Meteorologists have even concluded that van Ruysdael’s lovely clouds are largely fictional recollections.”
I was disturbed, because the truth of those wafting yet energized clouds is something I have long held dear.
The very next day I encountered, in neat italics next to John Singer Sargent’s iconic Portrait of Madame X, this disclaimer: “New research by fashion historians and couturiers has determined that the structure of Madame X’s dress is physically impossible.”
And not much later I was admiring Rubens’ Creation of the Milky Way and there beside the vast canvas was this note: “Cosmologists tell us that recent analysis of galactic debris has definitively proven that Rubens’ portrayal of the Milky Way ‘s origin via a spray of milk from the nipples of Juno is incorrect. The milk in question emanated from organic Vermont cows.”

Where does all this punctilious fact-checking leave us? Desperately clinging to our allusions. I tremble lest it is discovered that Garden of Eden is not as portrayed in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.



*What he actually said is that they were never wrong about suffering.

Bavo, Bosch and a Hollow Tree Trunk

Like many people we know, Saint Bavo of Ghent (589-654) led what Butler understated as an “irregular” life before he cleaned up his act, that is to say, was converted by a stirring sermon of Saint Amand. Actually, Bavo’s early misdeeds are worse than those of anyone I know: he actually sold his servants into slavery. Pretty unforgivable, you would say?

But as we have seen time and time again, a checkered past, a feckless youth, a prodigal adolescence, even a criminal record, can all be expunged by a timely conversion.

Which would explain why Bavo’s conversion makes such an excellent subject for painting, such as Rubens’ huge painting in the cathedral in Ghent. (For art’s sake, rather than verisimilitude, Rubens includes several semi-nude bodies in all sorts of torqued positions.)

But the painting I want to mention, because it is so unexpected, is Bavo’s singular appearance, in grisaille, on the exterior right wing of Hieronymus Bosch’s Triptych of the Last Judgment. (The one in Vienna. Not Bosch’s only Last Judgment, not by a long shot.)

The falcon on his left wrist, the spurs and elegant robes are all emblematic of the luxurious life led by Bavo, pre-conversion. Conversely, the open purse in his right hand signifies the alms he dispensed so graciously to the poor, post-conversion. The midget, the amputated (or mummified) foot, the child balancing a bowl atop his head, these are all pure Boschian enigmas. I read that both the foot and the bowl on the infant’s head appear in Bosch’s Lisbon Triptych, in a sinister context.

The other thing you must know about Saint Bavo is that after some time in the monastery he decided he wanted more of a hermetic life, and took up residence in the hollow trunk of a large tree. One hopes it was a very large tree. Since hollow trees are favorite places for a swarm of bees, I wonder whether he had to evict 60,000 odd honeybees and their queen before settling in.