Ciclo DLXXIX

Niccolo da Tolentino acauallo^epcrchclauoradola vnfanciullo,chepa(Ia ua,dimenc) la scalajCgli ven ne — the words are broken as the memory is broken. A condottiero on horseback, the child on the staircase, the horse rearing because the boy dimencava — shook, fidgeted, moved as boys move. I saw this once in my mind for a battle-piece never painted. Motion is the difficulty. The horse that rears because the child moved: all of painting lives in that because. The dignity of the captain, the animal’s animal fear, the boy’s small unthinking gesture — three orders of being joined by a twitch on a stair. To paint that, one would need the patience of the page, which is patient where I am not. But the modo di colorire a olio — the way of coloring in oil, which even in Tuscany was not yet known when I was young — that came to us from the north, from the Flemish, and with it a new shadow. Oil does not dry as tempera dries. It waits. It allows the painter to return tomorrow and find the edge still soft, still negotiable. There is a mercy in that. Andrea — non menosagace fisimulatore, che egregio pittore — Andrea was as shrewd a simulator as he was an excellent painter. Simulator. One who feigns. But is not all painting feigning? The horse is not a horse. The boy is not a boy. Yet the because is true. Per altra via di leuarfelo dinanzi — by another way of getting the thing out from in front of him. What stands before the painter must be removed, not destroyed — removed, set aside, so that the picture may be seen through it. The hand trembles. Yet writes. The stair remains. The boy’s small gesture remains. Whether the captain ever reached the top of the stair, the horse ever calmed, I cannot say. The candle gutters and the paint, unfinished, keeps its soft edge until morning.