The Knight And Death; And One Way Or Another by Leonardo Sciascia

Author:Leonardo Sciascia [Sciascia, Leonardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783780235
Publisher: Granta Publications
Published: 2014-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

He asked me to his table once again. Instead of the four priests there were the Cardinal and the three Bishops. And two places had been added for the Minister and an industrialist. I felt ill at ease. Not because I’d never been at table with Ministers, industrialists and priests (not a day passes as a rule when I’m not sharing a meal with one or a whole collection), but because of the place and the occasion — a hotel run by priests, a gathering of Roman Catholics for the purpose of spiritual exercises. And if I felt surprised and out of place in that company, they seemed even more surprised at finding me there when Don Gaetano introduced me (impeccably introducing me to the four prelates, and the Minister and the industrialist to me). And maybe they assumed at first that I’d been converted. But when the Cardinal held out his hand to be kissed and I lowered it in the customary handshake they gave obvious signs of perplexity — directed at Don Gaetano. Questioning, preoccupied glances converged upon him. Don Gaetano explained that I was there by chance, out of curiosity, more or less by accident.

Since everything Don Gaetano did was for the best they were reassured. And at once they all felt the need to praise my paintings, the prelates those they’d seen in exhibitions or collections, the Minister and the industrialist those they possessed (and it turned out that they did have some, even some painted with warm feet). The conversation naturally proceeded to painting in general. And it became immediately apparent — despite their praise of my work — that for the four Churchmen the art of painting had been dead and buried for about a century — the last to have practised it being Nicolo Barabino, whose name brought to my mind the reproduction of his Madonna of the Olive Trees over my mother’s bed which for years, probably ever since I was first able to hold a pencil, I’d copied: always miraculously according to my mother, according to me tolerably well, all things considered — while for the Minister and the industrialist it had never existed except, at a given stage of their lives and fortunes, as an investment and for its sale value. Thus they didn’t see eye to eye with the priests— since the sale value of old paintings is variable for minor painters and incalculable, beyond any true or realistic appreciation, for major ones; whereas for contemporary artists, whether major or minor such prices are steady and rising steadily. Except that there were no major artists among our contemporaries, the Cardinal observed, adding without conviction: ‘Apart from our friend here present, of course.’ I protested without conviction, and reminded them of Guttuso. The Cardinal objected that he was far from being a major painter. Whereat Don Gaetano praised Guttuso’s Crucifixion which had provoked a certain scandal thirty years ago but which now, he said, the Vatican Museum was hoping to acquire.

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