From The Walls of Circumstace
by Dennis Barone
Pride
Just beyond the figures, outside the painting and the calm river, the source became clear: red rosettes or spots of blood installed in a private sphere. The right arm at the opponent's head, a long serpent in the background--this hypothesis prefigures the anatomical. Hitherto unpublished, his remarkable letter tells us that the altarpiece formed a far more serious problem, drapery on the rocks and also that rock slab with an inscription on it. His famous print in brown--reproduced by a means he found thoroughly self-conscious. Strange as it may seem, the hue of the silent laurel hedges in the middle of these gardens expressed maddening despair and the sensation of the tragic.