Anam Cara

EAUTY OF THE

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NFINISHED

WE INEVITABLY ASSOCIATE BEAUTY WITH PERFECTION. BUT THERE can also be great beauty in something that is imperfect and unfinished. One of the best examples of this is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and is by the German painter Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528): a painting in oil on wood called Salvator Mundi. It is a powerful painting. When you enter the room, it immediately claims your eye. It depicts Christ, the ‘Saviour of the World’. His right hand is raised in blessing. The earth is represented by the globe he holds in his left hand. Christ is dressed in a beautiful rich blue alb, with a crimson cloak draped over his shoulders. His hair hangs down his shoulders in long, rich brown ringlets and his face is angled to the right. Dürer began this painting shortly before he departed for Italy in 1505 but he never finished it. Portions of the hands and the face of Christ are not painted. Dürer had however drawn in the features of the face and hands and these drawings are visible against the white panel. Against the deep, rich coloured background and drapery the unpainted face is a white illumination shining forth from the painting. We know that the uniqueness of Jesus is his essence: God in the form of a man. This unfinished painting achieves the happy accident of enabling the beauty and radiance of a divine face to shine from a human body.

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OLOUR OF THE

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The beauty of colour . . . derives from shape,

from the conquest of the darkness inherent in Matter,

by the pouring in of light, the unembodied . . .

PLOTINUS, Enneads

THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF COLOUR THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN the suspicion that colours belonged only to the surface. Deep down everything was dark and black. Farm life seemed to confirm this. In spring the plough would turn a green field into a black one. Turned over, the green skin of grass revealed dark earth underneath. Work on the bog brought further evidence of dark under-surfaces. Externally, the bog is the most sophisticated patchwork of subtle colours: saffron, purple, brown, white and green. Even in the midst of winter one can discover on the boggy black summit the most beautiful traces of burgundy. In springtime when turf is cut the bog is laced with colours. The top scraw is cleaned off to isolate the layer of turf to be cut. The browner turf is on top. The deeper you cut, the darker the turf becomes until you finally reach the last layers of turf down on the stone. This turf comes out like large slabs of black butter. It is called cloch mhoin, literally, stone turf. When it dries, this is always the hardest turf. Cutting down is a journey into the black archive of the bog’s memory. The blackest turf belongs to the oldest time; on a cold winter’s night, by the open fire, the blackest turf burns longest and gives the brightest flame.

Our ancestors were persistent voyagers in the dark. Without the benefit of artificial light, their day was lived between dawn and dusk. Their homes were caves – the dark mouths that nature had cut into the sides of hills, cliffs or mountains. Even during daylight it remained dark in there. Now and again, they must have longed to bring in some of the outside colour to adorn their caves. Imagine a mother gathering a bunch of the most beautiful wild flowers in blues, purples, yellows and whites, and placing them on some altar within the cave’s darkness. Imagine her seeing her dark home brightening with brief colour. Dwelling constantly in such a world of darkness, it is no wonder that sun and moon in their bright journeying would appear to be deities.

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