Completed Mystery Group Project Jigsaw - Genest Le Colimacon Annunciation by Francesco Del Cossa DSC08278
Post Script for the BCD Just Jigsaws Group:
Here are two photos from the Second Wooden Mystery Group Project. - the start and the end. You may have heard me talk about it, and I wrote about the first one in the BCD magazine. Genest does large jigsaws too!
Detail of Annunciation c1469 by Francesca del Cossa, in an extreme line-cut jigsaw made by Genest Desfosses, Le Colimacon.
At face value an Annunciation scene set in an open logia, the complex architectural setting is not quite real, but a trompe l'oeil with deliberate logical flaws. The column base is away from the wall although the capital is against the wall, supporting a ceiling beam. The Virgin's room is too shallow for all the furniture, there is something wrong with the views of arcade vaulting.The snail is huge but the dog is tiny. After I finished the jigsaw we did an internet search on 'annunciation pillar snail' and came up with the identity of the painting, at Dresden - see below. It also brought up a reference on 'goodreads' to a novel and an essay by art academic Daniel Arasse. The presence of the snail is undoubtably what attracted Genest to the painting - as it is his trademark figural piece (see column).
Here is a link discussing Arasse's essay (The Snail’s Gaze, and Secrets de Peintres in “Histoires de Peintres”) and interpretation of the symbolism of the (outsize) snail which crawls in/along the edge of the painting.
retinalechoes.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/the-snails-duality/
"Arasse interprets how this duality of the Snail’s presence both in and on the painting draws our regard into the depiction, by pointing to its artifice. The Snail, incongruous by both its presence and size, is simultaneously real and irreal, drawing the viewer into its embrace, and in this intimacy whispers to its viewer the secrets of its inadequacy. ‘Who am I,’ asks the painting, ‘belonging to this material world to attempt to ever represent the conception of the Son of God?’"
(The goodreads review pointed out the diagonal axes in the painting linking the outsize snail, pillar/Gabriel's hand and God (strangely snail shaped) in the sky. It also pointed out the parallel elements of Gabriel's foot, halo, wings and pointing arm, building struts and column tops. Retinale also reminds us of the contemporary third story of the eighth day Boccaccio'd Decameron, a tale of three medieval Florentine painters one of whom is credulously tempted by a confidence trickster and whose fellows remind him of the reality of their situation as painters. "Boccaccio’s mischievous tone presenting the image of the Snail as a metaphor for the painter who does little more than “smear a trail of slime across a wall” adds a second, more impious interpretation of the lowly gastropod to modify Arasse’s humble, celestial Snail.")
Retinale continues, "For Arasse, the Snail in Francesco del Cossa’s Annunciation painting “leads us to understand that this painting is itself a poor, inevitably inadequate representation of the event it represents.” Bocaccio’s metaphor adds a second, alternative perspective – the Snail is not simply the figure of painting’s inadequacy, it is also a sign of the painter’s supremacy.
The painter, lowly mortal though he may be, is nonetheless tasked with creating the infinite. As a painter of holy images, his daily task is to represent the unrepresentable by dealing with this creation quotidianly. It is not enough for the religious painter to passively await God’s inspiration, for he must also calculate ratios of dyes, formulate new compositions, figure costs, and select brushes, all to create an icon which will eventually be vested with sanctity. Pointing out painting’s artifice opens the door not only to a pious interpretation but also to an impious one, illustrating the painter’s unique position between the Infinite and the Void.
Although Francesco del Cossa’s Snail is most certainly on the painting, as a painted figure it still never ceases to be in the painting. Its body remains constituted of tints, and not of blood. Here is the source of the Snail’s duality – the Snail is composed from the same matter which one uses to compose images of the Lord. The Snail’s painted representation indicates an existence in the artificial world of painting, and its size indicates its existence in this material plane – granting the Snail a duality of spirit and flesh much like that of the Son of God.
The Snail which granted access into the painting, now also provides an exit out of it, doubling the Snail’s significance. Although the Snail might be the mundane which grants access to the heavenly realm, it is also the celestial brought down to the level of the gastropodal. The Snail is more than “painting which cannot represent” but it is also “the painter who must represent” by smearing his trail of slime behind.
The Snail becomes the dual figure of humility/pride, creature/creator that embodies every painter of holy images. And who knows? Perhaps this was Francesco del Cossa’s way of painting his autoportrait into the painting, as the lowly servant and powerful creator, and it is his head peeping out from beneath the shell?"
Another theory about the snail (from a Christian commentator, not convinced by this one):
"The snail was thought to live underground in the dark in its shell for three months of the year when it would re-emerge. If this makes you think of the time Christ spent in the tomb, you have solved the riddle. Many of the extra items in these paintings hint at the end of Christ's time on earth, even as His time in human flesh is just beginning."
Gresham College Lecture, 2014 Steve Jones Genetics Professor - Art of Snails & Snails in Art:
"... medieval painters included them in paintings of the Virgin Mary, due to the belief that their shells meant that their modesty was protected and they reproduced without sex."
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/snails-in-art-and-t...
Completed Mystery Group Project Jigsaw - Genest Le Colimacon Annunciation by Francesco Del Cossa DSC08278
Post Script for the BCD Just Jigsaws Group:
Here are two photos from the Second Wooden Mystery Group Project. - the start and the end. You may have heard me talk about it, and I wrote about the first one in the BCD magazine. Genest does large jigsaws too!
Detail of Annunciation c1469 by Francesca del Cossa, in an extreme line-cut jigsaw made by Genest Desfosses, Le Colimacon.
At face value an Annunciation scene set in an open logia, the complex architectural setting is not quite real, but a trompe l'oeil with deliberate logical flaws. The column base is away from the wall although the capital is against the wall, supporting a ceiling beam. The Virgin's room is too shallow for all the furniture, there is something wrong with the views of arcade vaulting.The snail is huge but the dog is tiny. After I finished the jigsaw we did an internet search on 'annunciation pillar snail' and came up with the identity of the painting, at Dresden - see below. It also brought up a reference on 'goodreads' to a novel and an essay by art academic Daniel Arasse. The presence of the snail is undoubtably what attracted Genest to the painting - as it is his trademark figural piece (see column).
Here is a link discussing Arasse's essay (The Snail’s Gaze, and Secrets de Peintres in “Histoires de Peintres”) and interpretation of the symbolism of the (outsize) snail which crawls in/along the edge of the painting.
retinalechoes.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/the-snails-duality/
"Arasse interprets how this duality of the Snail’s presence both in and on the painting draws our regard into the depiction, by pointing to its artifice. The Snail, incongruous by both its presence and size, is simultaneously real and irreal, drawing the viewer into its embrace, and in this intimacy whispers to its viewer the secrets of its inadequacy. ‘Who am I,’ asks the painting, ‘belonging to this material world to attempt to ever represent the conception of the Son of God?’"
(The goodreads review pointed out the diagonal axes in the painting linking the outsize snail, pillar/Gabriel's hand and God (strangely snail shaped) in the sky. It also pointed out the parallel elements of Gabriel's foot, halo, wings and pointing arm, building struts and column tops. Retinale also reminds us of the contemporary third story of the eighth day Boccaccio'd Decameron, a tale of three medieval Florentine painters one of whom is credulously tempted by a confidence trickster and whose fellows remind him of the reality of their situation as painters. "Boccaccio’s mischievous tone presenting the image of the Snail as a metaphor for the painter who does little more than “smear a trail of slime across a wall” adds a second, more impious interpretation of the lowly gastropod to modify Arasse’s humble, celestial Snail.")
Retinale continues, "For Arasse, the Snail in Francesco del Cossa’s Annunciation painting “leads us to understand that this painting is itself a poor, inevitably inadequate representation of the event it represents.” Bocaccio’s metaphor adds a second, alternative perspective – the Snail is not simply the figure of painting’s inadequacy, it is also a sign of the painter’s supremacy.
The painter, lowly mortal though he may be, is nonetheless tasked with creating the infinite. As a painter of holy images, his daily task is to represent the unrepresentable by dealing with this creation quotidianly. It is not enough for the religious painter to passively await God’s inspiration, for he must also calculate ratios of dyes, formulate new compositions, figure costs, and select brushes, all to create an icon which will eventually be vested with sanctity. Pointing out painting’s artifice opens the door not only to a pious interpretation but also to an impious one, illustrating the painter’s unique position between the Infinite and the Void.
Although Francesco del Cossa’s Snail is most certainly on the painting, as a painted figure it still never ceases to be in the painting. Its body remains constituted of tints, and not of blood. Here is the source of the Snail’s duality – the Snail is composed from the same matter which one uses to compose images of the Lord. The Snail’s painted representation indicates an existence in the artificial world of painting, and its size indicates its existence in this material plane – granting the Snail a duality of spirit and flesh much like that of the Son of God.
The Snail which granted access into the painting, now also provides an exit out of it, doubling the Snail’s significance. Although the Snail might be the mundane which grants access to the heavenly realm, it is also the celestial brought down to the level of the gastropodal. The Snail is more than “painting which cannot represent” but it is also “the painter who must represent” by smearing his trail of slime behind.
The Snail becomes the dual figure of humility/pride, creature/creator that embodies every painter of holy images. And who knows? Perhaps this was Francesco del Cossa’s way of painting his autoportrait into the painting, as the lowly servant and powerful creator, and it is his head peeping out from beneath the shell?"
Another theory about the snail (from a Christian commentator, not convinced by this one):
"The snail was thought to live underground in the dark in its shell for three months of the year when it would re-emerge. If this makes you think of the time Christ spent in the tomb, you have solved the riddle. Many of the extra items in these paintings hint at the end of Christ's time on earth, even as His time in human flesh is just beginning."
Gresham College Lecture, 2014 Steve Jones Genetics Professor - Art of Snails & Snails in Art:
"... medieval painters included them in paintings of the Virgin Mary, due to the belief that their shells meant that their modesty was protected and they reproduced without sex."
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/snails-in-art-and-t...