Patience and Chance: The Story of a Political Emblem

Abstract

mingled with allegorical elements, with picturesque bucolic details, and with the expressive gestures of Dionysiac ritual. They give the scene the glamour of a pagan death ritual-a character at once animated and sad. Turning now to Garofalo's picture, we are faced with a rather disquieting situation. Garofalo has copied the woodcut literally. He even illustrates the text of the Hypnerotomachia more faithfully than did the designer of the woodcut. His shepherd has the girdle of uite nigra, cum le foglie sue, as the text prescribes it. He is wearing, again in exact accordance with the text, an animal's hide with the hair turned inside, and the child's body is twisted to indicate the dance movement. The satyr is characterised by two small horns, etc. Because of this precise rendering of the text, our original question-whether there is any indication that a particular godhead was meant to be honoured by the sacrifice--can safely be answered in the negative. Following carefully the prescriptions of the Hypnerotomachia, Garofalo cannot have intended to represent a sacrifice to Ceres or any other deity. Yet he omitted the one element which is necessarily associated with the sacrifice in the context of the novel-the inscription. If the altar is not regarded as a tombstone, the original content of the representation becomes incomprehensible. What, then, was Garofalo's intention ? As the elements of the painting are essentially the same as those of the woodcut there still remains the possibility that it may have served to commemorate the death of a beloved woman. Garofalo might have been asked by his patron to paint such a picture from the woodcut in the Hypnerotomachia, and the initiated beholder imagined the name of a Ferrarese lady on the altar front. Against this assumption there is, however, a decisive objection. The text says that the woman with the torch is in tears. In the woodcut there is no indication of this. But Garofalo, who thought it necessary to add such details as the horns of the satyr and the belt of the shepherd, has omitted it too, and has transformed the sarcophagus into an ordinary altar. If his picture was intended as a commemorative monument, would he have done so ? His omissions and alterations rather suggest that he wanted this sacrifice not to be understood as an