The burial of the Count of Orgaz

I wrote this haibun for a prompt from the Eyemouth Writers' Group. I don't think I'll publish it - it shares some elements with one in The Book of Ways - but here it is anyway.

The burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586

‘A very parfit gentil knight’, by all accounts, and a generous donor to the church, the death of the old Count caused much lamentation in Toledo. Fortunately, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, later to be known as El Greco, - the Greek – had settled in the city and had begun to paint there. He was commissioned to record the death of the Count, and he produced what is undoubtedly his masterpiece, then and still displayed in the church of Santo Tomé. The painting is in the shape of an arch. In the lower half we are in the realm of humanity. Portraits of the local nobles form a long line of mourners, rendered in recognisable detail. At the centre of the lower half is the body of the Count, and on either side of him Saint Stephen and Saint Augustine, descended from Heaven as a mark of special favour, to bury the Count. They are very colourfully dressed in religious vestments, a contrast to the more sombre phalanx of local dignitaries.

It is the upper half of the painting, however, which astonishes and mystifies me. Never having been a Christian, I am often confused by paintings of religious themes depicting specifically Christian iconic elements, which may be obvious or well-known to those having grown up in the faith, but about which I know nothing. The top half of the painting is a depiction of Heaven, with Christ in Majesty above all, surrounded by the winged angels and the remainder of the heavenly host. Mary is in a central position, holding open a funnel-shaped fold in the fundament. At the lower end of the funnel an unformed figure, looking like a swaddled baby, is being helped into the narrow passage by an angel. This, we were told, was how the soul was often depicted in medieval and Renaissance paintings. It looked, and was obviously meant to look, like an inverted birth canal, through which the Count’s soul would ascend into Heaven. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time, the imagery baffles me.

It’s some years since we visited Toledo, that wonderful city set high on red rocks above a bend in the Rio Tajo, but I’ve never forgotten it, and El Greco’s masterpiece springs to mind whenever I think of it. It was raining when we arrived, and the colours were El Greco’s colours – deep greens, blues and greys. By the time we left in the afternoon the sun had come out, and the city was bathed in light. From the cliffs overlooking the plain, we watched a pair of vultures circling, a new tick in my bird book, a reminder of mortality.

an art pilgrimage -

in a hot Spanish autumn

a cool oasis

Copyright © Colin Will 2014

08/12/2014