LATER today being Culture Night, I may drop into the National Gallery on the way home to enjoy the novelty of it staying open till 11pm. If I do, a compulsory stop will be the early Italian room, to enjoy my new-found appreciation of Paolo Uccello's Virgin and Child, writes Frank McNally
Sad to say, until recently, I regarded this picture - if I regarded it at all - as possibly the ugliest in the gallery. Yes, ideas about human beauty have changed in the six centuries since it was painted. Even so, its orange-haired, Bunteresque baby was about the most unlikely Messiah imaginable, I used to think. Only a mother could love him.
As for his mother, the converse applied. The miracle of the virgin birth was here all the more miraculous in that she had apparently passed on her genes for big puffy cheeks that dwarfed all other facial features. That and the severe hairstyle put her badly at odds with all traditional portrayals of the Madonna, up to and including Sinéad O'Connor's apparition to Francie Brady.
But all this was before I went on holiday this summer, and packed a copy of EH Gombrich's The Story of Art. The book is justly famous as an overview of 5,000 years of visual culture, written with unflagging enthusiasm and without ever resorting to obscure language. And there on page 190, in keeping with the title, was a charming story about Paolo Uccello: "It was said of Uccello that the discovery of perspective had so impressed him. . . he spent nights and days drawing objects in foreshortening, and setting himself ever new problems. His fellow artists used to tell that he was so engrossed in these studies that he would hardly look up when his wife called him to go to bed, and would exclaim: 'What a sweet thing perspective is!'"
Mrs Uccello's responses are not recorded, unfortunately — at least by Gombrich. Maybe she just smiled indulgently and continued upstairs. Or maybe she had her own ideas about perspective, and her husband's apparent lack of it. Maybe she suggested Paolo could go sleep in the dog-house until he achieved his next artistic breakthrough.
We don't know. But the point is that Uccello was brought alive to me, down six centuries, by that simple tale. So now when I look at his painting, belatedly admiring the depth the artist gave it, I cannot help being enchanted.
See how the baby's toes creep over the bottom of the frame. And how his little chubby knees appear to thrust into the viewer's space. By contrast, the scallop-shell arch behind the Virgin's head draws us inwards, leaving her as the painting's still centre. Yes, maybe she is a little flat. But whatever perspective was going, like any mother, she would want her son to have all of it.
Having also discovered that Uccello was the son of a barber, I equally withdraw all criticisms of the Madonna's hairstyle - probably the height of fashion in 1435. And as for the picture's gaudy colours, well, it seems this was a trademark of the artist. He cheerfully flouted the rules of his time, making "the fields blue, the cities red, and the buildings the colour he felt like".
Indeed, his Madonna was too challenging for later viewers. Some time after he painted her, either because of changing fashions or because it was deemed insufficiently pious, a dark veil was added to the Virgin's headdress, remaining until the 1960s when it was removed during restoration. All said, the more I learned about Uccello, the more I liked him.
IS IT cheating to be won over to a picture because of something you read about the artist? Some would say yes: that the artist's life is irrelevant and anything that comes between the painting and the viewer is distraction. Against which it could be argued that Van Gogh's work would not be so highly prized today if his tragic life had not been documented.
Maybe pictures used to paint a thousand words, but that system has gone the way of the gold standard. Thanks to Tracy Emin and her installation-art pals, the value of a picture has slumped to its lowest level since the 1930s. It was worth only 395.8 words yesterday, after a day of panic selling, and further losses are expected when markets reopen.
Personally, I find even the minimal text with which galleries accompany paintings an emotional support I cannot do without. Sometimes I force myself to study the picture first without preconceptions. But I can do this only so long before checking the story, ie the name and dates.
Then I find myself looking at the work in a different light: "So, he painted this a year before he died. Only 42. I wonder was he sick at the time. Or was it an accident?" Unfortunately, my weakness for the human interest angle has also revealed that Uccello (who lived to nearly 80) may not have painted the National Gallery's picture i at all. It is stylistically similar to frescoes in a Tuscan cathedral, whose attribution to Uccello is "equally controversial", according to one commentator. Some experts suggest they may all be the work of an anonymous follower of Uccello, called the Prato Master.
So maybe Virgin and Child was not created by the artist who was so besotted with perspective that he wouldn't go to bed. But it's too late to turn back at this stage. I'm emotionally committed to the painting now, and that's that.