The Curator's Dream

9th Oct 2022

One night, all the little people in the backgrounds of all the paintings in the gallery rebelled. They rose from their regular spots among the blue hills and yellow forests, out from behind the shadows of the gigantic Madonnas and Jesuses clothed in crimson and lapis lazuli; and though each of the little people spanned only the height of Saint Stephen’s finger, they waved their arms about and shouted angrily and without making a sound.

Saint Michael, already distracted by the dying Lucifer whose serpentine head he held in one hand, was quite unable to prevent a party of wheat farmers from scaling his armour and clambering on to his halo, where they swung jubilantly, plucking the barbs from the feather in his cap.

Above Saint Jerome’s head a lion in a cave, having tired of terrorising the sheep, had taken to worrying at the good Saint’s hair. By opening its tiny mouth as far as it would go it could fit a small lock of his hair in its jaws and it was quite making the nuisance of itself. The sheep, meanwhile, ran amok, their shepherds distracted with trying to climb the Saint’s robe, hand over hand, he sweeping them aside only for them to pick themselves up and try again.

At first I tried to persuade them back into their rightful places, with a careful brushstroke here and there, but they would not hear of it; they hid in bushes and under rocks and one behind the walls of a distant city atop a hill, and after I’d moved on they came out again and resumed their protests. A Saint Catherine – one of Raphael’s – insisted to me that she had them under control, and would waft her golden shawl about to hide the little people’s antics; but I could see that for all they were ants to her, she was quite unable to restrain them, and they marched up and down the lakeshore behind her, furiously splashing in the water.

A Virgin, busy breadfeeding the baby Messiah, furiously bade Saint Dominic to sort the tiny rebellion out; but he was quite beside himself, his voice quavering as he told them to get back in order, and it was no use at all. They kept walking up and down the hill, driving their donkeys with them, and cutting down the trees to make little signs on which they wrote glittering golden letters thin as a hair which I was quite unable to read.

It was getting quite out of control, and I had only a few hours before the doors opened and the guests were allowed in; so I cried out, “What will satisfy you?!” For while all the little people had been shouting at the top of their lungs, or so it appeared, I could not hear a word – they were, after all, made of paint.

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