Calderón’s Dream

Mounted pin-brooch, 2007 aterials: 20ct gold, carved tourmaline, rubies, grossular garnets, silver, 18ct white gold pin

The note of ‘Vanitas’ was never more tellingly sounded than in the art and literature of the 17th century. The holdings in the Wallace Collection are comparatively free of this melancholy strain, although a small table-piece of a chubby amoretto playing with a skull carved from the translucency of alabaster, apparently unlabelled, and high on a cabinet shelf, did catch my eye. It reminded me of Calderón de la Barca’s play, La vida es sueño, about vain delusions and Royal paranoia:

‘...All of life is but a dream; And man (as I can see) Merely dreams his entire existence and actions Until his dreams float away. The King dreams that he is a king; And, submerged in this delusion, He reigns, rules, and directs. Everything is subject to him, Yet little of it remains, For death quickly turns his happiness Into dust...’

height (without pin): 52mm width: 18mm ount: mixed media Signed and dated artist’s no: 421.MP-B.07 hidden alche y: 217-8

It is perhaps impossible truly to separate the sculptural beauty of the skull-form from the intrinsic meaning it still holds for us, even in a world increasingly deaf and blind to the sub-text of metaphor. ‘Fascination’ is a word which happily covers – as does ‘covers’ – both responses, and I was ‘fascinated’ here by the dual juxtaposition between carved ‘organic’ stone and engineered metal.