DRAPERY FOR GOD THE FATHER

6 7 R D R A P E R Y F O R G O D T H E F A T H E R M A R Y J O S A L T E R for Mark Leithauser Wherever I turn, he’s already there – Dürer’s determined follower who has come, like me, to the museum to study the masterpieces. I study him: an old Hell’s Angel in damp, unlaundered undershirt from which pale tufts of armpit hair sprout, and make him smell much as Dürer must have smelled. He’s spellbound by A Tuft of Cowslips (1526, gouache on vellum); the blue-gray wash of Praying Hands; the darkening series of engraver’s proofs for Adam and Eve. Thick as the rhinoceros in that woodcut, he stays put – I skip a room or I backtrack and yet he blocks me, having swung into my lane again, a Wild One weaving against the tra≈c. When he and I were young, I suppose I could have been the girl behind him on the Harley, arms around his waist, not gaping in distaste 6 8 Y at the rear view of his clothes: armored as one of Dürer’s knights, his belt is spiked, he’s trailing chains from the pockets of his jeans, and sleeving his bare arms, tattoos by a contemporary artist were needle-pricked in reds and blues that blend now on his skin. When (a miracle) at last he steps aside, he leaves me standing alone before a floating study for an altar triptych, lost in a palace fire two centuries later. Disembodied twice, then – since this is Drapery for God the Father: a priceless heap of heavy cloth fit for the shape that moves within it, though unseen. White hatching, done not with a pen but the thinnest paintbrush, brings forth the weave of light itself. Dazzling. I look away. And there he is once more, my heaven-sent blind date, my odd opponent in this afternoon’s long scrimmage: we make eye contact, and agree wordlessly to share the creator who made us in his image. ...