coda This book has been a kind of experiment, an essay in which I have attempted to suggest or flesh out just some of the basic patterns in the history of the artist in the Western tradition. There are of course many others. There are different narratives of the artist to which my own is related, stories that have yet to be told. There are quite obviously many things this essay is not, and I am reasonably confident that these lacunae will be filled by future writers. I have practiced restraint by limiting the book to a length which I believe to be readable. Ever so many art history books are overwritten in the sense that they are so lengthy that they cannot be read easily; some would even say they are bloated, overburdened with examples or information, at the reader’s expense. In this respect, they become reference works, books to be consulted, not to be read. Again, I invoke my hero, Peter Whiffle, who urged restraint and brevity. One does not need to put down on paper everything that one knows about the subject. A potentially lively subject can all too easily be deadened by excessive exegesis . Indeed, in the spirit of Whiffle and as an unabashed hedonist, I a brief history of the artist from god to picasso have approached my subject in the fervent hope that the stories I have told and retold here haven given some measure of pleasure. Although there is much pathos, even suffering, in many of the narratives I have related, there is ever so much play and fun in these stories as well. More than the accumulation of facts, hypotheses, and theories, art history as storytelling must be shaped, and I have to the best of my abilities sought to interweave various stories in such a way as to give unity to my overall narrative. If it began with the mythology of God the Creator and of the Greek god Hephaistos, it ended with Picasso’s identification with God—an identification that I leave to the reader to ponder. As I have said, much is left unsaid here, and I wish to end by suggesting or hinting at just one of the countless threads or clues one might pursue from what I have fabricated. Future scholars, for example, will want to fill in details from God’s life as an artist. They will turn to Dante’s Purgatorio 10, where we encounter the three monumental relief sculptures, illustrating stories of Mary, David, and Trajan, which exemplify the virtue of humility. They will recognize, as some have suggested, that these works, which Dante likens to the art of Polykleitos, are the work of God. Although God is eternal, we can develop a chronology of his works, and to the catalogue of his divine masterpieces worthy of the legendary Greek sculptor, we can add the Purgatorio reliefs. Dante’s implicit attribution to God of the monumental relief sculptures in purgatory is highly suggestive. For when we think about it, who but God Himself could possibly have built the glorious architecture of the heavenly city, the luminous New Jerusalem? With its perfect geometric proportions, great wall and gates, and its foundations radiant with gems, the divine city built by God is the archetype for so many ecclesiastical buildings, both real and imaginary, throughout the history of Western art. God’s role as architect here is perhaps obscured by the mystical way he is presented in the Book of Revelation as the very temple of the city. Such mysticism should not, however, prevent us from recognizing that the invention of this great urban project belongs in the portfolio of deus artifex, God the supreme artificer. In the wake of Dante and the Bible, Vasari would later find God’s art even in ancient pagan myth. Writing of Pygmalion, Vasari says in the proem to the Lives that the mythic Greek sculptor imparted to his statue fiato e spirito, breath or spirit. Vasari reinterprets Ovid in the terms of the 136 [54.205.243.115] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:56 GMT) coda Hebrew Bible, where God, creating Adam (the first sculpture), filled him with spirit. Since Ovid does not speak of spiritus in his account of Pygmalion, it is clear that Vasari’s rewriting of Ovid is a biblical allegory of Pygmalion as a God-inspired artist. In the monograph that charts God’s activity as an artist...