Paua Dreams

Walking into the Duomo in Florence, I had the very pleasant experience of seeing Paolo Uccello’s Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood (1436), which is one of the treasures in that church. Apart from being a masterpiece, it was meaningful because it is a reference in Peter McKay’s Metaphysical Heart brooches of the mid 1990s. Like various aspects of Western culture, this image is part of the cultural flotsam and jetsam that is served up in McKay’s jewellery of the period. It was quite amazing to see it in context, not only in terms of its physical reality but also in terms of the architectural setting. (You can read more about the Duomo by clicking here.)

I felt really international about all this, especially since I talk about this connection in the lecture I have been giving about New Zealand contemporary jewellery. (Peter McKay is my cautionary tale ending in triumph in terms of how the New Zealand jeweller deals with his or her distance from the metropolitan centre.) All was good until I realised I had been presenting Uccello’s work as a sculpture, and not as a fresco as it so obviously is. How quicky the warm glow of cosmopolitanism can turn into the blush of provincial naivete.