Mysteries of the Rectangle  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting (2005) is a book by Siri Hustvedt.

From the publisher:

In Mysteries of the Rectangle, Hustvedt concentrates her narrative gifts on the works of such masters as Francisco Goya, Jan Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Gerhard Richter, and Joan Mitchell. Through her own personal experiences, Hustvedt is able to reveal things until now hidden in plain sight: an egglike detail in Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace and the many hidden self-portraits in Goya's series of drawings, Los Caprichos, as well as in his infamous painting The Third of May. Most importantly, these essays exhibit the passion, thrill, and sheer pleasure of bewilderment a work of art can produce—if you simply take the time to look.

Excerpt:

"Don Sebastian Martinez, who cared for Goya in his house in Cadiz, elaborated on the artist's condition in another letter to Zapater: "The noises in his head and the deafness have not improved, but his vision is much better and he is no longer suffering from the disorders which made him lose his balance. He can now go up and down stairs and in a word is doing things he was not able."

Orignal Spanish:

“los ruidos en la cabeza [de Goya] y la sordera no han mejorado, pero su vista está mucho mejor y no sufre de los desórdenes que le hacían perder el equilibrio.”