Art, we are told, will withstand the passage of time. It will live on well past its creator, well past its patron, well past its first audience, and most satisfyingly, well past the philistines who do not appreciate it. Art will survive. Ageless. Immutable. Untouchable as the “unravish’d bride of quietness”-ever close, yet ever out of reach.
And none of that is true, or at least not wholly true. If art in theory is perpetual, art in actuality is not. Like all else, it succumbs to time. By neglect, abuse, or even-ironically-by too much love, art too can die. But another maxim, truer than the legend of art’s immortality, is that art embodies the human soul and, like it, is capable of restoration, of being saved. Such an enterprise requires a physician of precise skills-intelligence as well as humility, courage as well as honesty-that must be drawn upon all at once in order to bring what is nearly lost back to life again.
Rachel Piers, the protagonist of Suzanne Wolfe’s engrossing novel Unveiling, shows just how demanding and intricate a task this is, especially for one who is in need of rescue herself. A conservator of medieval art, Rachel has been lent by her museum to a large corporation that is funding an important project: the restoration of a mysterious medieval triptych located in an obscure Roman church. Her task is all the more difficult because she has lost something crucial to her work-a proper understanding of what she is about-and gained something deadly to it: a carapace that shields her from life. And all this, is turn, is ultimately traceable to a violation in her past, an incident Rachel’s own mother has sought to suppress.
Despite her mother’s efforts, or perhaps because of them, the secret memory works its way to the fore of Rachel’s mind as she labors through a beautifully realized but crumbling Roman landscape. Rachel views the canvas of the ancient city-faded-ochre piazzas, worn pedestals, stacked bistro chairs-and cannot see roses without also seeing blood. This tragic view is a mark of her talent, but it is also a symptom of her malady: as she sets to her task, she seems as much trapped by her perspective as she is enabled by it. The relationship between Rachel as restorer of the work, and the interest she takes in the unknown artist-whose theme is “The Lamentation”-is wrought with personal resonance, made all the deeper when it is assumed that the image is a lost masterpiece. Questions of who the artist is, what figures lurk in the borders and side panels, and why exactly Rachel and her team have been employed to restore the triptych, drive the interest and intrigue.
Novels of artists are currently in vogue. Vermeer and his Girl with a Pearl Earring are in every bookstore, Gentileschi and Rembrandt too. But Wolfe’s work features art the other way around, which makes her approach refreshing and provocative. It is not the artist through whose eyes we see, but a woman who comes after, who is trying to restore the life that was, and perhaps still is. So how is that accomplished? How does one recapture vitality beneath smut and grime, repair damage done both by the neglect of the indifferent and the devotion of those who have loved, intensely, with candles burning bright? What is the right approach? What is going too far? When has the restorer inserted herself and unwittingly made what was the artist’s, her own? Those who cleanse, after all, must first fairly appraise what is soiled, what needs repair, and perhaps just as important, when to stop.
In the conflict between Rachel and those who are paying for the restoration, Wolfe suggests choices that are both hard and telling. “Art for all” is another populist maxim; is it right for great art to remain cloistered, available only to the provincial admirer? And when Rachel muses about being converted from an old artistic position-“art for art’s sake”-we know what she means, but also wonder at what she means. For how portable is beauty? Because the novel is tied between art and soul, we are teased to wonder about the portability of the human being. Are the words “I would die outside this place” not, after all, literally true for some, and not in some way true for all? Surely, Rachel is looking for the place that she would die without. And though cleansed and polished and made new again, there is some art that will die outside its place. As Rachel questions this, the issue of whether the triptych should stay in the church or be taken to a museum becomes significant. She complains that an altarpiece outside a church is a paradox, that however admirable the technical brilliance, the piece cannot be what it is meant to be if candles do not burn before it, prayers are not roused by it, God is not reached through it. And yet she is barreling towards a deadline and an achievement that will likely result in just such a displacement.
Fortunately, Rachel is not alone. Other scientists and researchers help her, none more important than Donati, a tongue-in-cheek socialist whose explications of his neighborhood culture are as important as his artistic analysis. This is his home, and despite all that would belie it in his philosophy, his native history echoes through his gestures and manner. “Being” in terms of “belonging” is a central issue of Wolfe’s novel-things in context, in their proper place-and Rachel is not in hers. But her dilemma is deeper than alienation. Wolfe draws her as a natural at work that has not as yet become a part of her contentment.
Of course, mastery at life is seeing that work is never finished, and that it can only begin when we are in our proper context, where we were always meant to be. The triptych upon which Rachel and Donati labor is at the heart of an old community. And in turn, at the heart of the old triptych is loss: not Christ lifted high on the tree-wracked with pain, dying, yet still alive-but Christ limp, dead, the full weight of his bones in his mother’s arms. The loss of the blameless-through both death and distance-recurs throughout the novel. But the theme need not signify only with women like Rachel. Her loss is of a life that could have been-and there are few, regardless of success, who do not suspect it has all gone terribly wrong somewhere. Part of the human soul is always missing; we are born with something valuable having just slipped though our fingers.
Wolfe expertly juxtaposes Rachel’s two cleansings, done by her and through her, and weighs the consequence of both. But the greater achievement is in the portrayal of the soul in flux, as it rises out of, and falls back into, its old state. At one point, talking to Donati, Rachel blithely says that art must have soul and passion to be good. The reader nods, agreeing at an artistic truism. But the danger is that art will accept any soul or passion, joyous or tortured, and will allow anything if good art is made in the process. And the trouble is that as humans we can only stand so much torture, even if it is the routine, even if it is the center of our existence. Without joy and peace somewhere, the soul falls into disrepair, decay, and, in Rachel’s case, distance.
She has enjoyed her separation. Divided from an infrequent mother, a failed marriage, and a past worth leaving, she lives by way of a capable aloofness she imagines as a layer of glass. That has been the best way to get along. In fact, she may have been right. When humans enter, they cause her pain, and it is an adaptive response to avoid pain. But then, as we know, joy is also prevented, and only part of the whole is real if only part of the whole is known. A floor is placed beneath, to keep lows from sinking too far, but a ceiling is slipped in up high, to stunt happiness. It is not that this is the opposite of life. It is sufficient. It is a way to get through. But it is the way for those with no one to sustain them, with no one to swoon against. It is also the way for those who cannot face their own image, who have not looked at their own hands and found them empty. So Rachel suspects; so she searches.
A.G. Harmon’s fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in various publications, including Image and Logos. His novel, A House All Stilled, won the Peter Taylor Prize in 2001. He teaches at The Catholic University of America.
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