The Fall of Icarus, Italian Late Mannerist and Early Baroque painter Giovanni Baglione (1566-1643)

French author Maurice Leblanc created dozens of provocative short stories featuring a gentleman thief and master of disguise by the name of Arsène Lupin. In a somewhat similar vein, by my reading, British author Hector Hugh Munro aka Saki (a name taken from the poetry of Omar Khayyam) wrote his short fiction featuring a narrator as refined aesthete, either telling his tale in objective third person or taking on the role of an actual character within the story itself.

As the Leblanc tales revolve around crime, so the Saki tales revolve around an aesthetic moment, usually touching directly or indirectly on art, music or literature or those other cultivated British arts: civilized conversation and social interchange. True, these Saki tales may include elements of satire and biting social commentary but they also contain great humor and wit rendered in highly polished, tasteful, elegant prose.

“That woman’s art-jargon tires me,” said Clovis to his journalist friend. “She’s so fond of talking of certain pictures as ‘growing on one,’ as though they were a sort of fungus.” So begins The Background, from Saki’s book, The Chronicles of Clovis, a stunning three-page tale where, prompted by Clovis’ statement, the journalist relates the story of one Henri Deplis, a native of Luxemburg who inherited a modest sum of money impelling him to a seemingly harmless bit of extravagant behavior when in Italy: he made his way to the tattoo parlor of Signor Andreas Pincini and for six hundred francs had his entire back covered with the artist’s version of The Fall of Icarus.

As the journalist continues, Signor Pincini died shortly thereafter and following some bad blood about monies owed for the tattoo, the artist’s widow donated The Fall of Icarus (considered her husband’s masterwork) to the city of Bergamo.

Events transpire against Henri Deplis: he is forced to leave a public sauna since the proprietor will not allow such a work to be placed on display, the Bergamo authorities prohibit Henri to expose his back in the sun so as to damage their art, he is even prevented from crossing the border since by law Italian works of art must remain in the country. Poor Henri! You will have to read for yourself to find out how the tale takes a few more unexpected, rather brutal twists (link below).

What a story; what a tattoo! I’m left with a question: If I had my own back covered with such a tattoo, what work of art would I choose. Of course this is only a fanciful “what if” since no tattoos for me, thank you. For starters, I am not a big fan of pain. However, if I were to imagine my back covered, what would be the tattoo? Well, as per below, I know three pieces of art I wouldn’t choose:

The middle panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights – If the tattoo artist also needled the left panel and right panel on two other willing subjects, in all likelihood, museum curators would insist all three of us tour together so the entire triptych could be placed on display.



The tiger shark from Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - A really bad choice since I’d have to immerse myself up to the neck in a tank of formaldehyde to replicate the original.


Graphic Designer/Artist Joe Wezorek’s picture of 670 faces of soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq during George W. Bush’s war - I wouldn't want to carry such a powerful political statement around on my back.



What work of art would you choose? Link to The Background by Saki: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bac.shtml


“The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.”
― Saki (1870 - 1916) ( )