Page 145 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Aurelio took his one-year’s inheritance and moved to Florence, and set himself up in
public piazzas painting quick portraits of merchants and tradesmen until accepting his current
position as a fresco painter on the ceilings of the new I Magistrati. Aurelio had hoped in
Florence to learn how to speak, but he found no one who knew how to teach him. Allesandro
Allori, who had hired him to paint the frescos, and done so by scribbling his his notebooks rather
aggressively and jabbing his finger at words on the page. Aurelio wasn’t stupid; he could read;
he didn’t need the jabbing in order to know to read the next word in order. He was able to
communicate, slowly of course, by writing words on pieces of paper, but few people had the
patience for that. In fact, the only person who’d ever tried to engage him in any sort of
conversation was Santi del Meglio, the painter who had been murdered, or met with such bloody
foul play.

So, Aurelio, as you can imagine, was lonely. You might recall your first impression of
Aurelio lying on his back, conversing with the painted god Jupiter. Aurelio, in fact, conversed
with many of his painted figures. And even when he came home in the evening to his small, one
room off of Via Calimaruzza, Aurelio occasionally fantasized little dialogues and theatricals
between the figures themselves. In painting a tableau of Daedalus and Icarus, for instance,
Aurelio might imagine something like the following theatrical.

Translator’s note: Daedalus and Icarus playlet. here is some evidence
that the little playlet which follows had an illustration associated with it (see
Bay 40, I think it is, which would make it painted by Allori rather than Aurelio),
but was substituted in publication with a non-illustrated version, so as not to
confuse the reader whether it was part of Santi del Meglio’s illustrated folio. In
the volume which I examined in the research room at the Uffizi, I could see that
the pages upon which the playlet was printed were of a different stock; a little
heavier than the rest, almost as though having been prepared for an entirely
different purpose. A case could be made to relegate this story to an Appendix,
rather than inclusion at this point in the manuscript, but familiarity with its
theatrical precedence becomes useful later, if that’s important to you. In the
meantime, if you choose to earmark this playlet for later reading along with the
Appendix, you would not be alone, or regretful.

Daedalus and Icarus

a play in two wafts

Waft One

(The scene is the Labyrinth. The Minotaur awaits at the center for the inevitable day when
Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in attempting escape, get disoriented and stumble their way to the
center. The father and son, however, have other plans for their future, and are constructing

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