Page 161 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Uffizi gallery in person, and didn't need the book to reproduce that art for them. I
wish I could reproduce all the ceilings for you in this book, so you can see all the
thousands of fascinating characters and figures, but of course that would require
this book to be the size of the ceiling. I've done the next best thing, and posted my
pictures at www.grotesquechildrensbook.com. Be forewarned, even a single
ceiling is overwhelming, and there are many ceilings.

I haven’t been able to extrapolate whether the very first original Italian
version had a separate standalone faux-facsimile of the children's portion of the
book, or whether the children's tales were scattered throughout the whole novel
like they were in Cardano’s English version. I suspect they were interspersed, as
well, and the kids' stuff was put in there deliberately to keep the reader interested.
But there might also have been a second, more devious reason for all the
children's art and tales, and that is to distract the original author's enemies from
reading the rest of the book too closely. The original unnamed author was clearly
caught in a delicate balance of trying to get out the truth about the circumstances
surrounding the deaths of the Duke and Duchess Bianca de’ Medici, without the
surviving Medicis themselves finding out what the author knew, and destroying
either the book or the author or both, before the truth would out. Obviously the
poor fellow lost that balancing act, because neither he nor his book lived to tell
the tale.

As you’ve seen, I've made the decision to put all the children's tales at the
beginning of the novel, because I think it makes for easier reading, but as I say,
you're welcome to second-guess me and digest it in the original order. There’s
also some heavyweight medical and alchemical and legal blather throughout. A
lot of it is ponderous academic marginalia which doesn't directly impact the plot,
and you’re well advised to skip the legal sections especially. It depends on what
you’re looking for in a reading experience. If you skip the thicker-looking
sections, you'll miss a lot of the heady intellectualism in the rest of the book,
because you’ll be unaware of the references. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing. If
you’re content to read for the story and the jokes, and won’t feel deprived if you
never discover, say, the symbolic significance of knucklebones, then, honestly,
don’t bother with any of the sidebars and exhibits. I've done you a favor and tried
to label what sections you can skip and not miss out on the plot. Your call: read
them or don't. Including this note.

Translator’s Note. About the frontispiece. I wouldn't pay too much
attention to the introduction on the frontispiece warning you about the danger of
this book. That danger was real to the Medicis, four hundred years ago. The
Medicis had good reason to fear this book, but you don't. That is, unless you fear

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