Taoist Correspondences

Date:	1979
Medium:	Pencil and watercolor on paper
Size inches:	15 x 22 1/2
Size cm:	38.1 x 57.2
Signature:	Signed and dated lower right with ©
Location:	Private Collection, New York

Reference
Andrew Wyeth,The Virgin, 1973; Antonello da Messina,The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 1475-77; left, Chart of Taoist correspondences; right, explanatory paragraph.

Andrew Wyeth

The Virgin

Siri Erickson Collection

Brandywine River Museum

Chadds Ford

Pennsylvania
(Unpublished notebook entry, 1978)

Andrew Wyeth and Antonello da Messina. Andrew Wyeth's The Virgin and Messina's St. Sebastian.
      It is nearly impossible to conceive a male nude without him doing something. A female nude doesn't need to do anything. She can sit or stand or lie down and our eyes see a composition. Always the male is getting ready, being tortured, committing suicide, but can't be lying down or only standing or sitting without some comment about the artist attempting something more than painting a composition. Messina's St. Sebastian and many other paintings of St. Sebastian solve this question because the male nude is standing dying or dead, tied to a tree or some vertical post with arrows piercing his body.
     I am not curious about how I can paint a male nude if I have the use of St. Sebastian and the Messina St. Sebastian is the one I find best to work with.
     Andrew Wyeth's The Virgin is a very fine painting of a standing female nude. Both Wyeth's woman and Messina's man are virgin-like. Both are painted in tempera medium and it came to me that they should be together. Often in my compositions I put two familiar objects together without regard to time in history. This causes a third thing to happen: composition.
     Naturally Wyeth's woman would be left of Messina's man because the woman is looking to our right. I would render the woman as close to the original as possible. There is no need to change anything on the figure. There would be no change made on St. Sebastian unless I would foreshorten his feet slightly so that he is not on such a high plane. The man has his face toward us and his eyes are looking up.
     My rendering will be very limited in color. The painting would not be more than (dimensions not filled in by the artist) and it will be painted on wood panel -- oak -- in oil paint. (Unpublished notebook entry, January 1979. The pencil and watercolor drawing is the only known version of this work).