the name of the artist who produced it, Caen Canier, to
the name of the town in Italy, Gubbio, where the view
through the window, depicted in the painting, was painted, to
JA’s visit to that town, with Kenward Elmslie, at
the time of their attendance at a festival in nearby Perugia, (thus probably
meaning summer
1965 in Spoleto
– Gubbio is a couple hours away), to
at Kermani’s prompting, recollection of the mythical Wolf of Gubbio, to
recollection of an engraving from around 1911 which depicts the Wolf,
finally leading JA hilariously to expand:
“Oh yes, it ate a lot of boys
and girls in the Middle Ages.There’s an
engraving by Carl Weidemeyer
showing St. Francis shaking the paw of the Wolf of Gubbio, and the wolf has an
expression on his face like, ‘Oh, alright, I won’t eat any more children!’
(laughter).”
An image of the engraving, and the wolf’s facial expression
(be your own judge), can be viewed here.
The interview appeared many months back, in Rain Taxi.
Excavated from the midst of TiR’s objectively bottomless reading backlog pile.
TiR knew it kept these things around for a reason.
