Here is Carpaccio’s famous painting, Young Knight in a Landscape:
The painting seems to be full of disorder.
There seem to be too many things in it.
Things here and there, crowding the knight from all sides, as if he is standing boldly secure while surrounded by chaos.
Wherever the painter has the space to put something—something is there, even between the branches of the trees.
It seems that Carpaccio has rushed to fill the canvas with as many flowers and birds as possible, as if compelled by a decorative impulse to add and add and add.
But then . . . you look closer, and you begin to feel uncomfortable.
What at first seemed disorganized, now seems to be oddly regular, a disturbing organization, as if this is the painting of a puzzle.
You notice that the tree seems to have bent to make room for the knight’s elbow.
You notice that the knight’s sword is drawn exactly above the dog’s head.
You notice that an iris is coincident with the knight’s knee.
You notice that the stones are exactly between the knight’s legs.
You notice that the birds are exactly dispersed among the branches of the trees.
You notice that the beak of the peacock touches the hoof of the horse. And the peacock’s tail bisects the archway.
The more you look, the more uncanny regularities you see.
Until—finally—you see that everything in the painting participates in these eerie regularities.
It is a painting that at first seems chaotic but is carefully constructed at every point.
This contrast between how the painting seems at first and how it is . . . is why it is especially memorable.
It is similar to certain dialogues in Stendhal, which they seem to say something on the surface while their subtexts say something vastly different.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, generally available at Amazon for $4.91.