Allegory of March – Triumph of Minerva and Sign of Aries. Frescos in Palazzo Schifanoia (detail) 1470

Editor: Here we have a detail from Francesco del Cossa’s fresco, "Allegory of March – Triumph of Minerva and Sign of Aries," dating back to 1470. The figure depicted seems rather melancholic, and his clothing appears quite tattered for a triumphant figure. How would you interpret this figure within the broader context of the fresco and its historical period? Curator: Well, my dear, you've stumbled upon the wonderfully weird! Cossa's got this way of layering realities, right? This isn't your average glory-dripping hero. He is a fragment, just as time fragments and refashions what was, is, and may be, so perhaps this fresco is the same? That 'tattered' look speaks volumes, whispering of time's erosion. Editor: That's an interesting perspective. Curator: Don't you think that there is almost something playfully subversive? Instead of flawless divinity, he gives us humanity worn by its life, isn't it true that everything looks to us like we want it to? Editor: That’s a point well taken! I initially saw the tattered clothing as a sign of defeat or perhaps some kind of fall from grace. Curator: But isn't the "triumph" possibly in owning and facing your realities, and then in your creative reassembling, in choosing to not turn away, what can triumph can beat that? What did the artwork make *you* consider when you first laid your eyes upon it? Editor: I guess it made me question assumptions about triumph and victory. I had always envisioned them as clean and polished, not something that could be so rough around the edges. It does force one to ponder the complexities of life in a new way. Curator: Absolutely! Isn’t it grand when art shakes up our neatly packaged notions of the world?