Painter of Time

by Matthew O'Connell

  POPE CLEMENT VII’s reign (1523-1534) may best be remembered for his denial of King Henry VIII’s request for an annulment from his first wife Catherine of Aragon, which then led to the formation of the Anglican church in England.

  Every painting described in The Painter of Time actually exists and the description of each, including the artist and the year that each was unveiled is accurate.

  The description of the Cloisters is largely accurate. It is a beautiful Medieval building set in Fort Tryon Park on the northern edge of Central Park along the Hudson River. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., not only donated most of his private art collection and bought the land where the Cloisters now sits, he also did in fact purchase several hundred acres of the New Jersey Palisades on the other side of the Hudson River and donated them to the state of New Jersey to help preserve the view of the museum. There are several cloistered gardens, although I doubt that there is a Japanese maple anywhere within those gardens. I also am not sure that there is a statue of St. Francis in the garden. Those both served allegorical purposes in the story and seemed to be acceptable embellishments.

  The Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at the Cloisters did indeed open in 2002 to go along with the larger Sherman Fairchild Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The description of the layout of center and the workspaces, however, is based in my imagination.