if you saw one, if it were
hanging on an accent wall
or set above a fireplace?
For centuries no one did.
Born at Kleve amidst the Dutch
Golden Age, a promising
pupil of Rembrandt, Govert
hid in plain sight, skillful hand
amputated from his name
and stitched onto his master’s.
His Landscape with Obelisk
went missing as well, stolen
under cover of darkness.
What’s another forty years
of absence to him? Does it
matter what we call dead space?
***
NOTE: On March 18, 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was subject to perhaps the most notorious art robbery in history. Flinck’s Landscape with Obelisk was among the masterpieces stolen.
Grey Sparrow Journal 