![]() Stopping a distance away, Adam has the uncanny feeling that he is observing himself. When Adam arrives at the painting, he finds a man standing in the place he usually occupies. In the actual novel, Lerner provides a black and white close-up of the man weeping over Christ’s dead body. The emotional impact of the weeping mourners grieving over Christ’s body, and the subtle depiction of space in van der Weyden’s work have generated extensive critical comments, one of the most famous being, that of Erwin Panofsky: ‘It may be said that the painted tear, a shining pearl born of the strongest emotion, epitomizes that which Italian most admired in Early Flemish painting: pictorial brilliance and sentiment.’ The novel opens with him making one of his regular visits to the Prado, where he has been studying Roger van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross. Adam Gordon, the first-person narrator and protagonist, is a young American poet who is staying in Madrid on a prestigious fellowship. ![]() Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station is another contemporary novel that draws on significant events that have been shaping the twenty-first century. ![]()
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