When the Saints Go Arting In: Simon the Zealot
Today I’ve been learning about Simon the Zealot, one of the apostles of Jesus who might have died peacefully or might have been crucified or might have been sawn in half lengthways, depending on whose story you believe. His back story is notoriously difficult to pin down, but he became the patron saint of sawyers, so the cut-in-half rumour informs a lot of the art, I’m both mortified and delighted to say.
Most of the art just shows Simon holding a big saw, which feels a bit insensitive. Imagine if you were killed by a rogue dart at the pub and then for the next two thousand years people kept painting you holding that dart. Embarrassing. But that’s what a lot of artists did, including Caravaggio here. Simon’s looking off to the side, trying to tell people that he also did a lot of other stuff that wasn’t being sawn in half, to no avail.
That’s where the fun stuff ends, though, so if you don’t like pictures of people being sawn in half down the middle, this might be a good place for you to stop. Because here, Niccolo Pomarancio decided to paint Simon right in mid-sawing, complete with blood spatter, a fairly nifty custom sawhorse, and a group of people nearby who are probably saying “oh my god, they’re sawing him in half”.
But it gets worse. Oh, so much worse. In this one, Lucas Cranach the Elder shows Simon being sawn in half upside down. Admittedly a bum crack works as an extremely effective sawing guide if you want to be precise about midpoints and things, but that’s just impolitely brutal. Lucas also seemed to spend quite a lot of time detailing a horse’s anus on the right side of the picture too, so I think maybe Lucas needs to have an urgent chat with a medical professional.
Okay, let’s have a little break with a calmer one of Simon just holding the saw again, in a sculpture by Francesco Moratti. I mean it looks a little bit like he’s just reached a page in a book that tells him how he died, but at least he’s in one piece, right way up, with clothes on.
Getting straight back into the gruesome horror though, Jacques Callot depicts Simon being set up horizontally, with the saw moving uppy-downy instead of sidey-sidey in another fancy, presumably purpose-built contraption. I want to know if there were carpenters who specialised in building martyrdom-ready person-sawing racks, and I want to know if that’s a dog or a small lion in the foreground. So many questions.
And here, with unnecessary detail by Antonio Montufar, Simon is horizontal and upsetting. At this point I basically want to send an email with recipients: these artists and subject line: wtf is wrong with you, paint a bowl of fruit.
In this medieval altarpiece, no fancy contraption was required to keep Simon in place while he was being sawn. Here he just seems resigned to the whole messy business, with a “well, what can you do?” expression on both sides of his face. The sawyers seem not to want to look at what they’re doing, but like. Not enough to stop doing it.
Look, that’s probably enough pictures of a guy being dissected with a giant metal toothed instrument, hey. Let’s finish with a statue of a guy who looks like he’s just looked at a bunch of pictures of himself being sawn apart. He saw what you did there.
Sorry.
