Interesting Emendations: Peter Schjeldahl's “Zurbarán’s Citrons”

One of my favorite pieces in Peter Schjeldahl’s superb new essay collection Hot, Cold, Heavy Light is “Zurbarán’s Citrons,” a review of the 2009 exhibition Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum, at the Frick Collection. The piece originally appeared in the April 6, 2009 New Yorker under the title “Bearing Fruit.” Comparing the two versions, I notice several interesting differences. For example, Schjeldahl’s description of Francisco de Zurbarán’s exquisite Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose (1633) has subtly changed. Here’s the New Yorker version:

“Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” (1633), the artist’s only signed and dated still-life, amounts to three pictures, side by side, in one: a silver plate holding four citrons (baggy, nubbly cousins of lemons); several oranges with stems, leaves, and blossoms, heaped in a basket; and a two-handled gray ceramic cup, apparently filled with water, on another silver plate, with a pale-pink rose facing it from the plate’s lip. The objects rest on an oxblood-brown table against a pitch-black ground; sunlight rakes them from the left. Scholars speculate that they allegorize virtues of the Virgin Mary (citrons for faithfulness, water for purity, and so on—allegory bores me). Certainly, there is a sense of conceptual rigor in the work’s rebuslike presentation, which invests ordinary comestibles on a piece of domestic furniture with the gravitas of a sacrificial altar. I was overwhelmed when I saw the citrons in the picture, many years ago, at the Simon, in Pasadena, California (inch for inch, the finest collection of European paintings west of the Mississippi). Ever since, they have served me as a touchstone of painterly potency. I was pleased to discover, at the Frick, that my mental image of them had been close to photographic. No nuance of the dusky russet shadows and tiny green inflections, in the fruit’s soprano yellow, surprised me. But the other objects registered with a jolt: I didn’t remember any oranges, basket, cup, or rose. My recollection had amputated two-thirds of a tour de force.

Here’s the Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light version:

“Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” (1633), the artist’s only signed and dated still-life, amounts to three pictures, side by side, in one: a silver plate holding four citrons (baggy andnubbly kin of lemons); several oranges with stems, leaves, and blossoms, heaped in a basket; and a two-handled gray ceramic cup, apparently filled with water, on another silver plate, with a pale-pink rose facing it from the plate’s lip. 

The objects rest on an oxblood-brown table against a pitch-black ground. Sunlight rakes them from the left. Scholars speculate that they allegorize virtues of the Virgin Mary (citrons for faithfulness, water for purity, and so on—but allegory bores me). Certainly, there is a sense of conceptual rigor in the work’s rebuslike presentation, which invests ordinary comestibles on a piece of domestic furniture with the gravitas of a sacrificial altar. I was overwhelmed when I saw the citrons in the picture, many years ago, at the Simon, in Pasadena, California (inch for inch, the finest collection of European paintings west of the Mississippi). Ever since, they have served me as a touchstone of painterly potency. I was pleased to discover, at the Frick, that my mental image of them had been close to photographic. No nuance of the dusky russet shadows and tiny green inflections, in the fruit’s soprano yellow, surprised me. But the other objects registered with a jolt: I didn’t remember any oranges, basket, cup, or rose at all. My recollection had amputated two-thirds of a tour de force.

I count at least five changes: (1) the New Yorker version is all one paragraph; the book version is two; (2) “baggy, nubbly cousins of lemons” is now “baggy and nubbly kin of lemons”; (3) the sentence “The objects rest on an oxblood-brown table against a pitch-black ground; sunlight rakes them from the left” is now two separate sentences: “The objects rest on an oxblood-brown table against a pitch-black ground. Sunlight rakes them from the left”; (4) “citrons for faithfulness, water for purity, and so on—allegory bores me” has been changed to “citrons for faithfulness, water for purity—but allegory bores me”; (5) “I didn’t remember any oranges, basket, cup, or rose” is now “I didn’t remember any oranges, basket, cup, or rose at all.”

Later in the piece, Schjeldahl describes his response to Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose. Here’s the New Yorker version:

In fact, this work still strikes me as principally about those citrons, never mind their impeccable companions. The fruit’s fierce materiality and celestial beauty channel the essence of the artist’s national, historical, and personal genius. The distinctly Iberian black background is part of it. (Any painter who uses black as a color should have to pay a royalty, for the privilege, to Spain—as Manet effectually did, in his forthright emulations of Velázquez.)

And here’s the book version:

In fact, this work still affects me as principally about those citrons, never mind their impeccable companions. The fruit’s combined fierce materiality and celestial beauty channel the essence of the artist’s national, historical, and personal genius. The distinctly Iberian black background is part of it. (Any painter who uses black as a color should have to pay a royalty to Spain.)

Note the change of “strikes” to “affects” in the first sentence, the deletion of “essence of the artist’s national, historical, and personal” in the second line, and the deletion of “for the privilege” and “as Manet effectually did, in his forthright emulations of Velázquez” in the parenthesis.  

I find such changes fascinating. They afford a glimpse of a master stylist fine-tuning his composition.