ABSTRACT
If, ultimately, this project suggests the death of masculinity, it also acknowledges the inevitability of its resurrection. I invoke, once again, the San Marco altarpiece, specifically the crucifix attached to the surface of the central panel (Fig. 1.1). Anachronistic and impermeable, this visual interruption may disrupt Alberti’s innovative istoria, but this gilded icon, with its pictorial promise of salvation, also flatly reinstates the master narrative. Recuperation, just as below, in the predella panel that takes as its subject the miracle of the black leg (Fig. 1.3), is dependent upon the prosthetic – a welcome, if jarring, imposition.
