A smaller version of this, along with a description, is up on the current installment of Now:Here:This at Artists Unite.

Boxes of lightning
I've twice been to the National Gallery to visit an exhibition of drawings from the Woodner Collection, ranging from the Renaissance through to about the 1930's. Many of the older works are actually several drawings spliced together or pieces from one sheet that have been cut apart and recombined. I've revisited one work in particular attributed to the Florentine School, "Studies of Kneeling Saint Francis and Other Figures." The lower half is one chunk, topped by a narrower piece cut from the same sheet. The figures are quite faded now - you have to look closely to more than the white that heightens the zig-zagging folds of the robes against a pale green ground. These aren't studies for instructional images anymore. They are two reliquaries, a small box of lightning sitting on top of a medium-sized box of lightning, stacked lit hat boxes.