Gareth Long and Derek Sullivan

Third Day, Eighth Story, May 3, 2020

pencil and coloured pencil on paper

2@8.3 x 5.8” (21 x 14.7 cm)

In a new iteration of Gareth Long and Derek Sullivan’s collaborative drawing project the two artists will methodically work their way through Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, each illustrating the one story per day in the isolation of their own studios. They will Zoom conference and draw together, but make separate drawings. The resulting pairs will be dated and numbered according to the story. The project will be continued until complete, or social distancing restrictions are lifted, whichever comes first.

Decameron (completed 1353 CE), set in Italy during the time of the Black Death, tells of a group of seven young women and three young men who flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside for two weeks. To pass the evenings, each member of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy days during which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of the fortnight they have told 100 stories.

Summary of Third Day, Eighth Story: Ferondo, having swallowed a certain powder, is entombed for dead and being taken forth of the sepulchre by the abbot, who enjoyeth his wife the while, is put in prison and given to believe that he is in purgatory; after which, being raised up again, he reareth for his own a child begotten of the abbot on his wife.