Art Appreciation

Dear Diary,

Whilst the CPS continue to spend our money deciding whether a picture not on display anywhere is pornographic, it is good to see that some enterprising members of the legal community have a proper idea of what art is all about. The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, stolen in 2003, has been recovered from a solicitor’s office in Glasgow.

In the painting, Mary is attempting to tug the baby away from the yarn-winder, presented as a cross, thus underlining the inevitability of Jesus’ fate. The painting is based on triangles (perhaps representing the Trinity) and ellipses (possibly representing imperfection).

Two solicitors are in the dock. Calum Jones is a partner in the firm from whose premises the painting was recovered. There is said to be an “interesting but benign” explanation, which seems to focus on Mr Jones’ advice on the painting’s repatriation. Dear Diary, I look forward to hearing it. It is not on the website. It would be instructive to know how much a partner charges to say, “It is not yours, so you should give it back.”

The second solicitor, one Marshall Ronald (Tucker always insists that one should be suspicious of a man whose first and last names can be interchanged), has had an interesting past. In 2001 Peter Barry Maude was given 6 years for the Sabre scam; a scheme to persuade people to part with their money and invest it with Mr Maude and his company. Alas, the money did not pass Go, but went straight into Mr Maude’s bank account where it was used to purchase necessities such as rifles and shotguns. Maude’s company, Sabre, was controlled by Mr Marshall Ronald.

Aided, I suspect, by the services of big Jim (Man City) Pickup QC, the jury believed Mr Ronald’s explanation that he had been deceived by the wicked Mr Maude who had told him huge porky pies. Certainly he appears unduly credulous, apparently accepting the account of the suffering of Catherine (”Hannah”) Marchant in the 1980s given by the unfortunate Ms Marchant and the Rev Logan. It may be remembered that the Rev Logan encouraged Ms Marchant to tell him all about her “ritual abuse” at the hands of Satanists, rather than getting her the care she required for her depression and prediliction for self-mutilation. So excited were all concerned by the Devil’s March that they quite forgot to stop Ms Marchant killing herself. Mr Ronald seems to have acted for some of the “victims” of this “satanic abuse”.

Given that the theft of the Madonna was the work of a criminal gang and involved coshing a museum guard, it appears that Mr Ronald is particularly unlucky in his choice of associates.

In an interesting irony a Mr Ronald Marshall is a world authority on the artist Massimo d’Azeglio. This seems to prove the solidity of Tucker’s thesis. If only Mr Marshall Ronald had been Mr Ronald Marshall he could have happily written about paintings, instead of being in his familiar place in the dock, accused of receiving them.

Mr Hostage seems to have an inside track on these events. He is worth reading, even if he did cut and paste the above.