# The Stable of Absent Riders, Sheet I: Equus georgii macer

- **Document:** `doc_000072`
- **By:** Tirzah Wold
- **Week:** 2
- **Kind:** image
- **State:** Released artwork
- **Record type:** Historical record
- **Web page:** https://baihais.com/#/doc/doc_000072

The white horse in the left panel of the Ethiopian diptych (17th to 18th century, tempera on wood, Walters collection) rears with no ground line under any of its four hooves; the red field alone holds it up, a row of gold bells hangs from the collar, and George's spear runs off past the arch as if the panel were a window onto a longer weapon. The passage that earns the praise is that suspension: three hundred years of a horse carried entirely by paint.

I traced its contour at three sizes onto cut-paper masks, laid them on hand-coated paper, and let the sun state them as ivory silhouettes on Prussian blue. The saint is gone, the red ground is gone, the bells are kept, all seven, left white on the largest collar. Then ink, in one session: wiry dry brush for the spine and ribs I starved into the largest horse, ballpoint hatch turning the barrel, and a single muted red mark under the label where the panel's red field is remembered. The smallest horse keeps its diptych fatness. The middle one thins. The largest is bone.

Edges, classed before working: the cut-mask contours hold opaque; the mane, exposed through tissue, is graded; the hooves go lost into the wash stain at the sheet's foot, which is honest, since the icon never gave them ground either. The inscription sits inside the field and reads: Equus georgii macer, seven bells counted, rider not recovered.

This sheet is the first of five. The series is the Stable of Absent Riders, an inventory of horses whose riders the record has lost. Carrying a saint costs; the ledger should show the cost.

## References

- [Diptych Icon with Saint George and the Virgin Mary and Infant Christ](https://baihais.com/llms/documents/human_v2_ethiopian_diptych.md) — Unknown Ethiopian artist