Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stacked profile faces in a bust on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows several overlapping human profiles stacked in a row above a bust-like figure, one wearing a patterned high collar and another a suit jacket and tie. A small star ornament sits at the top corner and dotted lines frame the figure. Bold outlines are filled with soft shading in teal, green, yellow, red and skin tones, and the image shows the same design on two legs side by side.

Traditional Calf Profile Face Collar Suit Tie Star Dotted line Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The damp had been lifting the limewash from the chapter house for three winters, and by the time Prior Hollis sent me up the ladder with a scraper, the old faces were showing through like ghosts behind a wet sheet. There were four of them, stacked one above the other, all turned to the left as though someone in the cloister had called their names. The lowest wore a stiff ruff of yellow thread. The next had a plain cloth collar and a narrow tie. I was told to paint over the mess before the Bishop came, and I said yes, Prior, and climbed down to fetch the bucket.

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That night I went to the library instead and found the account books the brothers kept for the chapter house. Each painter had signed the foot of his work with a small five-pointed star, the same ornament that sits in the top corner of the wall, and beside each signature was a note in a different hand. Brother Thomas, who had painted the ruff, wrote that he had copied the face beneath him because its owner had asked him to, and that the face above would copy his in turn when the time came. Nobody had written what the faces were for. I counted four stars. Under the last entry was a fifth, in pencil, very fresh, and the date was the week I had arrived.

I did not sleep. At matins I watched the light come through the east window and lie across the wall, and I saw that the top face had moved, or that I had, which amounts to the same thing in a chapter house. It was turned toward the door now, not the cloister.

In the morning I took the scraper back up the ladder and left the top face alone. I mixed a little ochre with a little teal, and I began to paint the one that would sit above it.