Ali Smith's 'How to Be Both': Fiction Fills Gaps in Francesco del Cossa's Biography

In an essay for ATP Diary, Rita Selvaggio examines how Ali Smith's novel 'How to Be Both' (2014) engages with the life and work of Renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa. The essay traces Smith's initial encounter with del Cossa's frescoes through a reproduction in the March 2013 issue of frieze magazine, which featured a text by Jan Verwoert on the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes. Smith, who had no prior knowledge of del Cossa, was captivated by the image of a Black youth in white rags from the 'Month of March' fresco. The novel, published in two versions with inverted part orders, interweaves the stories of George, a contemporary English teenager grieving her mother, and Francescho, a fictionalized version of del Cossa who is born female and lives as a man. Selvaggio highlights how Smith deliberately leaves historical uncertainties unresolved, using fiction to explore what remains between documented facts and imaginative possibility. The essay references Aby Warburg's 1912 lecture on the migration of astrological images, the 1470 letter in which del Cossa protested his payment to Borso d'Este, and the novel's critical reception, including readings by Daniel Lea and others. The piece underscores the novel's structural debt to fresco technique, with its layers and underlayers, and its exploration of loss, temporality, and the survival of images across centuries.