Whoever said life is a jigsaw puzzle, has obviously tried solving one of those mammoth puzzles with thousands of pieces. Frederick Mony is qualified to repeat that analogy, because he has put 18,000 pieces together to solve a puzzle based on St. Columba's Altarpiece, a masterpiece by Renaissance artist Rogier van der Weyden.
When Mony received this humungous puzzle in 2008 as a gift from his daughter Preeti, it was the world's largest. A year-and-a-half later, when he had solved it, bigger puzzles had come into the market. Today, the Western market is flush with puzzles that have as many as 24,000 pieces.
But then, setting a record has never been Mony's objective. With a B-Tech from IIT-Madras and an M-Tech from IIT-Bombay, he became a computer engineer in the early 1970s, when the profession was novel to a majority of Indians. Mony was in this profession for decades. He worked with TCS for 25 years and in the United States for other big companies. He considers solving a jigsaw puzzle akin to finding a software solution, which is why he displays the same passion for the hobby.
“Those who can't solve their big puzzles, bring them to him. He completes them without much difficulty,” says wife Angela. But nothing he had done before prepared Mony for the 18,000-piece St. Columba Altarpiece. As the puzzle was so huge, it had to be figured out stage by stage; and care had to be taken not to disturb the assembled sections. After putting together 6,000 pieces, he placed a plastic cover over the finished work to secure it. He repeated the procedure for the next 6,000 and then the final 6,000 pieces.
“Puzzles based on paintings are more difficult than the ones based on photographs. A painter optimises colours and by subtle variations of a single colour, he may portray a variety of things,” says Mony. “Some paintings may lack in sharpness and clarity and pose an additional problem.”
Sharp and clear, the St. Columba's Altarpiece did not cause that problem. The painting (whose original hangs in a German church) splices three episodes from the Bible — the Annunciation (announcement of Christ's birth), the Nativity (Christ's birth) and the Presentation (presenting the child Jesus at the temple). The richness of the events and the way in which Renaissance symbols got entwined in Rogier's work helped Mony unravel the puzzle. “There is an interplay of two cultures and a meeting of two very different eras. Sartorial elements in all three depictions belong to the Renaissance period.”
A challenge
Framing the puzzle proved a greater challenge than putting it together. Achieving proper alignment while trying to paste and put the puzzle between a frame tried Mony's patience. Luckily, he found a carpenter who shared his patience and interest in the puzzle. Mony's labour of love adorns a wall of a bedroom in his house. It is often the focal point when people visit his house. Mony can rest on this laurel. But he is busy with other puzzles. The most complex of them is a 5,000-piece one from Ravensburger called “Views of Ancient Rome”.
“Though it has far fewer pieces than the St. Columba's Altarpiece, this puzzle is more difficult because it has a whole series of paintings. Almost all the paintings depict the sky in slightly different ways. Out of a jumble of blues, you have to find the right ones for each depiction of the sky.”
But it is obvious that Mony is happy with what he's doing.
