In a small town not far from here, in a small house with a garden, lived a woman and her three children. In spring she planted vegetables and tended her fruit bushes and waited and watched for her garden to begin to help feed her children. As soon as the elderflowers were in bloom, she gathered them together in a basket and took them indoors. There, she took out a roll of white muslin which she kept in a draw, laying it out on the kitchen table, she took a charcoal from the ashes of the fire and without thinking or preparation she drew a large circle on the cloth, intending to cut it out and bind the elderflowers in it, so that she could steep them in water.
At that moment, came to her house a visitor who knocked loudly on the door and halted her preparations. The visitor was the schoolteacher, he said that he came to talk to her about her children that were in his care, but secretly he came to visit as he admired the woman and could not stay away.
He entered, after addressing the woman with his business and came to where the cloth lay on the table. On seeing the cloth, with the large circle drawn upon it, he gasped and showed his surprise. He took from his pocket a long folding measure which he was in the habit of carrying and applied it first this way and then that for some minutes. Finally, standing back, he declared his amazement and impressed upon the woman the unlikely nature of the thing that she had achieved. He explained to her how difficult it was to draw a perfect circle with no help from machinery or measure and praising her for her ability, he asked if he could display the circle on the cloth at his school. The woman, although taken aback, agreed.
This is a painting depicting the Tale of the Perfect Circle. In this version we see the circle depicted, originally drawn on a piece of cloth, as some sort of hoop. It was quite common to find this tale alluded to in paintings of domestic scenes, with a circle drawn in the background or hidden in other aspects of the painting or drawing. There have been many studies of this genre of paintings over the years, the provenance of this image, however, owned as it is by the Guardians of the Cave archive, is know to be genuine.
tely thought to have been directly inspired by the Tale of the Perfect Circle.
The Guardians of the Cave 