Florida Vacation

                                             

The Weekly Bystander took the week off last week to get some R and R in sunny Florida. We spent the week on Longboat Key, a long narrow island on Florida’s West coast that stretches between the Gulf of Mexico on one side and Sarasota Bay on the other. Longboat Key is full of expensive beach homes, condos, and hotels but we always like to stay at the Rolling Waves Cottages: eight tiny cottages that are a real throwback to the 1950s.

These housekeeping cottages are nothing fancy but they are well equipped and maintained. The best part though is the beautiful white sandy beach that is only a few paces from your door. You practically have the beach all to yourself except for the pelicans and terns that continually dive for fish in a spectacular aerial display.

Otherwise there is not much going on at the Rolling Waves but a few miles down the road is trendy St. Armand’s Key, which is full of cafes, restaurants, and shops. From St. Armand’s Key it is but a short hop across the bridge to Sarasota, a city that probably has all the same problems as any other American city but still presents a beautiful waterfront prospect as you drive across the bridge. Sarasota is also a cultural and arts center. In addition to theater, ballet, and opera, it is also the home of the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art.

The Museum was built by circus magnate John Ringling on the grounds of his beautiful Italianate villa, Ca d’Zen.  The circus wintered in Sarasota and Ringling, one of the richest men in America in the 1920s, hoped that a world-class art collection might help to promote the city.

He was a little late in entering the Old Master collecting game since earlier magnates had gobbled up most of the available great works of Renaissance Masters. As a result he turned to works of the period that followed the Renaissance, the so-called Baroque. Baroque art was out of favor at the time especially since contemporary critics regarded it as smacking too much of the religious fervor of the Catholic Counter Reformation.

Francesco Cairo: Judith
Ringling Museum of Art

One of the most popular paintings in the Ringling is a striking version of “Judith with the Head of Holofernes”, a magnificent example of Baroque art by Francesco Cairo. It tells the story of the Biblical Jewish widow Judith, who saves her people by dressing up in all her finery to seduce and then kill the leader of the enemy forces. Here she is presented in a mixture of light and dark that is so characteristic of the Baroque. She has already done the deed and decapitated the drunken Holofernes with his own sword which is so elaborately depicted. As usual Judith is attended by her servant who will carry the head back to the Jewish camp and tell its leaders that their danger is over.

The Museum is currently featuring an exhibition of paintings by famed Venetian artist Paolo Veronese and his workshop that includes portraits, mythological subjects, and large-scale sacred subjects. The exhibition is augmented by works of Veronese contemporaries from the Ringling’s own collection. For example, there is a spectacular version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” one of the most popular subjects in Venetian art.

Veronese: Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Ringling Museum of Art

In this version the Holy Family has fled from the deadly designs of King Herod and reached the relative safety of Egypt. They pause so that Madonna can rest and nurse her Child. Joseph looks on and pours some water for Mary while colorful angels hover about bringing fruit down from a palm tree. The palm was part of a famous legend that had the tree bending down at the command of the infant so that Joseph could pick its fruit.

The grounds of the Museum are really lovely and also include a Circus Museum that is well worth visiting. The Museum also has a variety of cafes and a very nice gift shop. A provision in John Ringling’s will allows free admission on Monday and we along with a horde of tourists took advantage of Ringling’s beneficence.

All in all, the Sarasota area is a wonderful place to visit, especially when you consider  the ease of getting in and out of its wonderful uncrowded airport. ###

Huntington Library and Museum

                                              

On a recent trip to California my wife and I were able to visit the magnificent Huntington Library located in the posh little town of San Marino just outside of Pasadena. The library and the surrounding grounds were originally the home of railroad magnate Henry Huntington. After his death in the 1920s the home and its extensive collection of European and American  art were turned into the incredibly beautiful museum.

Huntington Library and Museum
San Marino, CA

The collection is so large that it takes at least four buildings to display only a portion. But what a portion! In the building devoted to European art there is a room dedicated to some exquisite Renaissance Madonnas, as well as a splendid collection of French eighteenth century  art, but the centerpiece of the Huntington is the magnificent collection of British eighteenth century portraiture.

This collection is mainly found in a great room covered with beautiful full-length portraits of beautiful men and women. Pride of place goes to Thomas Gainsborough’s famed “Blue Boy” which was purchased by Huntington from famed dealer Joseph Duveen in the early 1920s for the then record breaking price of $700000. Everyone knows the painting but hung as it is in the place of honor in the midst of all these beautiful paintings, it takes your breath away.

Equally striking is Thomas Lawrence’s “Pinkie” a portrait of an 11-year-old girl standing in a cloud-backed landscape. The portrait of Pinkie was ordered by her grandmother, and Lawrence was able to capture the budding loveliness and gaiety of this young girl.  Sadly, Pinkie died of tuberculosis shortly after the painting was completed.  Nevertheless, the painting holds its own today hung as it is directly opposite the “Blue Boy” at the other end of the great room.

In  between are paintings of the “beautiful” people of eighteenth century England during the era of the American Revolution, an event of whose significance most were probably unaware. I was interested in these paintings not only for their beauty but also because some of the people depicted were friends and associates of the subject of my doctoral dissertation of long ago, General Henry Seymour Conway. Conway was a soldier and a politician who rose to great prominence during the era of the American Revolution, and some of the people depicted in the Huntington library collection were associated with him.

Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire
by Sir Joshua Reynolds

For example, there is Georgiana Spencer, a distant relation of Princess Di, who would marry into the wealthy Cavendish family and become Duchess of Devonshire. For a while during her short life she was the reigning queen of London high society. General Conway was a close associate of the Cavendish family and a number of Dukes of Devonshire. Incidentally, two centuries later, Fred Astaire’s sister and original dancing partner, Adele, would marry another Duke of Devonshire.

The Huntington Library sits in the midst of beautiful grounds and fabulous botanical gardens. We went upstairs and happened to look out a window to behold a landscape more spectacular than anything in the paintings. Even down below sitting near the children’s garden, we could behold the striking San Gabriel Mountains acting like a frame for the whole scene.

By that time our four and a half year old granddaughter was getting a little tired but earlier she had gone through the picture gallery with great enthusiasm. She took innumerable pictures with her digital camera. Looking at Pinkie and the other beautiful ladies in their stunning gowns, at one point she exclaimed, “this is glorious!”

We visited the day after Thanksgiving and the large parking lot was practically full. Nevertheless, the grounds are so large and the collections so designed that we never had the feeling that you get in so many museums of being crowded, rushed, and jostled. The Huntington Library is one of America’s great museums, and anyone visiting in the Los Angeles area should not miss it. ###

Father's Day

Today is Fathers Day. Is there any more difficult job than the one faced by fathers today? On this day our society pays lip service to fathers but on every other day they are mocked and vilified. Everywhere around us we see men abandoning, and abusing their children, and even urging that their children be aborted. Let's pray today that fathers will deny themselves, and take up their cross and do their work.

Here is a little prayer for fathers;

            Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for all the fathers on earth who,

            like St. Joseph, accept the responsibility to care for and love their children.

            May you strengthen them with the kindness, patience and wisdom they need

            to encourage and guide their children.

            May they be supported by a steadfast wife, a caring family and good friends.

            Most of all, may they know that you and you alone are the source of all that is

            good and truly valuable in this world.

 "For what does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, but ruin or lose himself?


###

Titian and the Borghese Gallery

My wife and I first saw Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love on a visit to the famed Borghese Gallery in Rome in the spring of 2010. We were in Rome for a few days at the end of a journey that had begun in Venice where I delivered my paper on Giorgione’s Tempest at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love

After the conference we visited Florence and Orvieto and wound up in Rome to complete our journey. However, once in Rome we discovered that we were among the multitude stranded there because an eruption of a volcano in Iceland had shut down most air travel from Europe. It was a nerve-wracking experience but we were in a lovely hotel not far from the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon. We had no choice but to enjoy a few extra days in Rome.

So one day my wife suggested we visit the Borghese, a site that due to my ignorance we had never visited before. The Villa Borghese is located in a huge beautiful park right across the street from the fashionable Via Veneto. Even though a sign at the door said sold out, we entered and had no trouble gaining admission.

In 1909 Edward Hutton, an Englishman who would go on to spend most of his life in Italy, introduced the Borghese in this fashion.*

The Villa was built in the early years of the seventeenth century by Cardinal Scipione Borghese…and was bought, with its magnificent collection of pictures, and beautiful gardens and parks, by the Italian government for 144000 lira, much less than its real value, in 1901.

Fifty years later Giorgina Masson gave this overview.**

the chief glory of the villa, however, lies in its park and gardens, which have a circumference of nearly four miles and contain a riding school, an amphitheatre, a lake, an aviary and fountains. ‘Classical’ temples and ruins are dotted here and there among the shady walks of the great boschi of ilex. In assembling so many diverse buildings within the compass of one vast part it is tempting to think that perhaps Cardinal Scipione intended to create a villa on the lines of that of the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli.**

Walking through the park was a beautiful experience but we had come to see the collection within the Gallery. We were not disappointed. The collection of statuary on the first floor was incredible including famous works by Bernini and Canova. However, it was the second floor that blew us away. I share the feelings of Edward Hutton expressed over a 100 years ago.

But it is really the Gallery of Pictures which calls for our wonder and admiration, since it is, perhaps, the finest private collection of the Italian masterpieces of the sixteenth century anywhere to be found…. 

the true glory of the gallery consists not only, or even chiefly, in the work of Raphael, but in three works by the greatest master of that or any other period, Titian, who is represented by three pictures, the first belonging to his youth, the others to his old age. 

The Sacred and Porfane Love, painted about 1512 for Niccolo Aurelio, Grand Chancellor of Venice, is the highest achievement of Titian’s art at the end of his Giorgionesque period. It has been in this collection since 1613, when it was called…’Beauty unadorned and Beauty adorned.’ In fact, the name it now bears, which has so puzzled the world, does not occur till the end of the eighteenth century, when it seems to have been given it by the Germans. For us, at least, it can have no authority, the subject of the picture being merely a moment of beauty,--a moment gone, but for Titian’s genius, while we try to apprehend, in the golden summer heat, under the trees by a fountain of water….

No photograph or digital image can do justice to the Sacred and Profane Love. It is over nine feet long and seems to take up almost an entire wall in one of the largest rooms. I think that Hutton was right on when he described the subject of the painting as a “moment of beauty.” That is certainly the first impression when looking at the two beautiful female figures in the equally beautiful landscape. Titian’s coloration is also overwhelming. 

However, I distinctly recall turning to my wife and saying, “It’s Mary Magdalen.” Why? I still don’t know. Nevertheless, after we finally got home, I began to think more and more of the iconographic symbols in the painting, and to do a little research on the Magdalen. I discovered that as in the case of the Tempest, there was no agreement among scholars about the subject of the famous painting. Moreover, recent scholarly studies of Mary Magdalen in history and art provided much material for a Magdalen interpretation.

Sometimes I worry that interpreting beautiful paintings like the Tempest and the Sacred and Profane Love as “sacred” or “religious” subjects might lessen the reverence that these paintings have enjoyed in both the scholarly world and in the popular imagination. For years people have loved these paintings. Part of the allure has been the mystery and enigma that has always surrounded them. Moreover, in today’s secular society would a “sacred” subject turn people off?

 

I hope not. To me it is the mark of genius to be able to produce beauty that will be admired even by those who don’t see the paintings in the same way that devout contemporary Venetians might have. I know that the Sacred and Profane Love was not originally meant to be hung in the Borghese Gallery but seeing it there in that magnificent setting will always be an unforgettable experience.

As a young man Edward Hutton summed up the experience in 1909 and fifty years later in the seventh edition of his “Rome” his opinion was the same.

But, after all, what we have come here to see is the Sacred and Profane Love, by Titian, and that will lead us, not from picture to picture in a sudden enthusiasm for painting, but most certainly back again into the gardens, where the world is so sleepily golden in the heat, and the shade so cool and grateful. There we shall linger till, from the faraway city, the Ave Mary rings from all the cupolas, and we must return down the long alleys in the softly fading light, stealing softly, half reluctantly, out of the world of dreams back into the streets and the ways of men.###

*Edward Hutton, “Rome”, New York, 1909, pp. 330-333.

**Giorgina Masson, “Italian Villas and Palaces,” London, 1966, pp. 248-9.

Catholic travel: Italy and Assisi

                                                A Religious Experience

Assisi

                                 

Italy is one of the most popular travel destinations today. Besides its many attractions it has for the Catholic traveler a special significance. When my wife and I travel we like to go to Mass every day. Not only does every little Italian town have its own church, but each little district in the town will have its own church. Of course in the larger cities you can hardly cross the street without bumping into a Catholic church which is still functioning as a center of worship.

For an American Catholic the spiritual benefit of attending Mass even in Italian is immeasurable. Still, I have to admit that for a tourist there are some ancillary advantages. First, it is a pleasure to observe Italians at worship. On Sundays the churches are well attended and Italians attend with gusto. They sing out the hymns more so than we do here in America.

At a daily Mass attended by half a dozen elderly women, they sang an a cappella version of the Ave Maria that was as good as anything I've ever heard.

Secondly, even though most of the precious art works that were originally in these churches have been removed to pinacotecas and museums, there is still plenty to see although the churches are extremely dark except when services are being conducted. In some churches if you drop a coin in a box, you will get a couple of minutes of light illuminating some masterpiece. Any tourist can do that but sometimes a Mass goer can get a special perk. If you attend the 10:30 daily Mass in the Baptistry in Florence, you will be allowed inside before the mob of tourists is admitted. Before and after Mass you will be able to walk around observing the incredible ceiling and walls virtually alone.

One year my wife and I happened to be in Assisi on October 4, the feast of St. Francis. Assisi is a special town on any day but it was really something that weekend. The day before was a Sunday and we attended Mass in the magnificent lower church of the Basilica of St. Francesco. The Mass was packed with pilgrims from all over come to honor St. Francis.

Assisi is a hill town with panoramic views over the surrounding Umbrian countryside but to me the most wonderful thing about Assisi is the sounds. Monday morning we were awakened by the incredible bells of San Francesco which rang steadily for more than five minutes at 7:00. Two hours later a procession from the town's central square, the Piazza del Comune, wound its way down the via di San Francesco to the Basilica. Every year a different region of Italy is represented in the procession. That year it was Abruzzo from the South. People marched  in their native costumes behind their local banners down to the Church to attend Mass.

Loudspeakers broadcast the proceedings for the thousands who couldn't get inside while TV camera crews roamed through the crowd and helicopters floated above. After Mass some politician gave a speech, and then gaily dressed singing groups performed traditional songs from Abruzzo. Finally, the crowd began to disperse for lunch and siesta.

That night after dinner my wife and I were walking back to our hotel. By then even the area around the Basilica was deserted. Yet as we passed the doors of the lower Church, we heard a small group of Americans singing the hymn of St. Francis.

            Make me a channel of your peace…###