Unexpected discoveries

A signed engraving of Milan Cathedral from a charity shop. Not quite as acutely observed as J W Bunney's painting of the west front of St Mark's,Venice commissioned by Ruskin as a perfect architectural record.
A good thing to have on the wall. Collecting on a theme somehow consolidates knowledge: Italy  a theme of the moment.

E
Need to find a recording of Britten's The Holy Sonnets of John Donne - Batter my heart, three-personed God etc. Some tells me he heard Toby Spence singing them - particularly poignant following Spence's experience of cancer.

Another recurrent heme: Donne's poetry - sacred and profane - and voice.

Good Friday: Mantegna and Bellini

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
John Donne

LET mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, 

The intelligence that moves, devotion is, 

And as the other Spheares, by being growne 

Subject to forraigne motions, lose their owne, 

And being by others hurried every day, 

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: 

Pleasure or business, so, our Soules admit 

For their first mover, and are whirld by it. 

Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West 

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East. 

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set, 

And by that setting endlesse day beget; 

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall, 

Sinne had eternally benighted all. 

Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see 

That spectacle of too much weight for mee. 

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye; 

What a death were it then to see God dye? 

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke, 

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke. 

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles, 

And turne all spheares at once, peirc'd with those holes? 

Could I behold that endlesse height which is 

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes, 

Humbled below us? or that blood which is 

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his, 

Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne 

By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne? 

If on these things I durst not looke, durst I 

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye, 

Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus 

Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us? 

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye, 

They'are present yet unto my memory, 

For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee, 

O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree; 

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive 

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave. 

O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee, 

Burne off my rusts, and my deformity, 

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace, 

That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face. 

Everyday Venice and breath-taking Tintorettos

Cities as a state of mind: something that's always interested me. Everyone brings something different and has different expectations. For me, Venice is so visually charged that it's almost impossible to take in.
All I really want to do is ride up and down the Grand Canal on a vaporetto.
Or sit with a coffee on the Zattere. Made myself dizzy with too many.
(Someone says that everyone - i.e. every visiting person - attachs themselves to a place or area in Venice. Mine is Dorsoduro. 'People say Caraveggio is best....' 'Why?" "Because it's not so touristy... that's where there are a lot of family-owned restaurants.')
My attachment is totally arbitrary - where I ended up a couple of years ago in a friend's flat.
So aim must be to force myself out of this comfort zone - and look at something different every day.
Spend an hour or two writing emails in the unbelievably wonderful B and B.... where there is even a piano to play while waiting for the croissants to warm. They are filled with apricot jam.

Then the Scuola di San Rocco, which is just around the corner. People have often said to me oh of course San Rocco - you have seen San Rocco, of course, haven't you. But I hadn't. The guide book said something about Tintoretto's Sistine Chapel - which of course I didn't believe. But I literally caught my breath when I saw the upstairs hall. Tintoretto sweeps you away. So much movement, perspective and passion - and in the telling of Biblical stories (what would this mean, I wonder, to people who had no knowledge of Christianity?)

What paintings. 1560-1580. Tintoretto, like John Donne - how many years separated them? - knew a thing or two about the pleasures of the flesh.... Real temptation here...

Then the drama - the monumental composition - -the perspectives and emotion. Moses drawing water from a rock...

The Crucifixion, in an adjoining room, could take a day to see.

 I only looked at the carvings as an afterthought. They were added later.
But I really want a pair of those cowboy boots. By Pianto - 17th century.

NOTES:
So.... I am not the only person to be blown away by Tintoretto. Mary McCarthy in her dry, analytical, New Yorker way intimates that it's a really common experience.... 'he's the literary amateur's painter'  and little does the awed visitor know, she remarks, that these same Tintorettos are looked down upon by serious art critics. Not for the first time - I don't really care about that, or for the views of professional critics (and to give Mary her due, she says she likes the Tintorettos, too).

She really nails down what is amazing about these paintings, too many and too astonishing to take in on just one visit.

"One's admiration is given more, possibly, to the conception of a Tintoretto than to its realisation. He writes large what he means to convey; that is why we amateurs respond to the 'terrific' effects of The Last Supper, The Crucifixion, The Manger, The Annunciation. We see at once what he is up to; the unleashing of a supernatural event that strikes into ordinary life like a cyclone, knocking everything askew, tilting tables and crockery, so that everything seems to be sliding, as in a house carried away by a wind or a flood."  Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy

Henry James/Italian Hours on Tintoretto's Crucifixion:
"It is true that in looking at this huge composition you look at many pictures; it has not only a multitude of figures but a wealth of episodes; and you pass from one of these to the other as if you were 'doing' a gallery. Surely no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including the most exquisite bueaty. It is one of the greatest thingsof art; it is always interesting. There are works of the artist which contain touches more exquisite, revelations of beauty more radiant, but there is no other vision of so intense a reality, an execution so splendid."

St Lucy's Day and a dark start to the morning

A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY,BEING THE SHORTEST DAY

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks 
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ; 
        The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
  For I am every dead thing, 
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.         
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
  I, by Love's limbec, am the grave 
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ; 
Were I a man, that I were one 
 I needs must know ; I should prefer,       
   If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun 
At this time to the Goat is run 
 To fetch new lust, and give it you,       
  Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.
 John Donne

On the 730am train from Paddington.  The train ahead has problems with its doors. ...

Dawn is breaking as we wait.