Piero di Cosimo at the National Gallery

Piero di Cosimo's reputation as a Florentine Renaissance painter has suffered for the notion, going back as far as Vasari and as recently as a New Yorker article about the current exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Gallery, that he was a little touched in the head. Because of his eccentricity, he was not to be taken quite as seriously as the Great Names. But I left the exhibit feeling that there was much more to Piero than that.

Oh, his cup ran over with imagination at times, and the show leaves no doubt he had a sense of humor. The painting of Perseus rescuing Andromeda has been widely reproduced in media articles and the museum's own promotion. He obviously had fun with the mythical animal who served as Andromeda's prison guard. The curatorial commentary itself next to the picture aptly suggests the beast is more likely to inspire sympathy for the wacky creature than to scare the viewer.

And then there's the Madonna and Child -- as conventional a subject as any at the time it was put on canvas -- with one delightful detail: a dove with a halo. The Holy Ghost is usually shown as part of the Trinity, up in the sky above the biblical figures, or descending straight down from Heaven as if lowered on an invisible wire. This halo-crowned bird is just off in a corner of the picture. You can almost see the twinkle in Piero's eye as he added that touch.

The Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos. 

A larger version is shown in the New Yorker article,

 although the colors are curiously washed out 

compared with the original.

My favorite among the lighthearted paintings is a playful scene from mythology, in which the young Vulcan has just been tossed out of Mount Olympus by his parents, Jupiter and Juno. He has landed on the island of Lemnos, without a stitch of clothing, which seems pleasing to the flower-gathering nymphs who have found him. The nymphs show a nice bit of leg, and the one at the far right, dressed in the height of Renaissance finery, smiles charmingly with amusement and a touch of desire. There's a hole in the cloud where Vulcan tumbled through.

But the exhibit demonstrates that Piero was much more than a producer of jeux d'esprit. His able mind and hand were capable of richly colored, moving religious scenes.

Some of Piero's madonnas can be mentioned in the same breath as those of the great Giovanni Bellini. (For better or worse, Bellini's are mostly in Venice, which unfortunately I don't get to often.) The Venetian managed the impossible: showing Mary and Jesus, a look of unearthly beauty in Mary's face, and at the same time an infinite sadness. It is as if she knows the terrible death that will befall her son as well as, according to Christian doctrine, the end of death.

No, Pierro's works on the same theme (at least those shown at the Smithsonian) aren't as masterful as Bellini's, but in their own way are compellingly dramatic.

Piero seems to have understood what his miserableist contemporary, the monk Savonarola, did not: that joyous tones, a tickling wit, and sincere piety can coexist in love.

London scenes

Trajan's column, sculpture cast court, V&A

Some of my experiences in London this past week are recirculating through my head, like a song that keeps returning. I set down here a few notes for those who are planning a visit or who are interested in London.

The Victoria and Albert

After spending the morning at the Byzantium exhibit (described in the previous entry) I hopped on the Tube and alighted at South Kensington. After lunch at an Indian restaurant I remembered from a previous trip -- Indian food in central London is generally of a high standard -- I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as the "V&A," or as the world's attic. The latter description is not too far-fetched. It is filled with no end of arts and crafts, like a gigantic house owned by the most obsessive, long-lived collector imaginable.

If there is some sort of handiwork you fancy -- silver, glassware, costumes, German medieval and Renaissance wood carving, name it -- you're in for a peak experience at the V&A, but don't forget to bring emergency oxygen. By the time you have looked on the products in your field of interest, from century after century, in display case after case, room after room, you may find your head spinning, your knees week, your feet groaning, and be ready to plead for a stop to it.

I first headed, as planned, to the sculpture cast courts. They contain a collection of casts made in the 19th century of famous and not-so-famous sculptures from throughout history. Other than not being made of the original materials, they are actual-size accurate models that you can study at your leisure, many of them more closely than you could the real items. Trajan's column from Rome, an amazing pictorial record of the Emperor's military campaigns carved in low relief, can hardly be seen in situ because it is, understandably, fenced off to protect it; but the model in the V&A is bang in front of you. Not only that, but the installers sawed it in half so the middle part is nearer to eye level.

Minbar, a sort of Muslim pulpit,
from a Cairo mosque. Jameel Gallery

The newest room at the museum is the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, added with much acclaim in 2001. It would be a cheap shot to suggest that the Jameel Gallery is a symptom of the Islamization of Britain. The world of Islam has produced marvelous art and craftsmanship, and the V&A's new gallery offers examples that are well worth getting to know.

The intricate geometric designs, the richly patterned carpets, the elaborately decorated Korans -- fabulous stuff. And has there ever been a more beautiful form of writing than the old Arabic script in the illuminated manuscripts on view here?

The British Museum

You want to see the Parthenon sculptures, of course. I have a couple of times before, but this was the first time I felt that I really appreciated them.

Heavily damaged, missing some of their surviving pieces (which are in Greece), and out of context, the sculptures are not necessarily easy to warm to. They consist of three different elements: metopes, from the roof, which are low relief carvings of scenes of fighting between centaurs and Lapiths (a mythical race); the frieze, a continuous scene of a procession, which ran all around the outside of the temple; and the pediment sculptures.

The metopes are technically skilled but limited in variety; not especially compelling. The frieze is much more interesting, but hard to comprehend. Because of the need to display them facing into a room, when they were originally facing out from the building, their aspect is reversed. Besides that, instead of running continuously around, they are placed on two walls opposite one another. But even damaged, and with pieces missing, the frieze contains graceful carving and communicative details.

The remains of the sculptures from the east pediment and the west pediment face each other on opposite sides of the hall. Again, they would have originally faced in opposite directions, but here that's not much of a problem. The east pediment sculptures are the greatest glory of the whole group, and even in their broken state convey a moving sense of the highest ideals of the people of the Athenian city-state.

The other rooms devoted to classical artifacts are first-class too. I was delighted to be able, once again, to look on the justly celebrated Portland Vase from ancient Rome -- the most beautiful of its kind I've ever seen.

The museum is generally horribly crowded. Get there when it opens to have a few precious moments to look at its wonders in relative tranquility.

Victoria Hamilton

Twelfth Night, with Derek Jacobi and Victoria Hamilton

I had read "Shakespeare's" Twelfth Night, but never seen it performed, even on television. (The quotes around "Shakespeare" are because I am one of those nutters who are convinced that the actor-manager from Stratford had at most a small hand in writing the plays published under his name.) It does not strike me as one of the author's better efforts, but seeing it played in a West End theater almost made me change my mind. Almost.

The U.K. is going downhill fast in many ways, but in acting it's enjoying a Golden Age, has been for some years. Why this should be so in a culture that is otherwise moribund is an interesting question, one to which I have no answer except perhaps that the English have always been avid theatergoers and there is a solid tradition that is maintained in schools like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Anyway, you could probably cast 500 plays simultaneously with excellent actors from the country's major cities.

Needless to say, Derek Jacobi was a treat as Malvolio. I'd never seen him on stage before, and never in a semi-comic role, which he pulled off with great élan. Jacobi and Anthony Hopkins are probably the greatest all-around actors since Olivier, and it's only because neither has ever had as much glamorous appeal as Olivier that they don't have the same worshipful following.

I was just as keen to see Victoria Hamilton playing Viola. She is not well known in the United States, although much respected in British theatrical circles -- well, she would be, to be cast alongside Jacobi, wouldn't she? Hamilton provided the only light and humanity as Cordelia in Richard Eyre's otherwise nearly unwatchable King Lear for TV, and was also outstanding playing her namesake in the historical soap opera Victoria and Albert. I was not disappointed. She offered comic aplomb and touching lovesickness in this Twelfth Night. The rest of the cast was mostly excellent, although I thought Indira Varma (who played Titus Pullo's ill-fated wife in the HBO Rome) was a bit too coy and superficial as Olivia.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne

The National Gallery

Before and after Twelfth Night, I was able to spend a little time in the National Gallery (fortunately only a five-minute walk from the theater). This gallery of paintings is in every respect worthy of the great nation that Britain once was, and one would like to think, might someday be again.

I began in the Dutch section where I was reacquainted with "old friends" by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Metsu, Teniers, De Hoogh, and Jacob van Ruisdael. The latter is my favorite landscape painter of all time, and I usually have his paintings to myself, because he is anything but a crowd pleaser. But those swelling, metallic clouds -- the somber shadowed countryside with a spotlit patch of sunlight -- the liquid silver streams ... these chilly views of Holland are sad, contemplative, Zen-like in their perfect stillness, catching eternity in every branch and leaf.

After the play, I returned to the gallery to those geniuses of the Italian late Renaissance, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, all astonishing colorists in their individual ways. No matter how many times I see it (I guess this was the fourth time), Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne blows my mind. But I made it a point to absorb some of the master's other, less spectacular pictures, which were also compelling my admiration ...

When it was announced that the gallery would shortly be closing, at 6 p.m. A disappointment because the museum normally stays open until 9 on Wednesdays, but it being New Year's Eve ...

I used the last few minutes to try to impress on my mind one Tintoretto that I really wanted to "keep" -- but I find now that I cannot recall it, even its name. More time, more time, please.

But that's London. There is always so much more, just around the corner. You can't quite grasp its essence, it is too big, too varied, elusive. You leave impressed beyond words, but London is not yours, will never be yours, will only allow you glimpses of its own past magnificence that lingers in places, and the treasures it holds from every civilization since humans began making things that would last longer than their individual lives.

It is older than you in your present incarnation and will not yield all its secrets. So this city that began as Londinium, for the Romans who braved the back of the northern wind, bids you to return to know still more of it, but not enough, not ever enough.

Flying to Byzantium

Incense burner in the shape of a church,
gilded silver, 12th century

When I arrived in London for a brief post-Christmas holiday, I learned that the Royal Academy was presenting a special exhibition of the art of Byzantium (modestly renamed Constantinople by the emperor Constantine), which has become synonymous with the Eastern Roman Empire that survived a thousand years after Rome itself fell off the edge of history. The exhibit went on my short list of things to see, and after a night's recovery from the degradation of economy class air travel, I headed straight to the historic Academy building in Piccadilly.

The half dozen or so rooms where the objects are displayed have been sensitively lit -- very subdued overhead lighting, only the art itself clearly visible. This creates an aura of mystery in keeping with the other-worldly spirit of the works, and although the space was crowded, visitors seemed to catch the mood and mostly spoke in near whispers.

The subjects of the pictorial art are familiar: they would become central to the painting and sculpture of the European middle ages. But this is Christian iconography with a difference. The Eastern love of ornament in rich colors, precious metals, and jewels dazzles the eye. No puritanical simplicity here.

Ikon of Archangel Michael

The spectacular elements in the religious art are intended to convey through the senses the transcendent beauty of a greater Reality than we normally know in our earthly lives. Gold was the closest they could come to suggesting Heaven's radiance.

But it's hard to doubt that the people of this Middle Eastern Rome loved brilliant materials for their own sake. The jewelry and faded remnants of costumes that make up part of the show accord very well with the mosaic portraits that have survived of those magnificent show-offs like the emperor Justinian and his empress Theodora (6th century).

In its more prosperous days -- the civilization had its ups and downs, of course -- Byzantium could well afford its flamboyance. Justinian didn't do things by halves in filling his territory with wonders of art and architecture. Will Durant writes:

He began now one of the most ambitious building programs in history: fortresses, palaces, monasteries, churches, porticoes, and gates rose throughout the Empire. In Constantinople he rebuilt the Senate House in white marble, and the Baths of Zeuxippus in polychrome marble; raised a marble portico and promenade in the Augusteum; and brought fresh water to the city in a new aqueduct that rivaled Italy's best. He made his own palace the acme of splendor and luxury: its floors and walls were made of marble; its ceilings recounted in mosaic brilliance the triumphs of his reign, and showed the senators "in festal mood, bestowing upon the Emperor honors almost divine." And across the Bosporus, near Chalcedon, he built, as a summer residence for Theodora and her court, the palatial villa of Herion, equipped with its own harbor, forum, church, and baths.

Most of the large-scale artistic and architectural achievements of Byzantium have vanished or are in ruins (although the great cathedral of St. Sophia survives, as a mosque). But the collection at the Royal Academy includes some flabbergasting examples of craftsmanship.

Several pictures are made in a technique called micro-mosaic, which I had never even heard of. Mosaics are decorations or illustrations made entirely of fragments of colored stones, glass, and jewels; for those meant to adorn walls, the constituent bits (tesserae) are usually about thumbnail size. But the micro-mosaics are pieced together with tesserae almost as tiny as sewing stitches. The finished pieces are like cloth woven entirely of jewels.

Illuminated manuscript on parchment,
12th century

I don't know what it's doing there, but the Byzantium exhibit includes one of those portraits from North Africa in the heyday of the original Roman Empire that were painted on the coffins of the deceased. They are particularly fascinating because they are, as far as I know, the only surviving paintings of that era meant to represent what specific people actually looked like. The dry air of the region is said to have preserved the wood and paint that would long since have decayed elsewhere.

Roman portrait on cover of
wooden mummy case, A.D. 55-70

These paintings, especially of the women, tend to look startlingly modern. As far as what is pictured of the lady above, she would not have been out of place as a spectator in the Royal Academy exhibit.

For all its longevity, Byzantium eventually weakened, for the usual reasons -- unstable politics, religious upheavals (it went through its own period of iconoclasm), and wars that drained its treasury and its best genes. Constantinople was even trashed by its fellow Christians in the fourth Crusade. The West was always suspicious of Byzantium and dithered about sending aid in times of greatest danger, including the last, when Constantinople was besieged by the Ottoman Turks. In 1453, this last descendant of Rome fell to Islam. Sic transit gloria mundi. (I don't know the Greek equivalent, but it would be more appropriate, because the Byzantines were not long in dropping the Latin which few of them could speak well and adopting Greek as the language of their empire.)

Inevitably, but appropriately, the explanatory signage in the exhibition rooms at the Royal Academy quotes from Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium":

... I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Save the Parthenon sculptures: get them out of Britain

I have changed my mind.

No kidding: I have changed my mind.

My rethink is about the heatedly debated question of whether the sculptures that once covered the pediments and frieze of the Parthenon, which are now housed in the British Museum in London, should be repatriated to Greece. I have said no before. Now I say yes.

The sculptures were formerly known as the Elgin Marbles, after Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman empire — which then ruled Greece — who collected and shipped them home in 1801. The Parthenon had been severely damaged in an earlier war, and the site was unprotected, so it is quite possible that Lord Elgin saved them from destruction. But in today's climate of ethnocentrism and political correctness, he is reviled.

The sculptures now reside in a grand room built specially for the purpose, well displayed (except they necessarily face inward rather than outward as they would have on the Parthenon). I've been fortunate enough to visit them twice. Despite being considerably damaged, with portions missing — especially on the pediment carvings — they are still powerful and offer a fascinating glimpse into the civic and religious atmosphere of Attica's golden age.

While I can sympathize with the Greeks' (and many others') desire to return the artwork to its original site, especially now that a large modern museum has opened at the Parthenon, I can't buy it in principle. The argument from ethnicity is irrelevant: few of today's Greeks are descended from those who lived in fifth century B.C. Athens. That aside, to cater to the view that every work of art "belongs" to the country on whose territory it was made would wreck every major museum collection in the world. To take the land-of-origin idea to its logical conclusion, the Cincinnati Art Museum would contain only works created in Cincinnati. Or in the museum's own ZIP Code.

So why have I come around to the view that it's time to send the Parthenon sculptures back? Because that will help assure that they are preserved when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim-dominated country, as it seems determined to do.

During the Blitz in World War II, the National Gallery in London wisely packed up its treasures and stored them for safekeeping far from the city (I believe they were sent to a cave in Wales). The Parthenon sculptures could be equally vulnerable in another 10 or 20 years — or today, for all I know.

Muslim fanatics haven't a drop of tolerance for religious art, or even art depicting human figures, from other cultures. Whether the Parthenon sculptures are religious art depends on definition; worship of the gods and the celebration of the polis were entwined in the age of Pericles. Regardless, Muslim iconoclasts don't make fine distinctions. Buddhism is not a theistic religion either, which didn't save the 1,50-year-old statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Before Taliban


After Taliban

The Parthenon sculptures belong to the world, not to Greece. But they will be safer in Athens. The Greeks lived under the Turkish-based Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years, and if resistance to an Islamic takeover succeeds anywhere in Europe, I think Greece will be one of those places.

A terrible beauty is born

Striking modern art.

Love those blues.


Like a heavenly flower.


Museum quality.

If you happen to be an oncologist, you know what I'm going to say next. Yes, these gorgeous items are cancer cells. From top to bottom, breast cancer; unspecified; unspecified; brain cancer.

I've read that even amid the horrors of war, soldiers have sometimes found beauty to admire: tracer bullets and phosphorus like fireworks, smoke billowing from an explosion. It would seem that nature likes to tease us by making some of its worst phenomena pleasing to the eye. There might be a philosophical lesson in this, but if so, don't ask me what.

Here is a satellite photo of Hurricane Dean:

UPDATE 9/2: Speaking of visual beauty in weapons of war, I ran across the following description in Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day. It's a nighttime air raid in World War II London (Bowen had lived there throughout the war):

Harrison, back again, stood in the middle of a street, otherwise empty, illuminated by a chandelier flare. During the pulse of silence between the overhead throbbing and the bark of the guns, the flare made the street like a mirrored drawing-room. Above where Harrison stood peering at something jotted on an envelope, white-green incandescence flowed from the lovely shapely symbol, which slowly descended as it died -- the sky to the east reflected flamingo-pink nobody could have taken to be the dawn, the west was jagged with flames.

The museum of cursed art

New York, like other progressive enclaves, has substituted the worship of art for the worship of God. Its museums and galleries lure the faithful, their shows are respectfully noted in The New York Times, and their names appear in guidebooks and on tourists' checklists. Yet one art museum -- despite being located on a fashionable shopping street (Madison Avenue) in midtown, passed by tens of thousands every day, featuring the requisite gift shop and restaurant -- is virtually ignored by the guidebooks and media. I imagine The Times mentions it, if ever, patronizingly.

The Dahesh Museum displays cursed art. Cursed, that is, by the Art Establishment. It consists of 19th century paintings and sculptures that are not "revolutionary," that for the most part have no political and social message, and that are figurative. The paintings' subjects are historical, mythological, and picturesque. The same could be said of many Renaissance works certified by the experts as masterpieces, but according to them, that's not what the 19th century was about. The only art that matters from the period, they say, is impressionist and post-impressionist. Everything else is naively pictorial and quaint: "academic" is the damning expression. This is what the impressionist darlings rebelled against and saved us from.

Lawrence Alma Tadema,
Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh's Granaries

The true "academics" are today's institutional academics, mostly college teachers who write textbooks. They are herd animals. In their quest for the Holy Grail of tenure, they take in each other's washing and parrot the same line: modernism is the peak of perfection; the imps and post-imps were heroic pioneers in its development. The other styles in which many artists continued to work, contemporaneously with the imps, can only be derided. By the time these experts have been given their cardinal's capes and tenure, they have long since lost any ability they might once have had for independent thought or unprejudiced observation.

You will gather that I am rather fond of many of these so-called "academic" artists of the 19th century, which is why I visited the Dahesh Museum on a visit to New York last week.

Henri Lehmann, Adoration of the Magi

Certainly, not everything in the Dahesh is great. The same could be said about the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art. But the Dahesh collection includes a number of vivid and impressive items, which display both first-rate craftsmanship and splendid imagination. Unfortunately for the reputation of the artists, it's not the "right" kind of imagination. We have had it tatooed on our brains that scenes of the ancient world, or a fantasy Middle East, are not to be taken seriously (if they're by 19th century artists, who should have known better).

Henri Lehmann's painting shown above uses a remarkable glowing impasto to suggest the jewels and silk of one of the kings. Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ's Night Scene Near Gezeh, Egypt is a richly evocative canvas showing an adobe-like building in deep shadow under a cobalt sky, the only accent an L-shaped , fiery sliver from somewhere within the building.

Two unusual pictures by Alma Tadema (the museum spells his name without a hyphen, so I will do the same here) are hung. One is the narrow, vertical The Staircase, its central figure -- a woman in Roman costume -- seen from the back, ascending. We are left to ponder what the context could be. Another contrasts with Alma Tadema's usual classical setting: Joseph displays the artist's quasi-time-travel realism, taking us this time to ancient Egypt. Edwin Long's Love's Labour Lost is another essay in exotic and erotic historicism. Realistic, no, but captivating.

Edwin Long, Love's Labour Lost

As I implied in describing Lehmann's Adoration, these "academic" paintings are by no means necessarily just good draftsmanship with color applied; some show an individual, or even a proto-impressionist, technique. In the special exhibition "Napoleon on the Nile" (closing December 31, the day of this posting), which includes works by the artists that Napoleon took with him to document the wonders of the Egypt he invaded with his army in 1798, Joseph Farquharson's Ruins of the Temple at Luxor is painted in soft focus, the air permeated with dust haze, a study in tan and brown that I think Whistler would have admired. An Italian Woman by Léon Bonnat (in the Dahesh's permanent collection) puts you in mind of Corot, even to the splash of red in the subject's necklace.

Rafaelle Monti, Night

For an extraordinary venture into the realms of mystery, the prize of the museum to my mind is Monti's sculpture Night. (What, you've never heard of him? Okay, neither had I. One of the benefits of a museum like the Dahesh is to open doors that remain firmly shut in art history texts.) A shrouded female strides up and forward, like a spirit arising from the earth, holding a shroud blown by winds from regions unknown. Night could easily be the centerpiece of a show of symbolist art, itself a genre that gets only grudging acknowledgement from the Art Establishment.

According to the museum's web site, "the Dahesh Museum of Art's permanent collection originated with Dr. Dahesh (1909–1984), the pen name of Salim Moussa Achi, an influential Lebanese writer, philosopher, and connoisseur, in whose honor the Museum is named. Envisioning a premier art museum, he collected paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and books by academically trained artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Friends brought Dr. Dahesh's collection from Beirut to America in 1976 and founded the museum in 1987. For the next few years, the collection was researched and conserved, a location was secured, and exhibitions were prepared, all before opening to the public in 1995."

Dr. Dahesh seems to have been a man who followed his own star, oblivious to the fashionable certainties of received opinion. Good on him. Assuming that Western civilization survives its present Time of Troubles, its artistic taste may eventually catch up with him.

So little time

Bernard Berenson, the connoisseur and writer who specialized in Italian Renaissance painting, wrote in his diary for November 30, 1953:

I have paid twenty visits to the illuminated manuscripts exhibition at Palazzo Venezia [in Rome] and what have I carried away? Only a vague feeling of how much there is to study. To master them artistically and philologically would take a lifetime.

Berenson added that the first time he goes to an unaccustomed place, the most he can bring back from it is an idea of what to see on his next visit.

Long ago I concluded that all we did on earth (no matter how long we lived) was to decide what topics we should pursue if we had eternity at our disposal, with time for everything, no haste, no interest treading on the heels of the last interest.

I understand what he meant. I find that new experience increasingly feels incomplete. There's more in the past to compare it with, which raises new possibilities, new aspects to investigate.

Probably most people who follow any interest discover that there is much more to the subject than they ever dreamed about. And that, even as they amass knowledge in a field, more knowledge does not automatically lead to greater understanding.

As we get older, we realize that our curiosity and imagination can never be permanently satisfied. There is so much to intrigue us, so little time to explore it.

Rembrandt: Aristotle Contemplating
a Bust of Homer

Last night I browsed through the excellent Rough Guide to Italy. One thing that distinguishes this guidebook is its detailed descriptions of many smaller towns and cities in obscure (to most of us) parts of the country. It seems that there is hardly a place with a name in Italy that doesn't have historic buildings, sites, or associations, dating from the time of the Etruscans, Greek colonists, ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque … I read about some of those places and wished I could see them all. Even though I would be temporarily surfeited and would need to take a break, I could resume visiting them with just as much enthusiasm.

I never will see them all, of course. A few, if I'm lucky, but that's it. Even if I somehow acquired the means to travel from one historic and artistic site in Italy to another, that would preclude exploring many other places and interests.

Long ago, a single gifted and well-placed individual could take on board and try to understand all that was known. Herodotus told his contemporaries about all the past and present (although much of what was "known" was a fable). Aristotle comprehended, to some degree, every skill and science of the fourth century B.C. Even in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas made a breathtaking attempt to squeeze the ultimate meaning from all human experience. Today, of course, people have trouble even staying au courant with their own specialties.

Fascination with the things of the world makes life interesting. But most religions have recognized this craving for sense experience as a spiritual danger. We become so dazzled by amazing, beautiful, and complex objects that we are distracted from looking within for the Pure Absolute Perfection that no sense perception can report to us.

According to Hinduism and Buddhism, it is precisely this attachment to worldly experience that binds us to the Wheel of Life and Death, forces us to reincarnate again and again to satisfy our hunger. Mediums and occultists say that some apparitions (ghosts) are the spirits of dead people who hang around the living because they're so desperate for corporal pleasures or addictions, and sometimes even take over the bodies of the living so they can continue to enjoy the thrills of physical existence.

Eastern religions, especially Zen Buddhism, offer an alternative: see truly into the essence of anything — letting go of all attraction or repulsion, all verbal knowledge — and you know everything. Even some sensitive Westerners have suggested something similar: Blake with his "To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour"; Tennyson's "Flower in the Crannied Wall" ("If I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is").

Wisdom indeed: we must learn to see, not only more, but more deeply.

Meanwhile, though, while we are not yet saints or mystics or yoga masters, our worldly selves ask or pray (depending on temperament) not for insight, but for the gift of more time.

The numbers game

Playful art from Mathematical Imagery by Jos Leyes.

Most of us have no idea what brilliant mathematicians are on about when they talk of the beauty and elegance of their science. Computer visualization offers a clue.

New York's Morganatic marriage

The J.P. Morgan Library and Museum used to be one of those little-visited gems that can remain off the track in a huge city full of famous attractions like New York. Originally part of the Manhattan mansion of the Wall Street millionaire -- I suppose billionaire in today's terms -- J.P. Morgan, it was opened to a largely indifferent public by J.P.'s son, known as Jack.

With real estate taxes what they are today, though, no institution can afford to pass up maxing out on the arty visitor's coin. Like the Frick Art Museum in Manhattan, which was also once a civilized and quiet refuge that has lately courted the mass market with blockbuster exhibits, the Morgan has gone big time. Its principal drawing card at the moment for many is the new architectural addition by designer du jour Renzo Piano.

Piano's expansion space could hardly be more different than the original two rooms, Morgan's Library and study, as well as the hallway between them. The new Morgan is a marriage of incompatible extremes.

Original J.P. Morgan Library

The original library with its nearly floor-to-ceiling rare books and early editions, as well as the hallway, are brilliant evocations of the Italian Renaissance, designed in the early 20th century by the famous firm of McKim, Mead and White. Like so much of the 16th century architecture they are modeled after, they balance splendor with historical and mythological detail that helps make them human and accessible. Morgan's study is a surprisingly intimate space, containing little but a desk, old paintings on the walls and objets d'art on a shelf that runs around the room. Such furnishing as there is, is dark and restrained. The effect of the whole room is old wordly and restrained, far from the neo-Baroque frou-frou decor favored by most of the 19th century rich.

Both the library and study are comfortable rooms, not cold and intimidating: you can imagine sitting in either and actually reading or studying the old books and artistic treasures they hold. I don't know anything about J.P. Morgan, but no doubt his wealth was earned for him in part by exploitation. And surely the one-upmanship of collecting played a part in his acquisitions -- not even a dedicated scholar could possibly read all those books and manuscripts in a lifetime. For all that, when visiting his quarters, you get the impression that the man was a genuine connoisseur.

The new addition, opened just this past April, had the task of integrating the study, library, and hall; a 1920s annex; and Jack's townhouse. It added exhibition rooms and provided space for the facilities no modern arts complex can do without: a restaurant, performance hall, and of course a gift shop.

Piano's architectural contribution is ... is ... well, let's start with a picture of the outside entrance and the new central court:

Now, it's true that photographs don't do justice to architecture, but these two photos save me some explaining.

Piano's extension of the Morgan obviously couldn't have been in the Renaissance Revival style as the original -- neither the money nor, probably, the workmanship would have been available to replicate it. That isn't the issue. What bugs me is that Piano and the directors who hired him seem to have made no effort at compatibility. The spirit of the new section rejects the old.

A couple of gushing newspaper articles I read make a big deal out of the way light is used as an architectural element in Piano's design. In other words, he uses a lot of glass. (I wonder how impressive the light will be next winter when it's gray outside.) But the original wing deliberately doesn't admit external light. It chooses not to bring the outdoors indoors. The library and study were created in the spirit of introversion. They are places to read, contemplate, and think. Piano's contribution rejects that sensibility -- it's made for high-class, adult mall rats, not scholars or philosophers.

Piano's glass is empty.

It would have been possible to design a fully contemporary expansion that would complement the original rooms, using darker, richly colored materials, updating Renaissance design elements. Piano's architecture isn't even contemporary. The closest thing you can compare it to is Swedish modern, circa 1950, a refinement of the Bauhaus. Piano has given us severe straight lines, blond wood, and -- are you ready for this? -- glass enclosed elevators! I'll bet one of these days, Radisson and Westin hotels will be copying that idea!

The entrance is now from Madison Avenue into the late-neo-Sauna court, which takes center stage. J.P. Morgan's glorious rooms are out of the view, their entrance tucked away in a far corner. Maybe some visitors never even discover them.

The best I can say for the Piano contribution is that it's tasteful, in a bland, unsurprising way. New Yorkers have an expression to indicate casual disdain: "Eh." I couldn't say it better.

On a purely functional level, the renovation is successful. It's opened up plenty of new fiendishly sterile, well-lighted space for the exhibits; the library no longer is forced to house display cases. And you can now walk inside the study, which was formerly roped off, a definite improvement.

None of my complaints should discourage you from visiting the Morgan if you are interested in its illuminated manuscripts and early books, including transitionary books that were typeset but still had hand-painted illustrations and initials. The collection is breathtaking. There is nothing like an illuminated manuscript to give you an exact idea of the decorative ideal of the Middle Ages (and in a few exhibits on display, even earlier). Paintings that old have inevitably faded with time or been restored, but the inks of almost a millennium ago appear to be perfectly preserved, as though the illuminations were painted last week. You cannot doubt that the artists and craftsmen of the monasteries and workshops, as well as their ecclesiastical and noble patrons, were in love with glowing color. The angels with multiply tinted, iridescent wings were part of their lives.

Site for sore eyes

"Butterfly Mandala" by Ann Stretton

My award for Knockout Web Site of the Week goes to eyebalm, the fine art online boutique of Ann Stretton and Stan Starbuck.

The site's 3-D look, glowing colors, and partial animation are remarkable. Be sure to mouse over the "Home" icon, the buttons underneath it, and the corners — including the @ symbol in the lower left — and see how they change.

The various galleries, for posters, digital imagery, jewelry, and more, display a good deal of fascinating work.

Musing on Museums

Donald Pittenger at 2 Blowhards writes about strategies for museum visits. He and the commenters have that field pretty well covered, so I won't take it up here; but it did set me thinking about the extraneous factors that can add to, or detract from, the value and enjoyment of a museum.

Here is a scorecard of both positive and negative factors that, aside from the exhibits, affect the quality of the experience.

Positive
Crowd control. The single most important variable is how many people you have to share the space with. Have you ever been to one of those "blockbuster" exhibitions where it's like being in Times Square on New Year's Eve? It's not just that you have to squeeze your way through hordes to get near the objects you want to look at, and listen to the yakking of everyone around you; besides that, once you do get into viewing position, you feel a sort of guilt for occupying the space and a self-administered compulsion to move along before you've even had time to connect with what you're looking at.

For very popular exhibitions or museums, there seems no alternative to timed admissions and exiting. And the number of admissions for each slice of the clock should be reasonable, not all that the traffic will bear, or there's no point. It's frustrating if this allows less time than you might ideally want, but by keeping the head count to a manageable number, you can at least look at the exhibits in an ambience that lends itself to appreciation.

Two museums in Rome illustrate the difference in policy. The Vatican Museums pack 'em in disgracefully — it's like trying to look at art in a football crowd. The Galleria Borghese sells tickets for particular times (you can even buy them on the Internet) and its rooms are, as a result, moderately populated and lend themselves to reasonably quiet contemplation. For efficent crowd control, add 10 points.

Dining and refreshments. It's essential to be able to call a halt and pull yourself together during a visit to a big museum. When I am looking at high-quality art, I become subject to the delusion of being a solid citizen, and want to have a serious restaurant available within the precincts. (The French, naturally, are very good at this.) It's equally important for there to be a cafe for light refreshments and a bar, so you can tune up your art-appreciation cranial circuits through a mild indulgence in Omar Khayyam's favorite pastime. For good dining and drinking opportunities, add 5 points.

Seating. Museum Foot Syndrome can strike at any time. First aid, in the form of posterior support, must be ready to, er, hand. There should be a comfortable bench in the center of every room. (Bench, not a seat with a back, so that you can sit facing any direction.) For good seating, add 5 points.

Guide map. Sure, every museum gives you a leaflet with a floor plan. But the upmarket version does more than tell you, "Room XVII, European sculpture and furnishings, 1500–1800," etc. It should list the artists and a selection of the works to be found in that space. The Getty in Los Angeles has a guide map that is a model of its kind. It offers a 3D-like view of the various buildings and of the grounds, with callouts from the plan of each floor of each building to a description of the contents as well as photographs of selected artworks. For a good guide map, add 3 points.

Descriptive labels. Purists decry any labeling of art objects other than the name of the artist, the title of the piece and the date. This is still the procedure in most art museums in Europe, I think. American museums tend to add descriptions. The anti-description argument is that you should experience the work directly, unfiltered through someone else's concepts. I sympathize with that position, but can't fully agree. It depends on the quality of the description. Descriptive labels should be short — there's rarely any need for more than three paragraphs — and primarily concerned with the item's aesthetic aspects. If the artist is little known, a brief bio can be useful. Sometimes it's worthwhile to include a few words of cultural background, but that should not be an opportunity for the curator to interpret the piece in the light of his or her political and social leanings. For good descriptive labels, add 3 points.

Negative

Defacing the exterior. It's become de rigueur to drape the facade of art museums with huge banners touting temporary exhibits. The banners can, admittedly, be colorful and attractive, but they can also detract from the architecture — for better or worse, depending on the architecture. A dignified classical building or an ornate, Beaux Arts front should not be tarted up with what amounts to advertising.

Banners are as nothing, though, compared with the barbarian deconstruction of a stately old building by plopping in front of it a hideous raw-concrete or rusty-wire "sculptural" atrocity of the sort that was all the rage in the 1960s, or some smart-ass, pop-art magnified vacuum cleaner or paper clip in the Claes Oldenburg vein. For ruining an attractive exterior, subtract 5 points.

Defacing the lobby. Hanging a Calder mobile to dominate the lobby is a sure sign of condescending, pseudo-hip pandering to the lowest common denominator. It's there because everybody will recognize it and feel oh-so-clever. If this sounds like a dig at the East Building of Washington's National Gallery, well, if the shoe fits … . For a Calder mobile in the lobby, deduct 25 points.

Calder is now such a standard-issue bore that some enterprising institutions have had to come up with a newer, please-all-comers substitute. Thank goodness for Dale Chihuly! Safe, recognizable, contemporary — whoo-ee! The middlebrow's Thomas Kinkade. For a Chihuly sculpture in the lobby, deduct 10 points.

Free admission for children. Children below a certain age — say, 10 — simply don't belong in certain museums, particularly art galleries. The Frick in New York is the only museum I know of that has a policy of excluding them, or used to (I expect they've been under savage pressure to relent). If so-called art lovers can't bear to be separated from their little darlings for a few hours or are too cheap to hire a baby sitter, sod them. I have spoken. For encouraging young children to attend exhibitions meant for grown-ups, deduct 10 points.

Placing a store at the entrance to the museum. There's nothing wrong with museums having stores and gift shops if it helps with the budget, and some of them are nice places to shop. But please — let's keep things in proportion! A store shouldn't be the first thing you see in a museum. Museums ought to uphold the principle that some things come before commerce. Good on the British Museum, which used to have its gift shop right inside the main doors but moved it to a more suitable location in the recent renovation and re-design. For over-emphasizing retail, deduct 5 points.

Neutral
I'm not much bothered one way or the other about the portable tape-recorded guided tours playing through headphones that are now ubiquitous in art museums. I don't use them because somebody banging on in my ears about what I'm seeing doesn't appeal to me, and they cost money, which doesn't appeal to me either. But some perfectly intelligent people use these devices and like them. A matter of taste.

If you have additional criteria to add to the scorecard, or want to dissent from some of mine, that's what the comment feature is there for.