Posted on 12/23/2011 7:30:20 PM PST by decimon
A chance discovery has brought to light the little-known story of how a British Army officer risked a court martial in wartime Italy to save a painting the author Aldous Huxley once described as "the greatest picture in the world".
I opened a dead man's suitcase in Cape Town and was transported from today's Africa, via World War II Italy, to Renaissance Tuscany.
Inside I found a story of high art, bravery and love, all the more powerful because it is a story not widely known.
I was on Long Street, a boisterous city-centre shopping artery, exploring the upper floors of Clarke's, a venerable bookshop staffed by bibliophiles who lovingly tend roof-high displays of new titles.
Climb up the stairs at the back and you enter a booky world almost extinct in today's era of online, search-engine rigour.
Here second-hand works await discovery, all meticulously catalogued, some preciously protected in glass-fronted cabinets.
Staff walk to and fro across creaking floorboards and up half sets-of-stairs linking a maze of attics, all crowded with books.
Graham Greene was my research target, more specifically his links with Tony Clarke, founder in 1956 of what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop.
Clarke died in the 1980s but his effervescent successor, Henrietta Dax, allowed me to look through his remaining papers, higgledy-piggledy in a brown leather case.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Again and again ping.
You beat me to it I will ask the mods to remove my thread.
You beat me to it I will ask the mods to remove my thread.
Wow, your reply resurrected. ;-)
I thought that it would be the painting on The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca. Sure enough. It is, indeed, one of the greatest and most memorable paintings of all time. Not the sort of thing I would imagine Aldous Huxley admiring, but I guess he just couldn’t help it.
The Venus Fixers:
The Remarkable Story
of the Allied Soldiers
Who Saved Italy's Art
During World War II
by Ilaria Dagnini Brey
Kindle Edition
Bargain Hardcover
Paperback
Thanks SC - I replied to you on the other thread but it had already been removed as requested.
Thanks Cardhu. I was all set to post a “add-only” message on there, and poof! gone.
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Thanks decimon. |
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And if the thread comes back?
Jesus looks lilke rob schneider in that pic
Jesus looks like all of us. ;)
This painting has very strange depth perspective.
The foreground isn’t deep enough to be occupied by four adult men. The two slumped asleep against the tomb have no legs visiblle; the fellow on the right has two legs while the man on the left shows only one!
Well, it does depict a miracle!
Yep.
He was, and had to be, every man.
A pale blond and blue would have stood out like a beacon in the ME.
He had no distinguishing physical characteristics what-so-ever.
No description given to the Romans would suffice to identify him, He had to be betrayed in person.
[a series of self-censored jokes, followed by] Merry Christmas, decimon!
Merry Christmas, Civ.
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