When you visit this Nativity
you pass through room after room;
five centuries of painting
ablaze with colour
and the human form.
When it’s as far as you can go
from the melee of the constant crowd,
that Saturday we were rewarded
by a space empty, but for three paintings
and our silent selves.
Silenced by its wonder
my son caught its breath:
the smell of the studio in Arezzo
and perhaps the shadow of the artist
barely sighted, blind at the end.
The painter, so the Polish poet says,
who hid so thoroughly behind
his work that one cannot invent
a private life, his loves or friendships,
passion and grief. His being was his ouevre.
And these faces (from the street perhaps?)
marked in the mind’s memory
with the miracle before them.
And for me: the silent music of the angels,
a choir with lutes haunts and haunting
always.
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
When you visit this Nativity
you pass through room after room;
five centuries of painting
ablaze with colour
and the human form.
When it’s as far as you can go
from the melee of the constant crowd,
that Saturday we were rewarded
by a space empty, but for three paintings
and our silent selves.
Silenced by its wonder
my son caught its breath:
the smell of the studio in Arezzo
and perhaps the shadow of the artist
barely sighted, blind at the end.
The painter, so the Polish poet says,
who hid so thoroughly behind
his work that one cannot invent
a private life, his loves or friendships,
passion and grief. His being was his ouevre.
And these faces (from the street perhaps?)
marked in the mind’s memory
with the miracle before them.
And for me: the silent music of the angels,
a choir with lutes haunts and haunting
always.
The painting is The Nativity by Piero della Francesca http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/piero-della-francesca-the-nativity
The Polish poet is Zbigniew Herbert whose book The Barbarian in the Garden has an essay about his love for this 15C painter from Arezzo.
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