Word: giotto
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...theme is most explicitly stated in The Last Mohican, a wry and witty fable about a serious-minded student named Fidelman who goes to Italy to write a monograph on Giotto. He scarcely steps from his train in Rome before his personal Old Man of the Sea latches onto him: one Shimon Susskind, a slat-thin Jewish refugee from, of all places, Israel ("The desert air makes me constipated...
...shoe: he pops up in a trattoria to spoil Fidelman's appetite by hungrily watching him eat; he stands shivering at his side to shame Fidelman for having warm clothing. Given four dollars, Susskind contemptuously counts the money, demands: "If four, then why not five?" Giotto forgotten. Fidelman is systematically robbed and humiliated, but learns what wise men have known for centuries: that a man is responsible for the life he saves...
...Giotto's murals are still young, which means that they will probably live until they crumble. Whether or not Rivera's murals, too, will breathe life for generation after generation is unanswerable. An artist of Rivera's stature might be compared to a rocket that dies boosting a satellite in the form of art. Symbolically enough, his last completed picture was of a baby holding a Russian satellite. He was buried with much honor, but naturally no church rites, in Mexico's Rotunda of Illustrious Men. While Mexican Communists paraded the hammer and sickle. Fellow Painter...
...sight was so much more beautiful than all those dry, thin abstractions inside the gallery. It made me want to paint the richness we can see and feel." He went to Italy, where the Renaissance had spread its richness across acres of church and palace walls. Inspired by Giotto, Uccello and Andrea del Castagno, he resolved to paint, as they had, for the millions: "I stick to my idea of a clear, firm, simple and precise art that everyone can understand...
...Sept. 3, 1939, Buchner closed the doors of the museum and got his master plan rolling to save one of the finest collections of paintings in the world, including 74 Rubenses, 10 Rembrandts, 26 Van Dycks, 15 Dürers, 10 Titians, 12 Tintorettos, 9 Veroneses, choice works by Giotto, Raphael. Botticelli, Goya, El Greco, Velasquez, Poussin. More than 1,000 paintings were packed for storage and loaded on trucks. The best were sent to the salt mines near Salzburg, Austria, where Buchner's careful investigation had found perfect temperature and humidity, and a bombproof mountain on top. Director...