Word: patinaed
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Loving Patina. Since the making and collecting of statuettes was the custom in ancient Rome, it was inevitable that the men of the Renaissance should revive it. They read of superb little sculptures like the Hercules that the poet Statius insisted Hannibal had admired and that Sulla used for adorning his banquet table. Fifteenth century connoisseurs not only collected ancient statuettes but also began commissioning contemporary ones...
...greatest sculptor of the century, introduced the statuette with his small putti in the Baptistery of Siena. From then on, the great studios turned out an army of naked gods, young shepherds, heroes on horseback, satyrs and saints. Many were received with such affection that they acquired a gleaming patina from the caresses of their owners. They were used as decorations for furniture, as inkwells, even as perfume burners to rid the air of the stench of sewage. But mostly they were loved as works of art in themselves...
Right through to the glorious final Communio, the New York Pro Musica did far more than perform old music; it removed the patina from a neglected master, piece and presented it as living example of the vigor of the Renaissance...
...Country Boys. The two wily old congressional giants who were pitted against each other in the fight have much in common. Sam Rayburn and Howard Smith both have the patina of age-Rayburn is 79, Smith 78-and the special dignity that accrues to old men who have long exercised power in causes greater than their own ambitions. Both are gruff on the surface, kind underneath. They were country boys, raised on farms, and they still, whenever they can get out of Washington, instinctively head for rustic serenity-the Rayburn cattle ranch near Bonham, Texas or the Smith dairy farm...
...describe the single-minded gluttony of hungry rustics or the lethal chagrin of a jilted woman ("she wanted to kill as much as she wanted to die '"). But Lampedusa's subtlest effect is to write prose that seems to be aged in marble and encrusted with the patina of antiquity. Like a statue or a ruin, the book congeals a moment of time past and makes it timeless...