Good Friday

Piero della Francesca’s restored ‘Resurrection’ is ready for public consumption, to our great benefit and in time for Easter.

The fresco described by Giorgio Vasari, the father of modern art history, as the Renaissance pioneer’s “most beautiful” artwork and hailed by British novelist Aldous Huxley in 1925 in the essay “The most beautiful painting in the world”, is a symbol of Sansepolcro. Indeed gunnery officer Anthony Clarke in 1944 famously decided at the last minute not to bombard the town because he remembered about the masterpiece he would otherwise have risked destroying.
The long restoration work was carried out by Florence’s Opificio delle Pietre Dure, one of Italy’s most well-known restoration laboratories, and the art superintendency of Arezzo and Siena, with a 100,000 euro donation from Buitoni manager Aldo Osti.

This is worth another trip to Italy.

Montmartre Cemetery

See below a kitty at Paris’ Montmartre Cemetery. Photo taken by me about a month ago. I loved how kitty just needed a sip and found some water (it had been raining a fair bit) that had collected in someone’s grave. Cats gotta cat. I took many more photos of the colony at the cemetery, which I will post later — have already posted someĀ at my National Geographic page. (Regular readers of this blog will remember the cats of Rome’s Protestant Cemetery here, here and here.)
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They Are Not Long

I do love this poem.

They Are Not Long

by Ernest Dowson

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.