Claudia and Duffy

Pieta

Linnea asked me if I wanted to go to a museum yesterday. I'm thinking galleries, shining things, blah blah blah. So we go.

The Isabella Stewart Gardener museum is in or on a place called The Fenway which is apparently an area instead of a straightforward road, which got us turned around a good little bit. "Linnea, what do your elf-eyes see?" Hope and I called out as she sprinted ahead on the snow. Seriously, I'm not sure how she spotted it.

We enter through a wrought-iron gate into a building rather unlike any art gallery I've ever seen. It's like a home, with all the rooms decorated in somewhat different styles, and the art is hung anywhere - if you don't take your time and look in odd corners and on backs of writing-desks and under cushions you miss some really ancient and valuable pieces. In the center of the square 4-story house is a courtyard garden with a beautifully arched full skylight above. Every room is filled with natural light - we arrive just before 4 p.m. and only have an hour or so before the place closes. It is quiet, but more like a nap quiet than a polite quiet.

The courtyard is off-limits. We stand on the stairs, a security guard prowling behind us, and reach our necks out into the sunlight for a minute. Azaleas and orchids grow next to huge fern-tree-like things and English ivy. I give Linnea a moment of panic when I think I've lost the number tag for the coats and purses we've just left with the attendant. On up the stairs, and we enter the early Italian room. It is filled with Madonnas and children, I think with a laugh, but then something about that sobers me.

I look at painting after painting of Christ - as a pear-hipped baby crying at the prospect of imminent circumcision; as a bulbous-headed toddler on the lap of an ugly Mary, clutching a desperately flapping goldfinch; as a quiet, pale young man with fluffy red hair underneath a starkly clean and neat crown of thorns, one tear on his cheek; as an emaciated corpse. Some of these paintings, and several of the sculptures, are rotting and ugly, old. Because of the intimacy and immediacy of the setting, I am affected by the feeling of age in the art more than I usually am in more sterile galleries. It makes me feel very young; but then I am pressed with the feeling that I know this person, the person in all these paintings. What he looks like doesn't matter - it's just weird, that I know this guy. And these paintings and sculptures are so old they're falling apart, and Jesus had mythical status when they were first created. But they're about someone I love.

It is like stumbling across the discarded diary of a friend - this is another place that he's written about himself, in the disproportionate style of the ancient masters, in paint made of eggs, oil, or sour milk. He is incarnate for me in another way than I've understood before - incarnate in time and society, and my imagination doesn't have to supply much help to my senses this time.

I carry that room with me as we walk through the other floors and rooms, and I am glad for the quiet. Happy.

Posted by tuggy at 03.09.06 10:48 | TrackBack