Two Months in Italy and Istria
July 17, 2007
Every journey exists on two levels: the ordinary level of reality and another level of the imagination. It so happens that this trip to Rome has inspired a meditation regarding the difference between faith and truth. Yesterday we visited Santa Maria Sopra Minerva the most important church of the Dominicans in Rome. It contains masterpieces by Bernini, Michelangelo and Fillipino Lippi as well as the tomb of Fra Angelico. For my taste the church is too opulent. An old woman was praying tearfully at the top of her voice for our entire visit.
Near the church, I am painting every morning in Piazza Campo del Fiori. The Dominicans burned Giordano Bruno to death here for the sin of declaring that the earth went around the sun. Today every morning people shop around his statue in this famous outdoor market. I stand at the foot of the statue thinking of him while painting the market. The umbrellas beneath the facades of the palazzi are all earth colors: white, yellow and orange beneath a fierce sun. In the shadows are the rich colors of the fruits and vegetables. There is Nino. Short, intense with black sparkling eyes one of the ‘mafiosi’ of the market. There’s Roberto the fruit vendor broad shouldered and slow who indicated the course of the sun would take the first day I was here. For the rest of that day he periodically repeated his gestures indicating the sun’s course while smiling slightly. Every so often I glance up at the statue and the bass-relieves that tell the life of Bruno. He was a priest who, in a time of faith, died not for eternal life but for the truth. What would he think of our age today when we are re-instituting torture and religious war?
The Outdoor Market in Campo die Fiori
