A Long Way from THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

(1950)

Because his father was a criminologist, the blogger grew up in the environs of several Florida state prisons. At the time the blogger’s family moved to Lantana (1977), the sanatorium pictured above–re-named the A. G. Holley State Hospital in 1969–had so few tuberculosis patients that the greater part of the facility had been taken over by the Florida prison system. How well, though, the blogger remembers the non-contagious patients of the sanatorium milling around the grounds in their blue bathrobes. One of them sometimes knocked on the blogger’s family’s door to ask for a Dixie cup of vinegar, which he found was the only thing that would quiet his cough.

The last patient left A. G. Holley State Hospital on 2 July 2012. The building, which has the distinction of being the largest Art Deco (or, more accurately, Streamline Moderne) structure in Palm Beach County, is likely to be demolished.

Postcard from the Collection of the Blogger

Giuseppe Novello, IL SIGNORE DI BUONA FAMIGLIA (1934) – Front Cover

Book from the Collection of the Blogger

"Il Trionfo della Morte" (14th Century) – Campo Santo Monumentale, Pisa

“Il Trionfo della Morte” – Detail

“The Triumph of Death” – Detail

These images of “Il Trionfo della Morte” show the fresco before it was severely damaged by a fire resulting from Allied bombing of Pisa in 1944. While the first image does not attribute the work and the second names Orcagna as the painter, art historians have credited the fresco to Lorenzetti, Traini, and Buffalmacco as well.

Postcard and Print from the Collection of the Blogger

Cloy, "Golden Rain – Nocturne" (ca. 1868) – Front Cover (Detail)

Cloy seems to have been a pseudonym of F. W. Messe.

The title and the cover illustration (by J. H. Bufford) refer to the myth of Zeus assuming the form of a golden rain in order to impregnate Danaë. In no other representation of this scene known to the blogger, however, does Danaë’s attendant have horns.

Sheet Music Published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston

From the Collection of the Blogger

Leonardo da Vinci, Drapery Study

L’Istituto Nazionale della Grafica, Rome

“Only connect …”

“Only connect …” is the epigraph to E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End.

Forster was responsible–indirectly, of course–for bringing the blogger and his partner together.

The blogger was in London for a few days before going up to Cambridge to do research on Forster for his dissertation, and his future partner was in London to give a reading at the Southbank Centre. They met on 6 March 1992.

Leavitt read his story “Chips Is Here.”

Production of Haendel’s GIULIO CESARE at the Palais Garnier, Paris (20 January 2011)

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“Son nata a lagrimar / Son nato a sospirar,” the duet between Cornelia and Sesto in the première partie of this opera, can be a wonder.

Program from the Collection of the Blogger

Edouard Manet, "Bouquet of Peonies" (1882)

Murauchi Art Museum, Tokyo

A Book and Two Letters

Mark Mitchell, Virtuosi (2000) – Dust Jacket (Spine and Front)

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Letter to Mark Mitchell from Henry Z. Steinway (29 December 2000)

Letter to Mark Mitchell from Caio Fonseca (7 December 2004)

Jusepe de Ribera español, “Saint Sebastian” (1651)

Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples

Published in the Catalogue for the Exhibition of Ribera’s Work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1992)

Ribera’s second painting of Saint Sebastian is highly unusual in showing the subject with hair on his torso. In their paintings of the martyr, Botticelli (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Il Bronzino (Musée Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), Cima da Conegliano (Musée de la Ville de Strasbourg), El Greco (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; Catedral de Palencia), Holbein the Elder (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), Liberale da Verona (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan), Mantegna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Ca’ d’Oro, Venice), Memling (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), Antonello da Messina (Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), Perugino (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), Pollaiolo (National Gallery, London), Reni (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musei Capitolini, Rome), Rubens (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Il Sodoma (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), and van Dyck (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) show him without.