Retreats.

Canaletto, Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1750

The passions simmer and resimmer in solitude: the passionate being prepares his explosions and his exploits in this solitude. And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell.

Gaston Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space

Happy Birthday, Canaletto

Canaletto, The City Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge, 1747

Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, was born on this day in 1697.

Happy Birthday, Canaletto

Canaletto, London Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge, 1747

Canaletto was born on this day in 1697.

The great Waldemar Januszczak shows us The Ornate Excess Of The Rococo ...

Grand.

Canaletto, The Grand Canal with Santa Maria della Salute towards the Riva degli Schiavoni, 1744

LOOK!

Happy Birthday, Canaletto

Canaletto, The City Seen Through an Arch in Westminster Bridge, 1747

Giovanni Antonio Canal, commonly known as Canaletto, was born on this day in 1697.

I highly recommend the documentary Canaletto & the Art of Venice ...

Happy Birthday, Canaletto

Canaletto, The City Seen Through an Arch in Westminster Bridge, 1747

Canaletto was born on this date in 1697.

Happy birthday, Canaletto.

Canaletto, The Stonemason's Yard, 1725

Canaletto was born on this day in 1697.

Happy birthday, Canaletto.

Canaletto, London, Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge, 1747

Canaletto was born on this day in 1697.

View.

Canaletto, View of Walton Bridge (detail), 1754

Thank you, Mme. Scherzo.

Unroll.

Canaletto, A View of Walton Bridge (detail), 1754

The BOOK of a MONK’S LIFE

I live my life in circles that grow wide
And endlessly unroll,
I may not reach the last, but on I glide
Strong pinioned toward my goal.

About the old tower, dark against the sky,
The beat of my wings hums,
I circle about God, sweep far and high
On through milleniums.

Am I a bird that skims the clouds along,
Or am I a wild storm, or a great song?

Many have painted her. But there was one
Who drew his radiant colours from the sun.
Mysteriously glowing through a background dim
When he was suffering she came to him,
And all the heavy pain within his heart
Rose in his hands and stole into his art.
His canvas is the beautiful bright veil
Through which her sorrow shines. There where the frail
Texture o'er her sad lips is closely drawn
A trembling smile softly begins to dawn . . .
Though angels with seven candles light the place
You cannot read the secret of her face.

In cassocks clad I have had many brothers
In southern cloisters where the laurel grows,
They paint Madonnas like fair human mothers
And I dream of young Titians and of others
In which the God with shining radiance glows.

But though my vigil constantly I keep
My God is dark—like woven texture flowing,
A hundred drinking roots, all intertwined;
I only know that from His warmth I'm growing.
More I know not: my roots lie hidden deep
My branches only are swayed by the wind.

Thou Anxious One! And dost thou then not hear
Against thee all my surging senses sing?
About thy face in circles drawing near
My thought floats like a fluttering white wing.

Dost thou not see, before thee stands my soul
In silence wrapt my Springtime's prayer to pray?
But when thy glance rests on me then my whole
Being quickens and blooms like trees in May.

When thou art dreaming then I am thy Dream,
But when thou art awake I am thy Will
Potent with splendour, radiant and sublime,
Expanding like far space star-lit and still
Into the distant mystic realm of Time.

I love my life's dark hours
In which my senses quicken and grow deep,
While, as from faint incense of faded flowers
Or letters old, I magically steep
Myself in days gone by: again I give
Myself unto the past:—again I live.

Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace,
Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space . . .

Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm
Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave
'Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm—
And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave,
Dreams that were closely cherished and for long,
Are lost once more in sadness and in song.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Thanks to Mme. Scherzo for the clouds.

Moment.

Canaletto, Capriccio with Colonnade in the Interior of a Palace, 1765

When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city … but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.

Renzo Piano