Title : Paradise Lost
link : Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
[by Fred Lynch in Italy]
I’ve been to Renaissance gardens before -and have found them to be overwhelmingly beautiful - amazing man-made paradises. But this year, this one, effected me differently.
In the small Central Italian town of Caprarola, everyone looks up at the enormous and elaborate Farnese Palace (Palazzo). No one looks down upon it. The scrappy town’s main street was reconfigured long ago to lead up the steep hill to its elevated entrance. It appears that no expense or effort was spared to build this country home for a family that produced powerful Cardinals and Popes in the age of the Renaissance. The word “magnificent” comes to mind when you visit - and that's not a word I think about very much.
The palace itself is a giant pentagon, with three stories of elaborately painted rooms. In the center of the structure is an open courtyard. Everywhere are classical and biblical references. The frescoed ceilings are so amazing that your neck hurts from all the gazing. And the circular staircase is a marvel of elegant design. Behind the palace the extraordinary gardens unfold. A long and winding path leads inevitably to the most elaborate series of cascading fountains that you could image. Passing the rushing waters, the huge river god sculptures, and then through the maze of shrubbery takes you to an elegant casino, which overlooks over it all. The place is hard beyond belief. I wondered, how could I put this in a single drawing and feel that I’d captured it?
After a few false starts, I turned instead to trying to capture my other feeling of that day - one of discomfort. While all the man-made beauty was undeniably impressive, I must say, I walked around wincing, as much as wide-eyed. I’ll have to attribute that to the political times I’m living in here in the United States. Ostentatious wealth and self aggrandizement are before me every day in newscasts. I think it completely changed the way I looked at this extraordinary exhibition of wealth, power and ego.
In the end, I settled into an shady corner of the gardens where I found a composition which could better illustrate what I was seeing and feeling - one that was hallow in the center.
Thus Article Paradise Lost
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