(Gerhard Richter, Mailand: Dom, 1964)
(Gerhard Richter, Domplatz - Mailand, 1968)
(from Google Earth)
requisite poem:
“Milan Cathedral”
Through light green haze, a rolling sea
Over gardens where redundance flows,
The fat old plain of Lombardy,
The White Cathedral shows.
Of Art the miracles
Its tribe of pinnacles
Gleam like to ice-peaks snowed; and higher,
Erect upon each airy spire
In concourse without end,
Statues of saints over saints ascend
Like multitudinous forks of fire.
What motive was the master-builder’s here?
Why these synodic hierarchies given,
Sublimely ranked in marble sessions clear,
Except to signify the host of heaven.
(Herman Melville, from Timoleon, 1891)
of course i love this entry and the gerhard richter paintings.
it’s great getting a look at your magpie pickings, too.
stendhal loved the duomo di milano and wrote about it several times, i think.
(charterhouse of parma? travels in italy).
w.g. sebald goes there in Vertigo, too.