(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)