Desirable
Your beauty draws
me in
Enveloped in your arms
I am obsessed by you
Entranced by your charms
Enveloped in your arms
I am obsessed by you
Entranced by your charms
You are most
desirable
Oh so perfect in my eyes
I want to possess you
You are the ultimate prize
Oh so perfect in my eyes
I want to possess you
You are the ultimate prize
I can almost taste
your kiss
As I hold you in my dreams
But life can be so cruel
It is never as it seems
As I hold you in my dreams
But life can be so cruel
It is never as it seems
There are times
that it feels
As if you could be mine
But the moments always pass
The stars never quite align
As if you could be mine
But the moments always pass
The stars never quite align
If you were but a
person
Your love I might inspire
Alas you remain elusive
It is wisdom I desire
Your love I might inspire
Alas you remain elusive
It is wisdom I desire
La Sapienza (Wisdom) -- Titian
Tiziano Vecelli ("Titian" in English) was in his 70s when he was chosen to decorate the vestibule of the Biblioteca Marciana designed by his friend Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino, the library in Venezia that Andrea Palladio called the best building erected since antiquity. Sansovino had built it from 1537 to 1553, but work on frescoes and other decorations continued until 1560. Titian's painting, one of the mythological pieces he referred to as "poesie" (poems), was one of the last additions. It depicted a reclining Wisdom with a written scroll over her body, floating on a cloud (an aerial quantity that suggested thinking), looking into a book (or perhaps a mirror, which would suggest wisdom can be found by looking). In the painting's original orientation Wisdom's face would have been turned towards the rising sun and the Doge's palace, but for some reason, probably in the 1590s, it was rotated by 180°, obliterating the initial symbolic intent and replacing it with folly. In 1603 the republic required that copies of all books printed in the city had to be deposited in the Marciana. In 1811 the collection was moved to more spciaous quarters in the doge's palace, and in 1904 to the Zecca, which Sansovino had built as a mint in 1537-1547.
ReplyDeleteThe library was named after the city's patron saint San Marco (Mark), the supposed author of the gospel bearing his name who had previously written down and translated the sermons of St. Peter. He founded the Christian community of Alexandria but in 68 was martyred by the pagan inhabitants, who placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he was dead. His remains were smuggled out of Abbasid North Africa in 828 and taken to Venice, where the doge Giustiniano Participazio hid them. In his will he requested that his widow build a basilica dedicated to St. Mark between the palace and the chapel of Saint Theodore Stratelates, the city's 1st patron saint (he had been beheaded by Gaius Valerius Licinianus Licinius Augustus in the 4th century, before he coauthored the Edict of Milan that officially granted toleration to Christians; his relics had also been taken to Venice in 828). In 1063, during the construction of a new basilica, St. Mark's relics could not be found, but in 1094 he revealed their location by extending an arm from a pillar.