Mixed Media: acrylic, PVA, canvas and paper on panel, 29 x 20.25 inches , 2008
$3,400
Arriving in Mantua one late autumn day, a place I’d long avoided because of its dank
and foggy reputation, I am surprised to find it warm and sunny. We walk along the
15th century cortile that connects one section of Isabella d’Este’s Palazzo Ducale to
another, looking through the ornately columned archways out to the lake that Virgil
immortalized around 40 BC in his pastoral poem the Georgics and imagine Verdi’s
Rigoletto hurrying along this same passageway on a dark, stormy night only to discover
his beloved daughter drowned in this same lake—on this day a calm and sparkling blue.
November 2007, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy