Oh to be in England....

 At a Westben choral concert recently a friend and I were reduced to soggy tears when Aemilia Moser and Dante Santone performed the sweet love song We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring, written in the 1940s by Ivor Novello. It's a  sentimental WWII song; lovers, the fellow off to war, sing of their hopes and dreams of a peaceful 'after' with its gentle pleasures. Love, loss and longing. 

"We'll gather lilacs in the spring again/And walk together down a shady lane/Until our hearts have learned to sing again/When you come home once more."

Recently The Gentle Author, a daily staple on my morning reading list, visited the bluebells in Bow Cemetery. So I am being given a nudge to think about English bluebells. 

There's something about spring bloom - that longed-for loveliness, joy at the renewal of colour and beauty at the end of dark dormant winter. But it's a fleeting joy. Spring blossoms are delicate; their season is short. As with our glorious autumn foliage which blazes for such a short time, fresh spring flowering evokes for me a wistfulness and a kind of sadness.

I believe English bluebells also bloom in Ontario, but the spring beauties that stop my homie's heart are trout lilies, violets, jack in the pulpit and trilliums, the blooms that adults pointed out to me as a child who loved flowers. I remember having the mysterious jack revealed to me for the first time, on an Arbor Day school outing with Miss Eaton, a whole lifetime ago. From that day also, I carry with me the lifetime prohibition against picking a trillium. 

For me, bluebells will always evoke happy times, delighted springtime discoveries along delightful English pathways with dear ones who are no longer among us.

Love, loss and longing.

Grant us Peace

From the first time I - we, when I was a 'we' girl - entered the cloisters of medieval Lincoln Cathedral in my Denis' home town, I was smitten.  After the transcendant space of the church we entered this place of ancient silence. Early English Gothic. I suspect I am not alone in this feeling. Just this afternoon I FB posted a couple of photos of the cloisters at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, and was surprised at the response.

Definitions for a cloister are somewhat prosaic. Britannica, for example offers this: "a quadrilateral enclosure surrounded by covered walkways, and usually attached to a monastic or cathedral church..."  "A covered walkway with a colonnade on one side." "A covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth" (new word.) 

Those of us who have experienced a cloister can do better.

Perhaps a cloister is not about what we can see, but what we feel. Peace in sacred nature. I'm just going to post and enjoy a few of these spaces now. And see if I can figure it out. And in doing so, and revisiting these tranquil spaces, to find tranquility in our turbulent time.

This lovely space is at the Byzantine church of Sant'Appolinaire in Classe, Ravenna. For years I had longed to see that city's miraculous Byzantine  mosaics, and in 2023 I did. 

Then a bit of cloister to rest the eyes, cleanse the palate as it were, from such rich fare.

Florence's San Lorenzo, parish church of the Medici family,  provides a welcome refuge from the insanely busy streets within its late 15th century cloister, Chiostro dei Canonici, the Cloister of the Canons. No-one should let Brunelleschi's unfinished facade deter further exploration, because within the huge complex is an exquisite Renaissance church, the  Mannerist Laurentian Library with Michelangelo's dynamic staircase and the wonders of the Old Sacristy and the Medici Chapels. One day, when I'm up to it, I'll post about my visit. 

But back to the cloister. Truly, a visitor to San Lorenzo needs to repair to this green space occasionally to calm the senses, still the heart. And settle the mind, which is invited to time travel the long history. San Lorenzo is the oldest church in Florence, consecrated in 393 and rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1419. The rough facade was to be completed by Michelangelo, sheathed in white marble, but funding failed. This is not uncommon. Santa Croce's marble facade was completed in the 1860s, the well-known marble front of the Duomo in 1887 (what did we know?) 

A place of sanctuary and stillness, meditation and contemplation, gentle perambulation. A pause for breath in a busy city and a busy world.

Even this image has a way of calming my coffee and news nerves.

To conclude, I will settle into my favourite cloisters, those of Santa Croce, an immensely important 'state church', resting place of the famous and wealthy, who commissioned astonishing chapels. Those layers of history and devotion create a sumptuous and important interior (which I fully absorbed thanks to an enthralling audio tour). But exhausting, right?

Spent lovely lonely time at the Renaissance gem, the Pazzi Chapel. Its simplicity and order creates awe and stillness simultanously. I still can't believe I was there, had longed for that moment forever. 

 But still, nature needed.

 Cloister drill. 

There's some good history here, which I will leave for you because I, for once, am without words.

They're fixing a hole where the rain gets in

I was fully prepared to be awestruck by the Pantheon in Rome. The forest of giant columns under the portico sets the stage. The immense bronze doors build excitement. But, oh! To step through the entrance and look up, look way up. 

That immense dome is still the world's largest unsupported concrete dome. Roman engineering stories are fascinating; there are loads to choose from out there. This is good - a nod to Vitruvius. If you'd like to watch, here are a couple of art historians trying to outdo each other with their erudition and enthusiam here and here on SmartHistory. 

At the top of this immense coffered structure, the oculus, that nearly 9 metre (almost 30 feet!) hole in the roof, open to the heavens. Which begs the question - doesn't the rain come in?

There are some great Roman myths out there, perpetuated by those great story-tellers, the tourist guides. One of the tales states that it does not rain inside the Pantheon (despite that oculus).

It's told that in the early days of Christian celebrations in the Pantheon, the hundreds of candles and the warmth of breath and bodies contributed to an effect called 'the chimney effect'. That stream of hot air rising upward, meeting with the rain, "suppressed the perception of rain coming in." Here's the story on this site.

I am mad for marble mosaic floors. Much of my time in sacred spaces this trip has been spent looking down. The amazing variety in the natural stone, the skill and design artistry of the masons - and we just walk around looking up. Next to the floors in the Pantheon the Baroque altars and Renaissance tombs are mere schotskes (imho.) 

Truth is, when it rains heavily in Rome, it rains in the Pantheon too. The Roman builders, practical always, addressed the issue in two ways.

The astonishingly beautiful (and original!) marble mosaic floors are subtly slanted, providing for drainage via clever holes in the marble designs. I wonder if you can see them in these photos: they are tiny and tear-shaped.

A Footnote, or Why I'll Never Rely on AI

I was curious to know if there was any info on the number of degrees of the gradiant built into the marble floor. Appears no. I did a quick Google search for sources, and of course AI had its hand up first, and offered this, which I must make a point of seeing on my next visit to Rome:

:This slope is not a pronounced gradient, but rather a subtle inclination designed to guide water towards the open oculus at the dome's apex.