Film Magic

Amazing things happen in Venice when you least expect it. A few nights ago I was reading in the kitchen of my apartment, when I spied a man on a ladder standing at eye level with the window. He was stringing lanterns around the street.

So I asked him what he was doing. He explained that he was a gaffer for a British film company working on the film Brideshead Revisited which was filming right outside my apartment window. The images of people in Renaissance Carnival costume were beautiful and the reflections of the lanterns on the water were magical. The photos included here were taken by fellow NYU student Julie Phillips.

Italian Space

The concept of space and the aesthetic organization of space is not an Italian invention - but nobody does it better. In the town of Possagno, at the rich foothills to the Alps, is a temple designed by Antonio Canova (1757-1822) which embodies the neo-Classical traditions of architecture.

His temple, completed in 1830, embodies the return to classical Greek and Roman ideas of harmony, rationality and proportion. The facade reflects the Greek design of the Parthenon, the ocular echoes the construction of the Roman Pantheon and the interior of the church recalls ancient Christian forms.

As a sculptor, Canova developed "sketches" in terracotta and then transferred them to plaster. He then enlarged the plaster models to marble by using a three-dimensional grid from nails hammered into the plaster.

His vision, which imaged Greek and Roman sculpture to be pure white, was a misconception. Most sculpture from antiquity was polychromed.