Catholics From Italy

"Michelagnolo and Vasari, going one day to visit Tiziano in the Belvedere [in Rome, 1546], saw in a picture that he [Titian] had executed at that time a nude woman representing Danae, who had in her lap Jove transformed into a rain of gold; and they praised it much, as one does in the painter's presence. After they had left him, discoursing of Tiziano's method, [Michelangelo] Buonarroti commended it not a little, saying that his coloring and his manner much pleased him, but that it was a pity that in Venice men did not learn to draw well from the beginning, and that those painters did not pursue a better method in their studies.. ..And in fact this is true, for the reason that he who has not drawn much nor studied the choicest ancient and modern works, cannot work well from memory by himself or improve the things that he copies from life, giving them the grace and perfection wherein art goes beyond the scope of nature, which generally produces some parts that are not beautiful."

"[Titian] painted the panel for the altar of 'Saint Peter Martyr' in the church of SS Giovanni and Paolo, making the figure of the holy martyr larger than life among enormous trees in a wood, where, having fallen to the ground, he is savagely assaulted by a soldier who has wounded him in the head in such a way that his face, as he lies these half alive, shows the horror of death, while in the figure of another friar who is in flight the terror and fear of death can be recognized. In the air are two nude angels coming from a light in heaven which illuminates the unusually beautiful landscape as well as the entire work; this is the most accomplished and celebrated, the greatest and best conceived and executed of the works that Titian completed during his whole lifetime."

"Titian, having adorned Venice, or rather all Italy and other parts of the world, with excellent paintings, well merits to be loved and respected by artists, and is in many things to be admired and imitated also, as one who has produced, and is producing, works of infinite merit; nay, such as must endure while the memory of illustrious men shall remain."

"I recollect hearing Messer Titian say when I visited his house in my childhood to learn something of painting that he had greatly improved his works after having been in Rome [in 1545-46]."

"On the 3rd of July 1518 Titian was called to the Salt Office [of Venice], and there curtly informed: — "that unless he [Titian] began at once or within a week to work at the canvas in the Hall of Great Council which had been neglected for so many years, and unless he should proceed to labour at it continuously till its completion, 'their magnificences ' would cause it to be painted and finished at Titian's expense". But: Awful as the threat appeared, it failed to move the painter in any way. He had orders for great altar-pieces at Ancona and Brescia, commissions from the Duke of Ferrara, etc.."

"Titian painted two pictures in the Hall of Great Council [of Venice], one of the Pope setting his foot on the neck of Barbarossa, the other of a fight [ 'The Battle of Cadore' ] which was done [by Titian] later."

"Titian is alive and well, and not a little pleased to know that your Majesty was inquiring for him. He took me to see [the painting] the [[w:La Gloria (Titian)|'Trinity' [also called La Gloria] ]] which he promised to finish towards the end of September. It seems to me to be a fine work. Equally so a 'Christ appearing to the Magdalen' in the garden for the Serenissima Queen Mary. The other painting he says will be a 'Grieving Virgin', companion to the 'Ecce Homo', already in possession of your Majesty, which he has not done because the size was not given, but which he will execute so soon as the particulars are sent to him."

"..Titian the painter is at Augsburg, whither the Emperor [[w:Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|[Charles V] ]] has called him, and he has constant access to his Majesty, whose health is on the whole but middling."

"All that Titian's figures want, is a voice; in all else they are nature itself."

"There had been a time, as Vasari truly said, when the master [Titian] finished his works with such care and minuteness that they bore inspection at any distance. At a later period his touches and brush strokes were ill suited for a close inspection, but at the focus they were perfectly effective, and so stupendously clever that the scenes appeared to be real. Three lives has Titian, one natural, one artificial, the third eternal."

"..if this man [Titian] had been in any way assisted by art and design, as he is by nature, and above all in counterfeiting the life, no one could do more or work better, for he has a fine spirit and a very beautiful and lively manner."

"Your Titian, or rather our Titian is here [from Venice to Rome] and he tells me that he is under great obligation to you for having been the main cause of his coming hither.. ..he has already seen so many fine antiques [of Rome] that he is filled with wonder, and glad that he came."

"..I glanced at a sky [aboven the Grand Canal in Venice where a boat-race was going on] which since the days of the creation was never more splendidly graced with lights and shadows. The air was such as an artist would like to depict who grieved that he was not Titian. The stonework of the houses, though solid, seemed artificial, the atmosphere varied from clean to leaden. The clouds above the roofs [of Venice] merged into a distance of smokey gray, the nearest blazing like suns, more distant ones glowing as molten lead dissolving at least into horizontal streaks, now greenish blue, now bluish green.. ..And as I watched the scene I exclaimed more than once, 'Oh Titian, where art thou, and why not here to realize this scene?'"

"If I were a painter I should die of despair.. ..but certain it is that Titian's pencil has waited on Titian's old age to perform its miracles."

"Italians have such illustrious people they can celebrate, that everyone celebrates — Michelangelo, Vivaldi and, of course, for us on the left, Sacco and Vanzetti."

"Se questa non piace, non voglio più scrivere di musica."

"With Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Baroque music reached its zenith. The prosperous, cultivated world of contemporary Venice shines through all his works, composed with innate craftsmanship."

"Overrated: Antonio Vivaldi. I'm tired of him. Stravinsky once said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. I disagree. Instead, I think he began 500 concertos and never achieved anything in them. So he kept trying over and over again without ever quite succeeding."

"Robert Craft: “Are you interested in the current revival of eighteenth-century Italian masters?” Igor Stravinsky: “Not very. Vivaldi is greatly overrated—a dull fellow who could compose the same form so many times over.”"

"Christopher Hogwood: "Caricaturists of all countries I have a great interest in; I like to observe what happens to an artist's vision when there is a deliberate distortion for the viewer. This is found in Italian art and in much Italian music. Vivaldi sometimes uses caricature in a very serious and grim sense, not at all comic.""

"Overrated: Vivaldi. He has recently become Mr. Baroque, and that is not fair to Bach and Handel. His music does not have the substance, the innovative quality or the passion of the greatest composers. Of course, it's perfectly good music and it makes the listener feel good, but there is no door opening as there is with the great masters."

"it is not quite accurate to say that the indigenous population gave of themselves and their land for that noble purpose. Rather, they were slaughtered, decimated, and dispersed in the course of one of the greatest exercises in genocide in human history...which we celebrate each October when we honor Columbus-a notable mass murderer himself-on Columbus Day."

"When everybody says "lesbian," a word connected with Sappho and the island of Lesbos, that automatically means that your forefathers and foremothers are European, that George Washington is the father of our country and Columbus discovered America-all false assumptions."

"Following the light of the sun, we left the old world"

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."

"Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages."

"I came to serve you at the age of 28 and now I have not a hair on me that is not white, and my body is infirm and exhausted. All that was left to me and my brothers has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that I wore, without hearing or trial, to my great dishonor."

"I certify to Your Highnesses that in the world I believe that there are no better people nor better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and have a speech that is sweetest in the world, and mild and always laughing."

"The tempest was terrible and separated me from my [other] vessels that night, putting every one of them in desperate straits, with nothing to look forward to but death. Each was certain the others had been destroyed. What man ever born, not excepting Job, who would not have died of despair, when in such weather seeking safety for my son, my brother, shipmates, and myself, we were forbidden [access to] the land and the harbors which I, by God's will and sweating blood, had won for Spain?"

"Your Highnesses have an Other World here, by which our holy faith can be so greatly advanced and from which such great wealth can be drawn."

"I have always read that the world, both land and water, was spherical, as the authority and researches of Ptolemy and all the others who have written on this subject demonstrate and prove, as do the eclipses of the moon and other experiments that are made from east to west, and the elevation of the North Star from north to south."

"I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. I am greatly supported in this view by reason of this great river, and by this sea which is fresh."

"And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear."

"It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost this fear, they are so artless and so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts."

"Princess Marie-Esméralda of Belgium: The fact that our public space is dominated by images to the glory of white men, conquerors, and certain colonizers or slavers undoubtedly contributes to the sense that history celebrates the supremacy of the white race. The "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus, regardless of the explorer's merits, reflects a Eurocentric view of the world. Wasn't it a continent that has essentially been 'discovered' since it was inhabited? His troops plundered the local wealth, enslaved the natives and spread unknown diseases."

"Eratosthenes... knew that the Sun was straight overhead in... Syene at noon on the , but that it was 7.2 degrees south of straight overhead in , located 794 kilometers farther north. He concluded... 794 kilometers corresponded to 7.2 degrees out of the 360 degrees... around Earth's circumference, so that the circumference must be 794 km x 360°/7.2°≈39,700 km... remarkably close to the modern value of 40,000 km. Amusingly Christopher Columbus totally bungled this... confusing Arabic miles with Italian miles, concluding that he needed to sail only 3,700 km... when the true value was 19,600 km."

"I first ask the kids, "What language do you think Columbus spoke?" Some agree on Spanish; some of the more astute ones even venture Italian. When I ask them what the Arawak spoke they respond, "English." Which, of course, to them is the "American" language. By way of illustration, I call two Cantonese-speaking kids to the center of the circle and ask them to speak their native tongue. They do so, at first shyly, then with pride that they have something special to contribute to this lesson. The rest of the kids-African American, Latino, and Pilipino-respond that the words sound like nonsense to them. In short, it is gibberish. We begin to improvise. Five kids volunteer to be Columbus and his crew and another five an Arawak chief and his tribe. The two groups confront each other, speaking "gibberish"-gibberish that ends up meaning "I came for gold and if you refuse to give me what I want, I will kill you," which is exactly where genocide and greed meet. Columbus and crew raise and shoot their rifles and the Arawak drop dead en masse. They had not been directed to do so. This was an improvisation, which ended our rehearsal for the day and began our first lesson in colonization. And we, the kids and I, have fallen in love with theater's power to teach. Truth. Or lies. You choose, as Augosto Boal reminds us."

"Columbus’s letter from his third voyage contains his description of the world’s shape as being that of a pear or a woman’s breast, with what he thinks he has discovered to be the Garden of Eden being on the nipple."

"Of this voyage, I observe," says the Admiral, "that it has miraculously been shown, as may be understood by this writing, by the many signal miracles that He has shown on the voyage, and for me, who for so great a time was in the court of Your Highnesses with the opposition and against the opinion of so many high personages of your household, who were all against me, alleging this undertaking to be folly, which I hope in Our Lord will be to the greater glory of Christianity, which to some slight extent already has happened."

"Christopher Columbus made landfall in the western hemisphere in 1492. His venture was characteristic of the internationalism of the American enterprise. He operated from the Spanish city of Seville but came from Genoa and he was by nationality a citizen of the Republic of Venice, which then ran an island empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. The finance for his transatlantic expedition was provided by himself and other Genoa merchants in Seville, and topped up by the Spanish Queen Isabella, who had seized quantities of cash when her troops occupied Granada earlier that year."

"Christopher Columbus landed first in the New World at the island of San Salvador, and after praising God enquired urgently for gold."

"Columbus's fleet in 1492 - which consisted of three small ships manned by 120 sailors - was like a trio of mosquitoes compared to Zheng He's drove of dragons."

"One of the least known and studied aspects of US history involves the centuries-long trade in Indian slaves. Only in the last decade or two have scholars begun in earnest to piece together and analyze the trade in Indigenous bodies introduced by Christopher Columbus from his first voyage to the New World in 1492."

"I did barge around the library fully pregnant, that's true too, and in fact I became almost obsessed with Columbus for several months. I didn't expect him to come alive, or to become such an unwieldy, slyly teasing, deceptive, wholly frustrating subject. I used to throw my head down on the table sometimes and wish, just wish, I could talk to him. I know I could have made him understand what was going to happen, made him understand cultural history and ethnocentrism. He was brilliant, strange, and emotional, and very, very cruel."

"The Columbus myth suggests that from US independence onward, colonial settlers saw themselves as part of a world system of colonization. "Columbia," the poetic, Latinate name used in reference to the United States from its founding throughout the nineteenth century, was based on the name of Christopher Columbus. The "Land of Columbus" was-and still is-represented by the image of a woman in sculptures and paintings, by institutions such as Columbia University, and by countless place names, including that of the national capital, the District of Columbia.7 The 1798 hymn "Hail, Columbia" was the early national anthem and is now used whenever the vice president of the United States makes a public appearance, and Columbus Day is still a federal holiday despite Columbus never having set foot on the continent claimed by the United States."

"there was no Italy — Columbus was from Genoa, a city-state. He died in Spain. So, you know, it’s a very weak link to Italianness. And, of course, Italians have such illustrious people they can celebrate, that everyone celebrates — Michelangelo, Vivaldi and, of course, for us on the left, Sacco and Vanzetti."

"I should not proceed by land to the East, as is custom, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone."

"The Admiral ordered the lord to be given some things, and he and all his folk rested in great contentment, believing truly that they had come from the sky, and to see the Christians they held themselves very fortunate."

"...your Highnesses may believe that this island (Hispaniola), and all the others, are as much yours as Castile. Here there is only wanting a settlement and the order to the people to do what is required. For I, with the force I have under me, which is not large, could march over all these islands without opposition. I have seen only three sailors land, without wishing to do harm, and a multitude of Indians fled before them. They have no arms, and are without warlike instincts; they all go naked, and are so timid that a thousand would not stand before three of our men. So that they are good to be ordered about, to work and sow, and do all that may be necessary, and to build towns, and they should be taught to go about clothed and to adopt our customs."

"And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts."