Vertigo

When I looked up once again from my work, the shadowy forms of the sleepers on the station forecourt had all vanished, or had faded away, and the morning traffic had begun. At one point a barge laden with heaps of rubbish came by. A large rat scuttled along its gunnel and, having reached the bow, plunged head first into the water. I cannot say whether it was the sight of this that made me decide not to stay in Venice but to travel on to Padua instead, without delay, and seek out Enrico Scrovegni’s Arena Chapel. Hitherto all I knew of it was an account that described the undiminished intensity of the colours in Giotto’s frescoes, and the certainty which governs every stride and feature of the figures represented. Once I entered the chapel, from the heat that already prevailed in the city even in the early morning of that day, and stood before the three rows of frescoes that cover the walls up to the ceiling, I was overwhelmed by the silent lament of the angels, who have kept their station above our endless calamities for nigh on seven centuries. Their lament resounded in the very silence of the chapel and their eyebrows were drawn so far together in their grief that one might have supposed them blindfolded. And are not their white wings, I thought, with those few bright green touches of Veronese earth, the most wondrous of all the things we have ever conceived of?