Saturday, March 13, 2010

Rossellini and Giotto

(The Seven Virtues: Charity; Giotto 1305)

"But in later years I came to understand that the arresting strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes derived from the great part played in them by symbolism, and the fact that this was represented not as a symbol (for the thought symbolized was nowhere expressed) but as a reality, actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more literal to the meaning of the work, something more concrete and more striking to the lesson it imparted."

(The Miracle; Roberto Rossellini 1948)

"And quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation by a person's soul in the virtue of which he or she is the agent has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical." -- Marcel Proust

(The Miracle; Roberto Rossellini 1948)