IX.vii. Peacocks

"I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love most."
- William Morris

Leaving my visitors alone for the day, I woke up early for the swan song of professor Cavina's modern art class, the long anticipated field trip to Parma and the Villa Magnani-Rocca foundation. At the ungodly hour of seven thirty in the morning we met at Bologna's bus station, where two coaches had been chartered for our purposes. Cavina arrived in the usual fashion, on bicycle, fashionable but not as late as some.
    In Parma we visited the Camera di San Paolo, frescoed by Corregio for a rather secular-minded abbess. Cavina asked me if I had visited this room before, and when I replied that indeed I had, she jokingly questioned the use of my spending a year in Italy. In return, I said that I had never visited Italy accompanied by the eyes of an expert.
    Continuing our itinerary, we arrived at the Villa Magnani-Rocca in time for a much vaunted pastoral lunch break. Walled in and planted with huge sycamore trees, the sun-drenched grounds of the villa enthralled most of us visitors more than the collections of the late musicologist Luigi Magnani, whom professor Cavina had known well. Surprised by our presence, half a dozen glorious peacocks jostled with our class of eighty or so students for prime spaces on the expansive lawns of the English-styled gardens. Seeking refuge in a treetop, a pure white specimen enchanted all of us with its long feathers, rustled by the May breezes, resembling the flowing hair of a maiden, while in the formal garden some of the more brazen classmates tried to provoke a display of the many-eyed plumage. A group of schoolchildren joined in, less inhibited, and openly took to chasing the poor birds. Even while professor Cavina tried to speak to us seriously on the steps of the villa after our long picnic break the pompous avians continued to crow, creating a humorous, raucous, and beautiful counterpoint.
    I think that one of Cavina's goals as expressed in the teaching of our course is to motivate the impending generation of art historians with glamour. Quite apart from her impressively encyclopedic and playful knowledge of all manner of art, she exudes a sense of elegance and assuredness all her own. Based solely on her lessons, it would seem that the world of the art historian is one of private villas, jet-setting, high stakes acquisitions, and passionate intrigue. This is probably as far as possible from the truth, but the ruse is worth the reward, and if the next great Italian art historian is born of Anna Cavina's influence I won't be at all surprised.