X.vii. A Dusty Altar

"Painting throughout its history has served many purposes, has been flat and has used perspective, has been framed and has been left borderless, has been explicit and has been mysterious. But one act of faith has remained a constant.... The act of faith consisted in believing that the visible contained hidden secrets, that to study the visible was to learn something more than could be seen in a glance."
- John Berger

In the tiny church of San Bernardino in Bergamo there is a priceless painting by Lorenzo Lotto, hung high above the altar, difficult to see beyond the railing that separates the choir from the rest of the church. An older parish priest, sweeping up dust, beckoned Sarah and I, together with another woman interested in the painting, to come closer, beyond the threshold that usually divides the clergy from the populace. As we stepped forward, he seemed most interested in conversing with me.
    "You are a student?" he asked.
    "Yes. Not here, but in Bologna for a year. We're from Canada, though, we're only spending the day in your city." I tried in vain to include Sarah in the conversation, but he was uninterested either because he had been trained to distrust beautiful young women or for other, more deeply felt reasons.
    "Ah, a young student, soon to be a doctor in fine arts."
    "Well, hopefully, but not all that soon."
    "Yes, I can see it in your eyes. You will be a great doctor. I can see it in the clarity of your eyes. Use them. Look at this beautiful work!" He gestured towards the looming, jewel-toned canvas hanging above a forest of candlesticks.
    "Yes, Lorenzo Lotto was a very interesting painter you know, one with a very profound sense of spirituality…" I found myself, for the second time in three months, engaged in a Sunday morning conversation about Lorenzo Lotto with a priest.
    "And you're Catholic or Protestant?" he asked me, as though those were the only two categories he had learned about at his seminary.
    Caught completely off guard, I paused for a moment, and then answered cryptically. He smiled, and I turned away to continue examining the painting. It was only as we were about to leave that he spoke to me again.
    "You love beauty."
    "Yes."
    "And beauty will save the world." I wasn't sure if he meant this last phrase as a question or as a statement.
    "Yes," I answered, plainly, for it was an axiom I had cherished since long before I had known Lorenzo Lotto, maybe even before I had ever known Keats.
    "Are you sure of it?"
    "Of course," I replied, as though it were so obvious it needn't be said. He then became less grave, almost as though he had found the assurances he was seeking in my unqualified answer. He shook my hand, said goodbye, and returned to his work.
    To me that priest treaded the most Christian of lines, one which falls between doubt and certainty, failure and confidence. He wasn't just a literary topos, some ineffectual Friar Lawrence or Dostoyevskian monk. He was real, and he swept dust off the altar of his little parish church as the world outside was collapsing in on itself, oblivious, entranced by the bright eyes of a younger man.

---

    "You lied to a priest!" she said to me in a half-mocking tone as we exited the church and walked up via Pignolo on our way to Bergamo's upper town, repeating, as usual, what we both had on our minds at the exact instant.
    "I did not lie to a priest," I said, "what I am isn't considered protestant in Italy. Besides, I'm not protesting anything." I was being glib, a sign of defensiveness, totally unnecessary in the face of perhaps the only individual who understood my actions totally.
    "And I'm Catholic in sentiment, anyways." I said, after a long pause, concluding the conversation.



The spires of Bergamo