Impulse traveling...

I'm reading Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War. I find certain elements of Helprin's style somewhat annoying, but the adventurous life of the main character, a young Roman named Alessandro Giuliani, and the novel's eclectic ideas make for very interesting reading. I'm not yet even a third of the way through the book (723 pages), but am inspired to comment on an event that happens early in the story. It's 1914 and Alessandro has joined the Italian navy, but there's a certain work of art he must see before he goes to war. He travels by train from Rome to Munich - into the war zone - just to visit Raphael's portrait of Bindo Altoviti, a wealthy young banker and friend of the artist, painted in the early 16th century.

Alessandro has just finished his Ph.D. in aesthetics - he was about to start a professorship in Bologna when the war intervened - and wants to contemplate the beauty of Raphael's work. In the passage, Helprin gives a brief history of how the painting traveled from Italy to Germany (by mule cart), describes the lovely museum and its Alpine surroundings, and puts into words the complexity that Alessandro sees in the face of the young Altoviti. I, on the other hand, simply enjoy the idea of jumping on a train and traveling for hours to see a painting...or a play, or an author's writing desk, or whatever may be at the end of the line.

Before I went to Dublin in January of last year, I happened upon Jonathan Harr's recent book, The Lost Painting, about "The Taking of Christ," one of Caravaggio's many "lost" masterpieces, and how it was discovered and restored. It now lives at the National Gallery of Ireland. I still haven't read Harr's book, but I saw the painting while in Dublin. It's the first Caravaggio I've seen. I was fortunate enough to see another while in Russia in June - "The Lute Player," the only Caravaggio at the The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I won't attempt to describe the beauty of these paintings, but I can envision traveling the world just to see every Caravaggio (there are only between 60 and 80, according to Harr, at least until more are discovered). Alessandro's impulsive trip seems only natural.