WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.550 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.550 --> 00:00:12.630 align:middle line:84% The last poem I read is, again, based on a painting 00:00:12.630 --> 00:00:14.640 align:middle line:90% by Luca Signorelli. 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:17.400 align:middle line:84% The painting is in the cathedral in Orvieto. 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:21.630 align:middle line:84% And it's the painting of The Resurrection of the Body. 00:00:21.630 --> 00:00:24.900 align:middle line:84% And in it, the spirits, the souls 00:00:24.900 --> 00:00:26.610 align:middle line:84% are coming down like little angels, 00:00:26.610 --> 00:00:29.160 align:middle line:90% I guess, from the upper regions. 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:32.310 align:middle line:84% And the bones are making their way up back through the soil. 00:00:32.310 --> 00:00:35.590 align:middle line:84% And on the line where the two merge, 00:00:35.590 --> 00:00:38.340 align:middle line:84% they're sort of fleshing again into people. 00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:40.778 align:middle line:84% And then the people, there's crowds of people. 00:00:40.778 --> 00:00:41.820 align:middle line:90% And they're doing things. 00:00:41.820 --> 00:00:44.690 align:middle line:90% 00:00:44.690 --> 00:00:47.040 align:middle line:84% Luca Signorelli wasn't a great painter. 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:50.010 align:middle line:84% This is probably his only really interesting painting. 00:00:50.010 --> 00:00:55.890 align:middle line:84% But he was technically the first really proficient master 00:00:55.890 --> 00:00:57.850 align:middle line:90% at depicting the human body. 00:00:57.850 --> 00:01:00.090 align:middle line:84% And that's because he was one of those people who 00:01:00.090 --> 00:01:02.760 align:middle line:84% was one of the very first practitioners 00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:13.780 align:middle line:84% of human vivisection or studied the anatomy very literally. 00:01:13.780 --> 00:01:17.030 align:middle line:84% And Michelangelo learnt a great deal from him, but, of course, 00:01:17.030 --> 00:01:19.260 align:middle line:84% brought passion to the enterprise, 00:01:19.260 --> 00:01:24.225 align:middle line:84% and so his work is a different order. 00:01:24.225 --> 00:01:25.600 align:middle line:84% But I'm standing in the cathedral 00:01:25.600 --> 00:01:28.420 align:middle line:84% here quite helplessly looking at this painting 00:01:28.420 --> 00:01:32.050 align:middle line:84% and trying to make some sense of it. 00:01:32.050 --> 00:01:36.030 align:middle line:90% 00:01:36.030 --> 00:01:43.542 align:middle line:84% "At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body, 00:01:43.542 --> 00:01:50.640 align:middle line:84% see how they hurry to enter their bodies, these spirits. 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:56.490 align:middle line:84% Is it better flesh that they should hurry so? 00:01:56.490 --> 00:01:59.730 align:middle line:84% From above, the green-winged angels 00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:03.820 align:middle line:90% blare down trumpets and light. 00:02:03.820 --> 00:02:05.460 align:middle line:90% But they don't care. 00:02:05.460 --> 00:02:07.660 align:middle line:90% They hurry to congregate. 00:02:07.660 --> 00:02:12.540 align:middle line:84% They hurry into speech until it's a marketplace. 00:02:12.540 --> 00:02:15.420 align:middle line:90% It is humanity. 00:02:15.420 --> 00:02:20.070 align:middle line:84% But still, we wonder in the chancel of the dark cathedral, 00:02:20.070 --> 00:02:23.040 align:middle line:90% is it better back? 00:02:23.040 --> 00:02:26.040 align:middle line:84% The artist has tried to make it so. 00:02:26.040 --> 00:02:31.140 align:middle line:84% Each tendon they press to re-enter is perfect. 00:02:31.140 --> 00:02:34.770 align:middle line:84% But is it perfection thereafter pulling themselves up 00:02:34.770 --> 00:02:39.150 align:middle line:84% through the soil into the weightedness, the color, 00:02:39.150 --> 00:02:42.030 align:middle line:90% into the eye of the painter? 00:02:42.030 --> 00:02:45.420 align:middle line:90% Outside it is 1500. 00:02:45.420 --> 00:02:48.120 align:middle line:84% All around the cathedral, streets 00:02:48.120 --> 00:02:53.280 align:middle line:84% hurry to open through the wild silver grasses. 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:56.550 align:middle line:84% The men and women on the cathedral wall 00:02:56.550 --> 00:03:02.430 align:middle line:84% do not know how having come this far to stop their hurrying. 00:03:02.430 --> 00:03:06.750 align:middle line:84% They amble off in groups and couples. 00:03:06.750 --> 00:03:08.880 align:middle line:90% Soon some are clothed. 00:03:08.880 --> 00:03:10.860 align:middle line:90% There is distance. 00:03:10.860 --> 00:03:12.990 align:middle line:90% There is perspective. 00:03:12.990 --> 00:03:16.770 align:middle line:84% Standing below them in the church in Orvieto, 00:03:16.770 --> 00:03:22.410 align:middle line:84% how can we tell them to be stern and brazen and slow, that there 00:03:22.410 --> 00:03:25.860 align:middle line:90% is no entrance, only entering? 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:31.440 align:middle line:84% They keep on arriving, wanting names, wanting happiness. 00:03:31.440 --> 00:03:36.270 align:middle line:84% In his studio, Luca Signorelli in the name of God 00:03:36.270 --> 00:03:40.470 align:middle line:84% and science and the believable, broke 00:03:40.470 --> 00:03:43.650 align:middle line:90% into the body studying arrival. 00:03:43.650 --> 00:03:47.940 align:middle line:84% But the wall of the flesh opens endlessly. 00:03:47.940 --> 00:03:51.450 align:middle line:84% Its vanishing point so deep and receding we 00:03:51.450 --> 00:03:53.040 align:middle line:90% have yet to find it. 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:55.470 align:middle line:90% To have it stop us. 00:03:55.470 --> 00:03:57.480 align:middle line:90% So he cut deeper. 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:02.760 align:middle line:84% Graduating slowly from the symbolic to the beautiful. 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:05.040 align:middle line:90% How far is true? 00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:09.720 align:middle line:84% When his one son died violently, he had the body brought to him 00:04:09.720 --> 00:04:15.540 align:middle line:84% and laid it on the drawing table and stood at a certain distance 00:04:15.540 --> 00:04:20.760 align:middle line:84% awaiting the best possible light, the best depth of day. 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:26.970 align:middle line:84% Then with beauty and care and technique and judgment 00:04:26.970 --> 00:04:32.580 align:middle line:84% cut into shadow, cut into bone and sinew, and every pocket 00:04:32.580 --> 00:04:35.250 align:middle line:90% in which the cold light pulled. 00:04:35.250 --> 00:04:38.610 align:middle line:84% It took him days, that deep caress, 00:04:38.610 --> 00:04:42.870 align:middle line:84% cutting, unfastening until his mind could 00:04:42.870 --> 00:04:46.140 align:middle line:84% climb into the open flesh and mend itself." 00:04:46.140 --> 00:04:49.740 align:middle line:90% 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:53.390 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:53.390 --> 00:05:12.085 align:middle line:90%