Friday, April 22, 2011

Yesterday was a beautiful, blustery day, and I spent it in Providence, walking up and down steep College Hill and admiring the loveliness of the city. While Tom and James toured the Rhode Island School of Design, I spent the morning with my mother at the RISD museum, where we saw many desirable cocktail dresses, an overdressed 18th-century infant with an expression on its face that convinced us that he was soaking wet, plenty of faithful representations of faithful dogs, a comic film about a regular living room that, over the course of 25 minutes, is gradually invaded by housepets and livestock, and, our favorite, a beautiful wooden statue of St. George on a tiny horse. According to the card on the wall, the statue was carved and painted in medieval Spain and was probably dragged or carried during a religious procession as a symbol of military valor. Yet George looks very young and very tired, as does his little horse, and the worn paint and simple, uneven carving style are strangely and beautifully expressive. It really was a lovely piece, and I'm sorry I can't find any links to it so that you can see it too.

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