Defying an Art Historian's Worst Nightmare -- No slides!

(The following is an article by Ms. Jai Imbrey who attended this lecture by our Yale '52 classmate, Colin Eisler in Venice at the Sala degli Arazzi in the cloister gardens of Palladio's San Giorgio.)

One of the world's foremost art historians Colin Eisler prepares to speak on his specialty, Bellini's notebooks, in a symposium in his honor. Scholars of all kinds, students and friends have gathered in the immense Renaissance hall. The mike crackles. A silver haired senior lecturer from the Courtauld introduces Eisler in priestly tones and perfect diction that would make Masterpiece Theatre casting proud. The venerable historian stands on the podium before the enormous expanse of blind arched wall, illuminated by the radiant white light like a Broadway star in a Gene Kelly film. Tall and slender with a slight stoop, he wears a handsome marine blazer and very fashionable new smoke colored glasses with large round lenses. (He had dropped his tortoise shell pair on the plane and some matron had mercilessly stepped on them), Now the moment all lecturers fear in the deepest marrow of their bones is upon him -- an empty carrousel, a PowerPoint disappearance.

Without missing a beat, Eisler merrily intones,'The first self-proclaimed cognoscenti of Venetian art, Pater and Ruskin, would been apoplectic at the thought of using images of any kind in talk on art. Projected images, no, no, no. Quel horreur! Words, now there's the crux. Language alone should evoke to perfection every detail, every color, every shade of the image down to the last feeble brushstroke, even the tiny yellow foxing stains in the corner. Illustrations would have been totally demeaning.'

Unperturbed, he is prepared to carry forth without slides evoking in livid detail each delicate striated petal of the iris that forms the heart of his talk that afternoon. Suddenly a small shaft of light from the corridor spikes the room. A young Chinese woman, very pretty, rushes in bearing the precious flash drive key. She flushes with embarrassment but expediently snaps the key in and sets up the screen. Eisler sweetly invites her to sit beside him, assuring all that he is the luckiest man alive to have such an attractive and competent aid at his elbow. He even pretends that he is annoyed to have to now hold forth as expected.

Moments later, we are suddenly engulfed in the world of the iris. We see its gentle roots in the great botanicals of the age; the covered Rialto bridge where the pharmacies traded in opiates and herbs. We hear of the flower craze of the Quattrocento, almost rivaling the Dutch tulip mania, the 41 curative properties associated with the iris (from gout to aphrodisiacs). We understand that only Giovanni Bellini. not his father or brother, could have produced such as delicately shaded graceful image, unlike anything else in the great Bellini Notebooks. We are made to believe that one of the greatest challenges for any master was to outdo the great painters of Antiquity and their unrivalled gift in imitating nature's beauty, The fragile iris reveals how Giovanni not only surpassed his father's master Gentile da Fabriano, his father -- Venice's most esteemed painter -- but took on all Europe and the North. We see with great clarity in the diminutive flower - that others would have flipped over nonchalantly distracted by the brilliant perspectival views and ancient stones- the extraordinary scientific eye of the age of Leonardo.

With cheer and joy, we recognize that no matter how beautiful, how well-crafted, how simple or complex a work of art might be, we need fine eyes, knowledge and a sense of wonder to see its power. We are humbled, but we are happy. We want to begin looking afresh at both great and simple works that remind us why we study art.

I came to Venice for this and now I can go home.