A Good Friday Meditation

Again one of the small treasures, of so many, in the V&A collection was this altarpiece from Lombardy. Attributed to the the del Maino brothers it would have been created in their workshop in Pavia. It was made for Sant'Agostino, Piacenza where it remained until 1841. The predella addresses the Nativity while the upper piece traces the events of the crucifixion. Back in my days as an avid record collector I had the wise counsel of my friend Alan when it came to buying things. Alan worked at Sam the Record Man's and had a coterie of people that he would advise on what they should buy. If Alan said "buy it" I bought it and was very seldom disappointed. Back in 1974 he suggested that I purchase a Archiv recording of a little known Passion by Francesco Corteccia, a Florentine composer at the time of Cosimo di Medici. As with most Passions written for the period the story is told by the Evangelist (in this case John)and the words of the crowd and meditations between events were sung by a choir. The spoken sections are in Florentine dialect and the choral in Latin. I find the sound of Arnoldo Foà's voice has a beauty that is as musical as that of the choir.



Unfortunately I had problems with focus on some of these photos so though it is not of the highest quality I still wanted to share it with you as a meditation on the art of the wood sculptor, the composer, the actor and the musicians.

03 aprile - Sabato Santo