Read Online The Food of Love by Anthony Capella - Free Book Online

the greatest flowering of genius the world has ever seen. Good morning, Laura. You
    look as if you’ve come hotfoot from a Bramante chapel or a
    Bernini fountain, so you can be the first to tell us what you have seen of the High Renaissance so far.’
    Laura thought quickly as she sorted out her books. ‘Well,’ she
    said, ‘I’ve been to the Sistine chapel, obviously, and seen the
    Raphaels in the Vatican, and some of Michelangelo’s architecture—’
    ‘Momento. Who is this Michael Angelo, please?’ Kim interrupted.
    ‘Oh. Er, sorry.’ In her haste she had pronounced it the
    American way. “I meant Michelangelo.” This time she pronounced
    it as he did, in Italian. But her teacher was still not satisfied.
    ‘In this room,’ he announced, ‘we won’t speak of
    Michelangelo, or Titian, or Raphael, any more than we would
    call Shakespeare Will, or Beethoven Ludwig. We are not yet on
    first name terms with these great men, nor will we presume to be until we have studied their works for many years. We will call
    them, therefore, by their proper appellations: Michelangelo
    Buonarroti, Tiziano Vecellio and Raffaello Sanzio. Please,’ he gestured at Laura, ‘proceed.’
    Kim Fellowes was an American, but he had lived in Rome for so
    long that he was, as he said, almost a native: the staff at the
    University referred to him simply as il dottore. It was to be regretted, he told the students, that his book on the Renaissance - the
    same book Laura had been consulting during her futile hunt for
    the church of Santa Cecilia - had had to be written in English
    rather than Italian, thanks to the dictates of a publisher eager for a commercial bestseller. And a bestseller it had inevitably become: he kept the reviews, carefully laminated to protect them from
    greasy fingerprints, on his desk for the students to examine. It had been acclaimed as that rare thing: a work that combined the erudition of a scholar with the sensitivity of a true artist. Everything
    about Kim proclaimed his perfect taste, from the gorgeous linen
    shirts he wore - Laura liked to play a kind of mental game which consisted of trying to find the right word to describe their colours: she usually resorted to words like cornflower, cranberry, or aquamarine - to his pale seersucker jacket, and the straw Panama that
    kept the fierce Italian sun off his finely featured face when outdoors.
    Some of her fellow students found him a hard taskmaster.
    Laura was overawed by his sensitivity and intelligence, and did
    everything she could to impress him.
    ‘So you saw the Sistine Chapel?’ he was saying. ‘And what did
    you think of it?’
    She hesitated. But she couldn’t bear not to tell him what she
    had really thought. “I thought it was a barn.’
    The other students laughed. ‘A barn?’ Kim Fellowes repeated
    questioningly, knitting his fingers together and placing them on his knee.
    ‘Yes. I mean, it’s beautifully painted and everything, but the
    paintings are so high that you have to look upwards all the time, and the room is so big and rectangular …’ She trailed off, certain she was about to be ridiculed. To her surprise, though, Kim was
    nodding approvingly.
    ‘Laura is absolutely right. The Sistine Chapel,’ he said, looking round at the students to make sure they all understood him, ‘is
    considered by many experts, including myself, to be the embodiment of all the worst excesses of the Renaissance. The colours are
    gaudy, the design overpowering and the conception unharmonious.
    It was commissioned purely as a status symbol by a
    nouveau-riche philistine who destroyed some rather fine
    Peruginos in the process. Buonarroti himself didn’t want to touch it, which is why we will be studying his drawings instead. Now
    then, who can tell me what contraposto is?’
    ‘That man is such an asshole,’ grumbled one of Laura’s fellow students as they packed up their books after the seminar.
    ‘He knows what he’s talking about,’ Laura