Elective Affinities XXX: To the light

 

Carl Friedrich Seiffert, The Blue Grotto on Capri, 1860, oil on canvas, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (photo © Jean Louis Mazieres)

 

Hieronymous Bosch, detail from the so-called Cardinal Grimani’s altarpiece (Ascent of the Blessed), 1505-15, oil on wood (polyptych), 86.5 × 39.5 cm (each panel), Palazzo Ducale, Venice

 

[Thanks to Gerasimos Mamonas for bringing Carl Friedrich Seiffert’s painting to my attention: the association was almost automatic. Seiffert’s painting also recalled to memory a trip, a little less than two decades ago, to Diros, the stunning caves in the Peloponnese, rich with white stalactites and stalagmites, which one visits by a rowboat on dark, impenetrable waters]