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Pope Francis watches children release doves at the Vatican: photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters, 26 January 2014
- A dove which was freed by children flanked by Pope Francis during the Angelus prayer, is attacked by a seagull in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday. Symbols of peace have come under attack at the Vatican. Two white doves were sent fluttering into the air as a peace gesture by Italian children flanking Pope Francis Sunday at an open studio window of the Apostolic Palace, as tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter's Square below. After the pope and the two children left the windows, a seagull and a big black crow quickly swept down, attacking the doves, including one which had briefly perched on a windowsill on a lower floor. One dove lost some feathers as it broke free of the gull, while the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove. The doves' fate was not immediately known. While speaking at the window, Francis appealed for peace to prevail in Ukraine: photos by Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press, 26 January 2014
A dove which was freed by children flanked by Pope Francis during
the Angelus prayer, is chased and attacked by a black crow in St. Peter's Square, at
the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014. Symbols of peace have come under
attack at the Vatican. Two white doves were sent fluttering into the air
as a peace gesture by Italian children flanking Pope Francis Sunday at
an open studio window of the Apostolic Palace, as tens of thousands of
people watched in St. Peter's Square below. After the pope and the two
children left the windows, a seagull and a big black crow quickly swept
down, attacking the doves, including one which had briefly perched on a
windowsill on a lower floor. One dove lost some feathers as it broke
free of the gull, while the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove.
The doves' fate was not immediately known. While speaking at the window,
Francis appealed for peace to prevail in Ukraine: photos by Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press, 26 January 2014
San Gregorio: Juan Rizi, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 100 x 125 cm; image by Enrique Cordero, 22 May 2010 (Bowes Museum)
St. Gregory the Great: José de Ribera (1591-1652), c. 1619, oil on canvas, 102 x 73 cm (Gerard Farinas/Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Roma)
Annunciation: Fra Filippo Lippi, 1445-1450, tempera on panel, 117 x 173 cm (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Roma)
Annunciation: Fra Filippo Lippi, 1448-1450, egg tempera on panel, 68 x 152 cm (National Gallery, London)
Annunciation (detail): Fra Filippo Lippi, 1448-1450, egg tempera on panel, 68 x 152 cm (National Gallery, London)
Annunciation: Fra Filippo Lippi, c. 1443, wood (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Annunciation (detail): Fra Filippo Lippi, c. 1443, wood (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Madonna and Child with St. Anne: Carlo Saraceni, 1610, oil on canvas, 180 x 155 cm (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Roma)
Two Venetian Ladies: Vittore Carpaccio, c. 1510, oil on wood, 94 x 64 cm (Museo Correr, Venice)
Two Doves: Franz Werner von Tamm, n.d.. oil on canvas, 90 x 57 cm (private collection)
Just struck me that the release and attack of the doves was a Cormac McCarthy moment... a "Blood Meridian" tone.
ReplyDeleteRed,
ReplyDeleteYes, just the sort of thing that could trigger a Holy Ghost Explosion.
Wow, that's kind of creepy. Reminds me of the hawks around here that like to keep an eye on the bird feeder.
ReplyDeleteFirst, we send out the pigeons, then we . . . no, not those pigeons. Then we issue BB guns to the Swiss Guards. No, wait; depending on the condition of the birds’ entrails following their unintended sacrifice, we call in the haruspex-in-chief to divine the future, find out who’s going to win the Super bowl. Important stuff like that. The gods do have their faves, so it’s said.
ReplyDeletePossibly I'm feeling insufficiently cynical here (hard to imagine), but my long day takeaway here are assorted views of the marvelous in the everyday (although admittedly those real life doves might disagree). Thank you for sharing all these photos, paintings, captions and details. Curtis
ReplyDeleteUh-oh. Based on these haruspicious prognostications, looks like it should be Seahawks by 6, around the time the last exravaganzertisement fades into the frozen fog, and the couch armies get the all-clear, signalling it's (maybe, almost) safe for the rest of us to crawl out of the deep bunker.
ReplyDeleteSo glad once again not to have cable.
Curtis, thanks very much, hadn't seen that till just now.
ReplyDeleteYou've caused a benign readjustment in my prediction for the Stupor Bowl, that annual national climacteric the effects of which even those who don't care about it cannot avoid.
I'm now putting my play money on the Doves, representatives of all that is innocent and therefore bound to lose in the long if not also the short run.
Not that being pecked at by a bird isn't something to be grateful for, but as one can never know for sure whether it's heaven-sent... or the wicked prop deployment of a demented Hollywood director... well, let's just say if I were Gregory, I'd definitely be thinking about the sad example of what happened to Tippi Hedren and wishing I'd remembered to put Doveproof Earmuffs right up near the top of my Christmas Want List.
But oh, the full sublimity of the ecstatic genius of the Cinquecento burst upon me once again somewhere in the process of examining the surviving work of Fra Lippo Lippi. The examples I've given here, simply breathtaking. In the Munich version of the Annunciation I've given the detail, which demonstrates that the art of painting in that time and place was advanced well beyond what we reverently regard as scientific knowledge in our devolutionary epoch. The broadband radiation tracers emanating from the throwing arm of the Divine Hurler indicate the directional inspiration-beam splits as it passes through the wee cloud pillow atop the pedestal tree mount of the Holy Ghost, who just happens (pure blesséd coincidence) to be perched there awaiting upon Providential Dispensation. The roentgen count may actually go up when the beam splits and is intensified like that. One can hardly blame the poor girl for looking just a bit apprehensive.
By the by, to pull the fleabit curtain back a bit so as to reveal the wicked heart of the plan here (in case anybody cares!!), the post was originally titled "Never Going To Have a Chance". The theme was to be the unfair treatment of doves in Christian iconography. That grand Teutonic bore Heidegger, who it seems sided with what the historical analyst T. Perkins calls the "Progressivism" of his particular epoch, opined that whatever it is we are -- walking lumps of Dasein, to be a bit more precise -- we are, like it or not, thrown into this world, and will keep on falling forever, no safety nets or refunds; and I thought, imagine how much more horrible for the symbolic Christian dove, whose existence resembles that of a laser beam painfully cross-bred with the world's greatest fastball, constantly being hurled by that big Power Arm in the Sky into someone's womb, ear brain, or you name the body part. You may name it, but only the Captain gets to decide the location. Ouch. Predestination was never meant to be like this.
ReplyDeleteAnd my other thought, probably obvious, but still maybe not, this is blogging -- if the Pope's handlers had the lightest clue about the hard truth of Nature Red in Tooth and Claw in the Avian Sector, they'd have never allowed those kids to toss those doves into that extremely dicey air traffic situation. Or to put it another way, doves are not nature's idiots, and given the choice, it's extremely doubtful they would celebrate their release by voluntarily plunging directly into the path of larger, leaner, meaner avian predators. No dove is that dumb. But a Pope...
ReplyDeleteAnother way of putting it. Here, we have a gang of lovely gigantic black crows who live atop the tall trees and bicker nosily and congenially with one another across the treetops all the livelong day; but god help the intruder who enters what they regard as their proper domain; any human reckless enough to venture into range is immediately gang-shouted into terrified flight.
There are also now and then mating pairs of mourning doves that happen into the aerial precinct thus defined; and they are intelligent enough to give the crows a VERY wide berth, without having to be warned.
From this I conclude that doves of any species are likely smarter than papal-advisorial amateur behavioural biologists of any known era.
But then for not dissimilar reasons, those who must experience reality are often much more acutely aware of it than those who conceive themselves, from a safe distance, to be experts on it.
I've said they bicker nosily. Meant noisily; but nosily fits too.
ReplyDeleteNot that it relates, but we used to have a crow call--a whistle that would call them. And I mean, hoards of them. They would circle around, looking for something to dive-bomb, the sky full of them.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's hard to tell why anybody would be frightened of a few crows...
ReplyDeleteDove releases, butterfly releases, all uses of animals as props, is grossly offensive. Magic should be left to professionals. The paintings were and are magnificent to behold. Curtis
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more, and I'm sure Tippi Hedren would be of our party, as well.
ReplyDeleteStill, however long we may sit here in our comfortable private gondolas parked outside the Doges' Palace and condemn the casual insensitivity of resorting to animal cruelty for a good-purpose (peace) photo-op, this sort of piddling misdemeanour is never going to elevate the present primate (a bit tired here -- that IS what they call him, no?) into the rarefied Elite Eight of Bad Popes.