And if you happen to walk past the Pinacoteca di Brera late at night on the first or third Thursday of the month, you might be surprised to find it open. Can it be true? So you go in, making your way through the rooms that open like paragraphs. It is true. Mantegna, Raphael, Titian, a procession whose greatness lies not in any abstract notion of importance but in the individual intimacy of each painting, in the little touches of solitude that protect each one from its fame.
Piero della Francesca, a radiant mathematical perfection. Giovanni Bellini at age eighty-five painting with an intensity and curiosity beyond that of far younger painters. You love the night, you love the unending art of painting, the visual testimony that goes against the grain of its own history. Painting, the child of silence.
You come at last to the crown jewel, Caravaggio’s Supper At Emmaus. This is the second version. Surer than the one in London. The drama is muted now, darker. Perhaps this one was painted in the aftermath of his crime. Certainly painted in the subsumed storm of his passions. An image like a whirlpool.
The surprise is that you find not only the catalogue entry below the painting, to the right, but also, to the left, a second caption, this one written by Joy Kogawa. These words!—in this frame of mind—they could have been written by any of us, by all of us, the words seem to be coming from inside the painting like a swelling sound, not written but felt, a miracle of collective intuition:
“Down through the ages walking on the Emmaus Road, we struggle with overwhelming catastrophes. Millions dead. The stranger who joins us says the signs are everywhere but in today’s xenophobia we do not see. We pause for nourishment. Suddenly scales fall from our eyes. Unbelievable! Hallelujah! We are all in the picture. The light of philoxenia—the love of strangers—an antidote to xenophobia triumphs and shines mercifully on all, those who do and who do not recognize the signs.”