Luke 19:28-40
After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ”
Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
This is my sketch of the mighty statue of Neptune as seen in the Piazza della Signoria.
A few weeks after I returned from Italy I was at the Art Institute of Chicago (back in my own backyard). I was in the American art wing, looking at late 19th century painting and came upon this work by John Singer Sargent (a great hero of mine). Of course a celebrated artist like Sargent would have been in Florence and of course he would have set up his easel and painted in the Piazza della Signoria in the shadow of the Fountain of Neptune. A moment of surprise came when realizing that I had sat in the same spot where Sargent sat over a hundred years ago.
"Best known for his society portraits, John Singer Sargent was likewise adept at landscapes and architectural studies, practices that he increasingly pursued after 1900 in both oil and watercolor. Fountain of Neptune depicts a portion of the famous 16th-century fountain in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Painting his composition on site, en plein air, Sargent chose an up-close, truncated view of the sculpture, focusing not on the god of Neptune, but on the twisting, muscular bodies of other bronze figures adorning the fountain. The play of light on intricate surfaces of architecture and decoration is the composition’s principal subject."
