Part One

Were we to look for a place that embodied the essence of the sacred feminine, we need look no further than the city of Venice.

Venice: everything is feminine. Water. The still dark waters of a multitude of waterways. The light, soft and diffuse, rendered blurred and blurry by the dampness in the air. The mists on the silent lagoons. The back streets and backwaters, silent and mysterious. Cats scuttling along empty canal-side walkways. Darkness of night, the great unknown. Masks and mystery.

Even the city's art - at least the Renaissance art, with which I am chiefly familiar - has a feminine quality. Colour, texture, light and shadow melting into one. Mood, atmosphere. 

There stands a contrast with the High Renaissance art of Florence and of Rome: Michelangelo and Raphael. Based less on primacy of colour and texture, more on line - drawing and colouring in. There is a softer feel to the Venetian paintings of Giorgione and Titian, unmistakably different. 'The Ideal' expressed through the human form comes male in Florentine art. The great figures of Michelangelo, muscular and heroic. David, the Sistine Chapel. Even when he depicts females, they come in the same muscular, nervous and restlessness style, like the sybils on that famous ceiling.

While Venetian painters invoke something greater in the form of females. Madonnas, Venuses, Titian's many female figures from mythology. Florentine art is spirit, Venetian speaks of soul. One is thinking, intellect, the other feeling. One embodies the eternal feminine, the other is more masculine in nature.

I generalise, and there are exceptions aplenty. But as a generalisation it remains true. 

Part Two

In the early 1980s I fell in love with Italian Renaissance art. To begin with I dismissed the paintings of Venice as being decadent. I visited Rome, Florence, Siena, Assisi, instead. But as time passed I got over it, and came to love the more sensual and feeling qualities on display in the best of the Venetian painting.

It is an irony that it took me decades to realise, or to face up to. For most of the 1980s I was working full-time at a Buddhist centre in London, chairing/managing it. What could possibly go wrong? It is the perfect scenario for a life of inspiration, surely. Yet in reality I needed to visit Italy regularly for emotional and spiritual sustenance.

I tried to calculate it; I think I visited Italy seven times over that period. I'm not sure where the money came from. But the last of these visits was, I say uncertainly, in 1989. Venice. 

Part Three 

Dates are a bit blurry - but who cares anyway?! - but it was probably early 1989 when I received a surprise letter from a Buddhist friend in Wellington, capital of New Zealand. He was inviting me out for a year, to help out with the Buddhist centre there; and specifically to offer my experience and 'spiritual support', something like that, to the place that they ran there.

It was a year or two since I had left behind my work at the Buddhist centre in west London, and I was widely perceived as at something of a loose end. While I did not feel that way too much, there was an element of truth in this perception. I was a resource not being utilised; let's utilise it......

For many people, the prospect of a year in New Zealand would be a dream come true. For me, not exactly. In fact I had never felt the slightest wish to visit the country, despite my then girlfriend hailing from there. However, two elements nagged away at me. Firstly, there was the feeling that I might spend the rest of my life regretting it if I didn't go. It would be a golden opportunity wasted. And secondly, I was a sucker for 'being useful', and doing something that needs to be done, because I can do it and some other people can't. So I went.

Before heading off to the other side (or end, depending on your view on the place that we inhabit....) of the planet, I decided there was one thing I needed to do. Although my obsession with Italian Renaissance painting was on the wane, still I was very much engaged with that particular aspect of western civilisation, and it continued to nourish my soul no end. I was aware that New Zealand was about as far from Leonardo and Botticelli as you could get, so I should give myself a good final blast before I departed.

Venice. It had to be Venice. Late October had come round, and the decision to go was last-minute. I checked the flights, but nothing was available at a price that I could afford. So train it was.

The whole thing was a bit crazy. I caught an overnight train across northern France, Germany, and through the Alps - I suppose: it was night and I saw nothing, but we arrived south of the mountains, so I deduce that we crossed them. 

The only thing I remember from that journey is stopping in the dead of night at some station or other in Germany, and the empty silence being pierced by a guy marching along the deserted platform and getting on the train. I think I was in a sleeping compartment, but most likely slept very little.

I spent two nights in Venice, which made for three short days. It rained a lot, the air was damp, and Venice displayed nothing of colour, splendour, or delight. I took refuge in the Accademia, the main art gallery for those interested in seeing Renaissance paintings, but even that seemed dark and miserable. Venice was half empty, and nothing of the magic and mystery which that city in silence can evoke was on show. 

I stood on the rain-sodden walkway in outer Castello region, gazing out over the waters. The visibility was down to a few hundred yards, and the drizzle enveloped me. Late autumn in Venice. There was nothing.

And then I was back on the train, another overnight train. No recall whatsoever. And a few days later the flight to the antipodes, and to what I sometimes call the worst year of my life.... 

Part Four 

In a shock-horror moment at the end of last year, I decided it was time to revisit Venice. The urge appeared from nowhere, or so it seemed. I didn't think about it very much, but just began to arrange things. So in the spring I shall go for a little less than a week, staying not in Venice itself, which is a bit expensive for my budget, but in a couple of the cities nearby. For the first time in over three decades I will set foot in Italy again, and see how it feels.

I have a list of paintings I intend to see. The list is short and selective. I find many feelings that I experienced in the 1980s resurfacing, albeit in modified form. One such is that of being happy to travel long and hard in order to see a painting. I will travel long and hard for very few things nowadays. I don't enjoy travelling, and it is rough on my physical body, often entailing sinus damage or the first day in bed with a migraine. I attempt to live in the 'here and now' as the cliche has it; but I am looking forward to this journey south of the Alps.              

Images: 1. Venice mists  2. Titian, Flora  3. Delphic Sybil, Michelangelo  4. Titian, 'Madonna of the Rabbit'  5. Raphael, Triumph of Galatea  6. Night Venice