36”x48" oil on canvas inspired by Boldini’s “Madame Charles Max” and this portion of “The Flame” by Ezra Pound:
‘Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
‘Tis not a game of barter, lands and house,
‘Tis not “of days and nights” and troubling years,
Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray;
There IS subtler music, the clear light
Where time burns back about th’ embers.
We are not shut from all the thousand heavens:
Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen,
Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid,
Bulwarks if beryl and of chrysoprase.
Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and there
Nature herself’s turned metaphysical,
Who can look upon that blue and not believe?