Candles, balloons, castradina, and sweets, thanks for one's good health and prayers for good health in the year to come: these are the key elements (sacred and profane) of the Festa della Madonna della Salute.
For more on this major Venetian holiday, please see: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2013/11/festa-della-madonna-della-salute-and.html
For information on the three-day process of preparing the feast's ritual dish of castradina, see: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2013/11/a-ritual-dish-for-la-festa-della.html
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| One can't help but have candles on one's mind when it comes to this festa |
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| For those concerned about the health of their soul, as well as their body, the sacrament of confession was available |
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| The speed with which balloon vendors locate and disentangle a specific balloon from the massive cluster of them they sell strikes me as one the day's minor miracles |
What fun! Beautiful photos! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThe shot with the candle light reflected in the spectacles was a brilliant capture!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, Yvonne: it was merely the product of sheer desperation as I tried to figure out how not to take exactly the same shots I'd taken in prior years.
DeleteJust back from Venice and many of the Biennale things seen around seemed really weird this time! Not as interesting as previously. Don't rate Damien Hirst, either.
ReplyDeleteLove the reflecting lenses shot - agreed, great.
I must admit, with embarrassment, Ella, that somehow I managed to miss much of the Biennale, but I did hear more than a few people say, like you, that they found it disappointing. It seems Damian Hirst succeeds as spectacle at least, but not everyone finds that enough in itself to be satisfying. A very fine artist and writer named Lori Ellison wrote about being moved by art whose "proportion is based on the lyric, not the epic--that is where the juice lives" (http://www.mckenziefineart.com/exhib/ellison2015_16exhb.html) and a show like Hirst's reminds me of the validity of her point.
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