Sculptures

You walk into a church in Rome that almost nobody puts on their list of places to visit. It has neither the grandeur of St. Peter's nor the endless lines of the Colosseum. It is San Pietro in Vincoli, a quiet basilica of ancient columns and warm light. You stroll down the nave expecting nothing in particular, and then you see it. At the far end, seated above a tomb, an old man made of marble holds your gaze. And it is not a friendly look.

In a gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art sits a naked man on a rock, biting his fingers. Around him, four boys cling to his body and plead for something no father should ever have to hear. He does not look at them. He looks elsewhere, at a point that exists only inside his head, as he decides whether hunger is stronger than love. The scene comes from a tower in Pisa, from a century of betrayals, and from one of the darkest cantos ever written.

The Greeks had a warning for anyone approaching a solitary spring: if a nymph sees you, or if you see her, you never come back the same. Some returned unhinged. Others never returned. In Brescia, a white marble freezes that exact instant: a nude young woman about to step into a stream, and someone watching her from behind without her noticing.

The hunger for love can become dangerous, as Deianira found out. She was the wife of Heracles (Hercules to his friends) and, by mistake, his executioner. Her obsessive and toxic love would cause the death of the very man she so desperately wanted. Deianira was the daughter of King Oeneus of Calydon, and she was so beautiful that suitors fought over her.