aspect of nature that Somerset Maugham's protagonist
discovers on his quest. Different, too, from the deeply
religious spirituality that informed the 19th century Hudson
River School of painting in America.
The Vatican Gardens exude a sense of humanism,
nature governed by man as partner, resulting in aesthetic
exercises that reinforce spirituality. Each shrine, fountain
and ancient artifact seems a talisman of a grace-filled
partnership of man, nature and God, a kind of symbolic
post-Renaissance Eden. It is fitting that huge banks of
potted flowers, first used to enhance the altars of St.
Peters, find their final resting place beneath these glades.
They are symbolic of those who journey, seeking faith and
finding a kind of rebirth in the death on this hill, shades of
T.S. Eliot.
As I walked along one path after another, gradually upward,
I recalled Claude Lorrain's spectacular painting at the Frick
Museum, The Sermon on the Mount, a visually compelling
HYLAND
