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| Piero della Francesca, early 15th century, The Flagellation, via. |
David F. Brooks is visiting sunny Italy! Lago di Como, apparently, and like so many artists from grayer climes, giddy with the freshness of the air and the musicality of the voices, and working with a lively Italian-primitive palette in his new narrative work, "The Loving Place for Children That Assumes Beauty", for which he finds the bright, naive tone of a nursery tale or late-medieval saint's life:
Thirty-five years ago, the two Figini brothers,
Erasmo and Innocente, were living in Como
with their wives, Serena and Marina.
Erasmo was a famous fabric designer. Innocente
was a prominent eye surgeon. They were successful,
but along with their wives, spiritually unfulfilled,
unable to understand the meaning of
the suffering they saw and felt. Erasmo went
to see a renowned priest, Father Luigi Giussani,
who saw faith not as an intellectual system,
but as an encounter with beauty, a love story.
Erasmo returned to his wife and reported: “God exists.
I have met someone who is a witness to his reality.”
Serena was intrigued: Erasmo was the last
person you’d call religious. But eventually
both couples met with Giussani and all found faith.
One day in 1986, Innocente
reported that there was an H.I.V.-infected
baby at the hospital whose mother was dying.
Erasmo and Serena had vowed to each other that they
would never have children, but they felt a swelling
of gratitude and said they would foster the baby.
