Primeiro foste
o frémito de fulgor efémero
tentação fugaz
apenas página branca
murmúrio solto
depois do bálsamo
da palavra
que sulcando a tua anca
te desnuda
sob véus delicados de lume
gesto brando
que insinua o perfume
da húmida vegetação
no búzio envolto
da minha inquietação
teu refúgio
e do flamejante
membro ereto
de vertigem e ecos
fonte que vertia
lágrimas cintilantes
segredos
de noites vencidas
entre os sussurros
e os caracóis arquejantes
dos teus cabelos
minha árvore solitária
na paisagem rasteira
a tua mão de pássaro
vai hesitante
interromper
o percurso de mel
nos teus lábios
não há sombra de pecado
apenas sonhos suados
e o esplendor dos teus seios
na minha boca sequiosa
o teu coração
é um corcel a galope
na minha cabeça
na febre da tua pele
onde arde a dor
e a raiva intrépida
o veneno de um piano
de sangue quente
e o teu rumor salgado
meu amor de cal
da ingenuidade das casas
na derrocada
dos beijos prometidos
no abandono
da madrugada
onde adormeceste
desconhecendo
que eras para sempre.
Lisboa, 6 de Março de 2012
Carlos Vieira
El Greco: The Vision of Saint John
The Vision of Saint John, aka The Opening of the Fifth Seal (1608-1614), oil on canvas painting by El Greco, 222.3 cm x 193cm, located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The oil painting titled ‘The Vision of Saint John’, also known by such titles as ‘The Opening of the Fifth Seal’, ‘The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse’ and ‘Profane Love’, is a large oil painting (2.22m x 1.93m) by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614) currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
The theme of the painting is Biblical, taken from the Book of Revelation (6:9-11). It features the naked souls of persecuted Christian martyrs receiving robes of salvation, and praying to God for justice upon their persecutors. The most dominant figure on the canvas is an agonistic St. John.
The painting is considered incomplete for various reasons (the Metropolitan Museum of Art says in its website, ‘top truncated’). It was the last and final work by El Greco, who painted it in the last years of his life, and, probably, he died before the painting could be completed. The upper section of the painting, which might have depicted Divine Love, appears cut off, and the bottom section as it exists now depicted Profane Love, according to art historians.
Original owner of the painting was the Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, after whose death in 1897, the painting was sold to the painter Ignacio Zuloaga. In 1956, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, bought it from the Zuloaga Museum.
According to art critics and writers, Opening of the Fifth Seal was the major inspiration for Pablo Picasso’s early Cubist works, especially the oil painting ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, which is said to reflect the expressionistic angularity in this El Greco painting. While Picasso was working on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, he visited the studio of Ignacio Zuloaga, and studied Opening of the Fifth Seal in detail.
El Greco, who in the early days of his career adopted elements of Mannerism and Venetian Renaissance in his painting style, later left all the established concepts of art. As a result, he developed a style of his own with disproportional, elongated lean human figures, giving more importance to grace and color than to form, and employed the effective use of light and shades in his paintings.
El Greco painted in a typical expressionistic style that found not much of appreciation during his times, but he was re-discovered in the early 20th century. El Greco is now regarded as the initiator of the later trends of both Expressionism and Cubism, and according to scholars of art, he belonged to no conventional school of art.
