{"id":1447,"date":"2009-10-09T10:58:58","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T15:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.marklamster.com\/?p=1447"},"modified":"2009-10-09T10:58:58","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T15:58:58","slug":"a-bibliophiles-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/?p=1447","title":{"rendered":"A Bibliophile&#8217;s Revelation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.marklamster.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/sje.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.marklamster.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/sje.jpg\" alt=\"sje\" title=\"sje\" width=\"250\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It would be nice if an author were somehow able to pick up Domenichino&#8217;s <em>St. John the Evangelist<\/em> (c. 1627) when it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artdaily.org\/index.asp?int_sec=11&#038;int_new=33182\">comes up for auction<\/a> at Christie&#8217;s in London this December. The picture seems, as much as anything, a celebration of the act of writing and the ecstasy of the written word. True, the writing process sometimes feels more like torture than pleasure, but this is a picture about visions, so we can allow for artistic license. Here, Domenichino&#8217;s rather effeminate and disheveled St. John composes the book of Revelation on the Greek island of Patmos (not a bad writer&#8217;s retreat) and looks as if he&#8217;s barely made it out of bed (typical writerly behavior). If this were painted today, his trusted eagle and putti would be replaced by an open laptop with a live Twitter feed, a half-eaten bagel, and a large mug of fair-trade coffee. As it is, the painting is likely to draw upward of $10 million, a bit stiff for any scribe, even one named Brown or Rowling. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It would be nice if an author were somehow able to pick up Domenichino&#8217;s St. John the Evangelist (c. 1627) when it comes up for auction at Christie&#8217;s in London this December. The picture seems, as much as anything, a celebration of the act of writing and the ecstasy of the written word. True, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/?p=1447\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Bibliophile&#8217;s Revelation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklamster.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}