Nei Giardini della Residenza del Principe-Vescovo a Würzburg, speaking of Rape and the Perceptual Advantage of a Classical Education

Between terms at the universities of Perugia and Siena, I spent the month of September, 2001, travelling through France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland; visiting notably: the Louvre in Paris, the coffeehouses of Amsterdam, my friend Phil in Köln, and the Residence of the Princebishop in Würzburg, Lower Franconia.  I was an hour early in the morning at the Residenz, before the doors opened, so I took a turn through the gardens...

It struck me forcibly that the subjects, of the two largest sculptural groups in this earthly prince-episcopal garden, were of the two most renowned allegorical rapes, Europa's and Persephone's--quite distinctly "saying," to anyone with a grounding in Classical Mythology (like me, it occurred to me, and the people who had made this place), "Such is Nature, the World we live in."  Such that, when the doors opened and I ascended the grand staircase beneath Tiepolo's depiction of the Four Corners of the World (whose allegorical components I instantly recognized), I said to myself, "Hey, I know this place. This is home!"