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I could not take my eyes off it at the Met, I recollect having read in a story centered on horror and the baroque, how perhaps the baroque and the 18th century sense of gothic in fiction were related aesthetically, in some ways anyway.

There have been many paintings I could not take my eyes off of, but this one, so large, it was tremendous. I recall having said as I walked into the gallery where it was hanging, Caravaggio’s La Deposizione, Christ being placed in his tomb, the two Mary(s) behind with their hands raised in epiphany–dead Jesus, the man, the glowing Christ still. I first went with a friend; then I went with family; then I went myself—I loved taking my dad then how long ago now decades earlier than the year he died.

How long ago was it? I should be able to answer, but…