“A proclamation first. In 1296, Florence ordered architect Arnolfo di Cambio to design the new Cathedral of Santa Reparata (Santa Maria del Fiore) ‘in a style of magnificence which neither the industry nor the power of man can surpass.’ Results come from desire. The Duomo still stands as proof. 🔥”

11th-century Istanbul building, Each floor is a different era!

In 2012, the people of Ireland were asked to choose their favorite painting in the world. They did not choose a Caravaggio, a Vermeer, or a Monet. They chose this: two lovers saying goodbye on a staircase... It is called Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, painted in 1864 by Frederic William Burton. It is a watercolor, which makes its richness and depth almost impossible to believe, and it hangs today in the National Gallery of Ireland. The story comes from a medieval Danish ballad. Hellelil, a noblewoman, fell in love with Hildebrand, the prince who had been assigned to be her personal guard. Her father forbade it and ordered her seven brothers to kill him. When they attacked, Hildebrand killed six of them. At Hellelil's desperate cry, he spared the youngest, and that hesitation cost him his life. He died of his wounds. The surviving brother imprisoned her, and she did not live much longer... Burton could have painted the battle. He could have painted the deaths, the grief, the blood. Instead he chose the one intimate moment before all of it: the lovers passing on a turret staircase, stealing a final embrace, knowing what is coming. And every detail in the painting carries the weight of that knowledge. He does not seize her in passion. He bows his head and kisses her arm with a tenderness that is almost unbearable, because it is goodbye. She does not collapse into him. She turns to climb the stairs, her face hidden from him and from us, because to look back would make it impossible to leave. The Victorian novelist George Eliot saw the painting and described it perfectly. The face of the knight, she wrote, is "the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament." And that is precisely why it has moved people to tears for more than a hundred and sixty years. It shows something that most of us have felt: not love at its beginning, when it is easy, but at the moment it must be given up, which is the moment that reveals everything it was worth. Burton understood that the most powerful thing he could paint was not the tragedy itself, but the last gentle second before it arrived, held forever in paint, so that the two of them never have to climb those stairs apart. Eliot, who was a friend of Burton's, captured it best: "It might have been made the most vulgar thing in the world, but the artist has raised it to the highest pitch of refined emotion." I started this newsletter because our predecessors left us extraordinary things, and almost no one teaches us about them anymore. Every week I try to. If that is something you would like to be part of, you can join here: James-lucas.com/welcome And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible. Thanks for reading.

Venice, Claude Monet 1908

In E.M. Forster's 1924 novel, A Passage to India, he writes about San Giorgio Maggiore, as Cyril Fielding arrives in Venice. "As he landed on the piazzetta a cup of beauty was lifted to his lips, and he drank with a sense of disloyalty. The buildings of Venice, like the mountains of Crete and the fields of Egypt, stood in the right place, whereas in poor India everything was placed wrong. He had forgotten the beauty of form among idol temples and lumpy hills; indeed, without form, how can there be beauty? Form stammered here and there in a mosque, became rigid through nervousness even, but oh these Italian churches! San Giorgio standing on the island which could scarcely have risen from the waves without it, the Salute holding the entrance of a canal which, but for it, would not be the Grand Canal!"

This is the way.

Do you like the color green? I see truth in this... "He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament" - Oscar Wilde, from Dorian Grey

Good idea

The law of attraction as it pertains to architecture is simple. Build something interesting, handsome, well proportioned & people will be attracted to it.

Wir trinken Kaffee…

Adaptive reuse is a good thing.

I want to introduce you to Steve. He’s 83. His wife died a few months ago and he comes to this lodge in Spring Mill, Indiana and draws. He taught art in Terre Haute, IN his whole life. He also did courtroom sketches in court cases. In the comments I’ll share some pics from his sketchbook. He was excited when I said I was going to share his sketches with the world.

There’s no doubt that standards have been lowered in today’s world. In how a man speaks, dresses, and carries himself. This is The Ways of a Gentleman. I write about raising those standards and leading by example. Give me a follow if you believe this still matters.

Mechanical skills are very valuable. Compliment design skills.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Sir Kenneth Clark reads The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats W.B. Yeats, born 13th June 1865

Look at these two.... So many laughs so much drama. Depth of Character.

Think often, reflect and fix things... like JPII aka Saint.

Every once in a while I wake up wanting a Bang and Olsfusen stereo and a Saab 900 Turbo. Then I realize it’s 2026 not 1986….