Look at the image in the previous post (see below). This picture is just below it, and you can see the overlap. But what interested me here in this second, lower picture of the group of Borso and his courtiers was the way they all used their hands, many of them gloved, to show their elegant and measured gestures; restraint and grace being the hallmarks of the movements of the nobility. The dogs are great too. I love the two that look like greyhounds, with their slim muzzles and wonderful ears. They peer down at a mongrel pooch who is a bit sorry looking (you can just see the top of his head), imitating exactly what is going on in the human world just above as Borso gives a coin to his servant, who may be the keeper of his hunting dogs. So even here the great hierarchy of being is reflected: the animal world reflects the human world just above that, and above the humans the stars and heavenly bodies, and above those the realms of the Olympian gods. There was only one other person there today, a beautiful Russian woman about 30 years of age. She was taking notes very seriously, as I did 25 years before at about her age. I talked to her a bit; she’d come from Moscow, where she studies art history, to see the frescoes. That’s some field trip. She just had a little point-and-shoot camera so I offered to send her some of my pictures if she needed them. I was trying to be chivalrous: a courtly ideal, though in the frescos of April and May, of spring, love is the theme. I dreamt of cold Russian nights… in bed with a fireplace flickering. As I left I tried to make a joke with the guard, who was doing crosswords, saying that it was ironic that she had such a boring job in a palazzo named Schifanoia. I’m not sure if she got it or not; she smiled weakly and just said, “arrivederci”.