The Coincidence of Opposites

Recently, when in Milan to receive an award, I visited the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. There are beautiful paintings there, and the library is a leading repository for Da Vinci’s codices. But I was deeply impressed by the crypte, a Paleo-Christian monument. I discovered that dreadful cage reminiscent of Piranesi’s depictions of torture and prisons. In the center of that cage stands a painted plaster statue of the bishop of Milan who was made a cardinal in 1560. He went to pray in that cage every week before a tombstone that is a replica of Christ’s in Jerusalem. What impressed me is how that clergyman, praying in a sort of double prison (cage + crypt), apparently felt spiritually completely free in God. A divine paradox.