Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Edgardo Franzosini

become mayor of that smal l town in Picardy, known for the therapeutic qual ities of its sulphuric waters, which rel ieves ai lments and aches and pains. It was then that Rembrandt, looking for new lodgings that would also serve as a studio, ended up f inding a two room apartment, not very wel l - l it but large enough, at 3 Rue Joseph-Bara. On the opposite side of the street, at number 6, his friend André Salmon l ived in a smal l oblong room. Now he was at the Western Front, with the 26th battal ion of the Light Infantry. Poet, writer, journal ist, art critic, a few years earl ier, in the pages of Art et Décoration: Revue mensuel le d’Art Moderne , he had compared Bugatti “to an ancient shepherd,” who during his leisure time, rather than sculpt frol icking shepherdesses, preferred “to take as his subjects the sheep in his f lock, his horses and his long-horned bul ls.” He cal led him an “animal sculptor by predestination.” In closing he observed that even the few human f igures Rembrandt had created were nothing more than “animals of a superior species.”

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