Page 19 - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione - Visions and Ecstasy

mausoleum in the grounds.The chapel was to be Berniniesque and beneath the
altar it was intended that there should be an atomic bomb shelter capable of
holding out for many months.Visits to Carrara were made and lengthy discussions
ensued choosing exotic and rare marbles for the interior. At lunches the plans
would come out to be discussed.It all seemed a little surreal yet it was real enough
and early works commenced on the concrete foundations and skeleton structure.
The Castiglione St Francis in Ecstasy, as the late Seward’s favourite painting, was Fig. 6.
destined to hang over the main altar.Alas the project was never completed. Basia had subsequent disputes with the
IRS over the status of her collection and the Foundation and she opted to leave the USA permanently, feeling she
had been mistreated, and set up residence in Monaco and later in Assisi. She retained, however, her paradise island
in the Exumas and once I was privileged to spend a wonderful long weekend meeting with her to discuss a purchase
there. Flying to Miami my name was announced on theTannoy system in the main terminal and I was shepherded
straight through customs to the Grey Goose hydro terminal, a relic of the 1930s.There I boarded Goose, a vintage
pre-WorldWar II Grumman G-21 twin engine flying boat8. Barrelling down the Bahamas at only 1000 feet on this
steed was an experience never forgotten. (Fig. 6) The smell of aged leather , oil and gasoline and the rhythmic
pulsating roar of the radial engines high on the wing over one’s head made conversation impractical in the cockpit,
except by intercom,and I gleefully sat lapping up every second of this vintage treat.We landed in a plume of iridescent
spray on a curved bay avoiding the outlying rocks and then taxied up onto the beach of golden sand fringed by a
coconut palm plantation. Some fifteen years later I repeated this journey, but at sea level on a sailing boat, pursuing
a course all the way south toVenezuela.The weekend in the Exumas was magical and the other guest was Franco
Zeffirelli who, on the second day, threw one of his infamous tantrums and departed in a huff so that he missed a
sailing trip on Basia’s sailing boat, Ocean Pearl,9 round the outlying islands.

lll

As the relationship matured so the number of paintings I sold Basia multiplied. Our first two baroque
exhibitions, Important Italian Baroque Paintings 1600-1700 (1981) and Around 1610 :The Onset of the Baroque,

8. This early model sported twin gasoline powered Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior SB-2 air-cooled radial engines, 450 hp (340
kW) each.

9. Designed by F.Spaulding Dunbar for Seward Johnson she is a 62 foot teak ketch and has now been donated to Block Island
MaritimeTrust in Chatham, Cape Cod.

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