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Foreword

‘...Le souvenir d’une certaine image n’est que le regret d’un certain instant….’
MARCEL PROUST, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, p.386, Paris, 1919.

T wo months ago, in November 2016, I was invited to Florence to speak at events celebrating the
50th Anniversary of the Great Florentine Flood. Friends were so kind as to arrange a concert for
me where I also had to give a discourse and to my astonishment a lady, whom I barely remembered
from those far-off times, also presented me with a framed label from one of the sacks of a mineral
I had procured through the Prado in 1966 to safeguard sculpture (Fig. 1). This was a period when my time
was occupied with conservation and I was in charge of devising the method for removing the fuel oil which had
extensively sullied much marble sculpture1. Fifty years had passed! An entire lifetime, I mused, as I sat with a
conservator friend from those days sipping an aperitif in Caffè Gilli. Whatever one might have achieved in life
by now is, sadly, firmly in the past. Such achievement could no longer be either equalled or surpassed in the
future, however long a diminishing pile of sand silently, but remorselessly, slipping though the clepsydra of time
might still endure. Meditating thus, I recalled what now appears as one of the happiest phases of my life, when
I might have considered myself footloose and fancy-free.

After events in Florence and then Venice I had sailed from Burnham-on-Crouch to Liguria, together with a very
beautiful girlfriend who later became the mother of my godchildren2. At this same time, in 1968, I had bought, with
my mother, a small rustic peasant cottage overlooking the sea. That winter was spent on some basic reconstruction
of the ruin, using the services of a mule to carry the cement up the hillside, and so render the hovel viable for
habitation. I recall that it was very chilly and also extremely damp so that the sleeping bags had to be hung out
to dry each morning. My friend went to work as an au pair in Albenga and I, instead, spent time in the archives
of the family where she worked. I also visited the hinterland and the many chapels and churches. Evenings were

1. See ‘JPH: A Reminiscence,’ in Gold Backs 1250 – 1480, Matthiesen Gallery, 1996, pp. 14-21.
2. See ‘Introduction’, Fatal Attraction, Matthiesen Gallery, 2014, pp. 11-31.

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