I touch down at Marco Polo on Wednesday afternoon, one among the many who have come for the preopening days of the Venice Biennale. The airport-with its series of moving walkways shepherding passengers toward the dock-will turn out to be the only place in the city where I manage not to get lost.
Inside, it's surprisingly dark, the main floor cut up by temporary exhibit walls painted black, the lights so dim that the details of the building, and the historic paintings spanning the rest of the room, are almost completely obscured.
Each painting seems to be a different scene from one unified narrative. It's something biblical, clearly, and the name pops into my head, along with the f...
The subject is always the same-a lion with a skull in its mouth; a lion with a book in its mouth; a pentaptych of a thorn-impaled paw.
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