Van Gogh has studiously swapped in these home windows and drawn curtains for a pair of formidable, 1st-Century Corinthian columns, full with intricate capitals and cornice, and a hanging fragment of a pediment, salvaged from the ruins of a Roman temple that adjoined the traditional discussion board and inserted into the façade of what was the Hôtel du Nord. Prominently seen from his vantage, these spolia, as they’re identified, or picturesquely repositioned relics from antiquity, would doubtless have preoccupied the comb of just about some other artist. However they don’t have any place in a portray that refuses to be weighed down by the previous. In Van Gogh’s work, you possibly can look again, however it’s greatest to not stare.
