To vary the hotel-window format, I zoomed in on a few facades a block away. They are prettier from this distance than up close, if my memory of that one early-morning walk several days ago is trustworthy. The haze across the background is smog, naturally. Temperatures are over 100. The heavy humid air does not move.
My final visit to the National Gallery of Art. I stood in the walnut paneled Vermeer room completely alone for a stretch of many minutes with five Vermeers (three of them universally accepted as authentic). The museum hides this room away at the end of a maze and does not point toward it with special signs (as they do for their Da Vinci).
People mostly look tired inside this vast museum. The National Gallery is good about providing sofas at regular intervals.
Joseph Mallord William Turnerdetail of Mortlake Terrace, 1827
Jean Marc Nattier
detail of Madame Le Fèvre de Caumartin as Hebe, 1753
Fernand Léger
detail of Animated Landscape, 1921
Pierre Bonnard
detail of Work Table, 1926/1937
Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio
detail of Alexander the Great, c. 1483-1485
Jean-Antoine Houdon
detail of Diana, 1778
Benozzo Gozzoli
detail of
The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of John the Baptist 1461-1462
The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of John the Baptist 1461-1462
Follower of Titian
detail of Alessandro Alberti with a Page, mid-16th century
Agnolo Bronzino
detail of A Young Woman and Her Little Boy, c. 1540
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingresdetail of Madame Moitessier, 1851
Circle of Andrea del Verrocchiodetail of A Lady, 1475/1485
Giovanni Carianidetail of A Concert, c. 1518-1520
Louis-Leopold Boillydetail of A Painter's Studio, c. 1800
