Page 17 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

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

destined to hang over the main altar.Alas the project was never completed. Basia Fig. 6.
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-World War 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 to

Venezuela.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.

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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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