Wikipedia, stopping in front of one painting, stepping back, gazing with half-closed eyes from the distance, or looking at the fine hues with eyes wondering so close that sometimes made him think for a moment they also were part of the canvas.

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From his place, he watched them, slowly sliding along the walls

To amuse himself, from time to time, he exchanged their clothes with the painted ones and tried to match their movements with soft satin or the heavy mantles of distant centuries.

From Manfredi’s Allegory Of The Four Seasons, hanging on his side, he let them wear the crown of flowers, until they left the room to wonder somewhere else.

Uncovered, he left only the eyes staring at old memories, or perhaps unknown shivers, staring over a woman’s head turned in surprise by Honthorst’s Merry Musician’s laughter, laughing from the opposite wall.

He guessed their old memories from the way they walked slowly, with small steps leading their peering eyes to the next wall, to hear A Philosopher Reading Passante’s thoughts, for himself and for them; and for him, he thought, some wise words.

Sometimes he felt someone’s eyes lingering upon him, or so he thought. Perhaps it was only Caravaggio’s Love Victorious, peering through his head from the other wall.

Sometimes he felt enraptured by a strange scent, so enraptured that the crown of flowers seemed to be on his head. He would close his eyes and would wait for a while, for a while he would even hope, yes, perhaps for attention too, but mostly for… and these two words would suddenly make his head dizzy.

“Mostly for what?” he would hear the question rising in the melismatic laughter of the Merry Musician, resounding in Love’s Victorious wings; the woman’s head would turn again and her eyes would ask the same question, the philosopher’s book would crumble under the same words again, and he would begin to feel Manfredi’s man’s shiver wrapping around his head, around his shoulders, around his entire body, slowly staring his being into nothingness, and for a while he would murmur to himself, Schütz’s sleep and waking notes… I sleep, and my heart waketh… then, he would open his eyes again, and again his gaze would follow the new visitors slowly sliding along the canvassed walls, stopping in front of one painting, stepping back one step, then another, with eyes half-closed, then turning their attention to the sculpture floating in the middle of the room, staring at another.

From the distance, the richness of the colors would engulf him again, and again suddenly enlivened, he would breath in deeply, as if wanting to take in, deep inside his chest, inside his awakened heart, the scent belonging to a different reality, a reality filled with sweet, precious sounds, where he would hear the Rhetoric of the Gods persuading Gaultier’s longing lute to play on its strings his longings.

Sometimes, though very rarely, someone would approach him in to ask about the whereabouts of some painting or other and he would hear himself answer, then slowly with the sound of departing steps he would go back to his reveries, standing in his assigned place of the room, still, most of the time, watching the art gallery visitors, day after day, coming and going, through the gate of moments.