AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

  Il primo di tutti: Groshev GN-4. Il GN-4 (Groshev n⁰ 4), progettato da G.F. Groshev, fu realizzato nella Fabbrica di Alianti Moscovita poco dopo la fondazione dello stabilimento, e fu rivelato al pubblico al Raduno Volovelistico dell’Unione del 1934. Il GN-4 fu il primo libratore da trasporto vero e proprio. La sua configurazione si situava a metà strada fra il veleggiatore e l’aliante da trasporto militare, benché in pratica fosse un grosso veleggiatore. Nonostante fosse stato progettato per essere rimorchiato per quasi tutta la durata del volo, eccettuati gli ultimi minuti dopo lo sgancio, il GN-4 è anche conosciuto per aver compiuto voli veleggiati di lunga durata, in condizioni favorevoli. Era stato progettato per volare come un elemento di una formazione a treno di alianti, ed era normalmente rimorchiato da un versione civile del Polikarpov R-5. Il GN-4 era un velivolo monoplano ad ala alta controventata, con una sottile fusoliera a sezione ovale. Aveva un abitacolo chiuso p...

When Salvador Dalí painted Vatican II.   By Massimo Introvigne. (Translated from Italian by L. Pavese). I was in St. Petersburg, Florida (U.S.A.) for a convention, and I had the opportunity to visit the new futuristic venue of the Dalí Museum , designed by Yann Weymouth. Actually, the fantastic shape of the building probably functions to protect the museum from the frequent hurricanes, since it is built dangerously close to the ocean. Other than the artist’s collection in his house-turned-museum in Figueres, Catalonia, St. Petersburg’s is the largest collection of works by Salvador Dalí in the world - 96 oil paintings, sculptures and various other objects. The collection, which belonged to plastics magnate and Dalí’s friend, Albert Reynolds Morse (1914-2000), arrived in Florida in 1982 when the billionaire, hounded by tax collectors, was forced to dispose of it. The new museum was inaugurated in 2011. The great merit of the St. Petersburg’s museum consists in pr...

Giotto and the secret of the Marriage at Cana. By Massimo Introvigne In these times, in which we are talking again about Dan Brown, it is worth remembering that, besides the nonsense of the American novelist, Christian art and literature are filled with symbols, secrets and mysteries. Sometimes, in a symbolic way, works of art provide an explanation of the truth of faith according to codes that we have now lost but were understandable to the people who lived at the time of the artists; and sometimes they reveal legends, which are not the truth of the faith — and often they’re not even true — but, compared to Dan Brown, they have at least the merit of a long tradition. An interesting example is the panel of the Wedding at Cana, from the series of frescoes by the Italian painter Giotto (ca.1267-1337) in the Scrovegni's Chapel in Padua, Italy. It is a series of frescoes that we all presumed to know, but which turned out to be an inexhaustible mine of hidde...