checked out on this painting can only see just about so many madonnas and it gets him. You know my theory? You know how crazy they are about bambinis and the less they got to eat the more bambinis they got and that they have coming? Well, I think these painters were probably big bambini lovers like all Italians. I don’t know these ones you mentioned just now, so I don’t include them in my theory and you’ll put me straight anyway. But it looks to me like these madonnas, that I really saw plenty of, sir, it looks to me like these just straight ordinary madonna painters were sort of a manifest, say, of this whole bambini business, if you understand what I mean.”
“Plus the fact that they were restricted to religious subjects.”
“Yes, sir. Then you think there is something to my theory?”
“Sure. I think it is a little more complicated, though.”
“Naturally, sir. It’s just my preliminary theory.”
“Do you have any other theories on art, Jackson?”
“No, sir. That bambini theory is as far as I’ve thought it through. What I wish is, though, they would paint some good pictures of that high country up around the rest center at Cortina.”
“Titian came from up there,” the Colonel said. “At least they say he did. I went down the valley and saw the house where he was supposed to be born.”
“Was it much of a place, sir?”
“Not so much.”
“Well, if he painted any pictures of that country up
