My heroes have a lot in common. Fabius Maximus, who is mocked to this day as a cunctator, or delayer, but who saved Rome from Hannibal’s Carthaginian army; Hercules Seghers, a painter of the early Rembrandt era who was barely noticed but is considered the father of modernity and made paintings of a kind that would not be seen for several centuries. Or Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa, who composed music fully three hundred years ahead of its time—I’m thinking here principally of his sixth book of madrigals—not until Stravinsky, who went on pilgrimages to Gesualdo’s castle, did we hear such
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