Giovanni Giocondo (circa 1433 – 1515) was an Italian friar, architect, antiquary, archaeologist, and classical scholar. He was born in Verona around the year 1433. He was a teacher of Latin and Greek in Verona. As a young priest, Friar Giovanni was a learned archaeologist and a superb draughtsman. He visited Rome, sketched its ancient buildings, wrote the story of its great monuments, and recorded, deciphered and explained many defaced inscriptions.
Quotes by Giovanni Giocondo…
Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts. Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, winding through unknown country home.
