I love them both.

Let’s start in Italy.  How can you go wrong?!  You can’t.

Galleria degli Uffizi. I could look at this view–in person of course– for hours, or days.

Here’s a nighttime view, looking the opposite direction. Sigh.

Here is just one of the masterpieces included in the Uffizi collection.  Botticelli‘s Birth of Venus.
Time spent looking at this painting is my idea of heaven, although I have little patience with the crowds that gather in front of this beauty.

And, before I get carried away with the incredible Florentine museum, let me turn to ukiyo-e.  Japanese wood-block prints.

Here is a masterpiece by Hokusai known as The Great Wave.  Try imagine yourself as one of the boaters in the lower right quadrant.  Scary thought!  Is the artist making a statement about the magnificence of nature and man’s tiny role in it?  Maybe.