30 April

Born in 1504 – Francesco Primaticcio, Italian painter.

Above: Detail of Holy Family with St Elizabeth and John the Baptist, (c. 1542) in the Hermitage Museum.

Also, born 1945, American writer Annie Dillard:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

—from"An Expedition to the Pole", Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)