History Archives - The Patroclus

May 28, 2025May 28, 2025

Ancient Sardinia

Ancient Sardinia is something you cannot avoid – the remnants are everywhere and tell a complicated and fascinating story. Welcome to the second post based on material from a visit to Sardinia in May 2025. The first contained a general introduction and a series of photographs taken at the spectacular Festa di Sant’Efisio. In this one I propose to talk a bit about the many ancient remains to be seen, and to try and put them in a bit of historical context. I’m not an expert – just a historical dilettante with a camera.

Nuraghi

And what a lot of ancient things there are to photograph, especially the round towers called nuraghi, which gave their name to the “Nuragic” culture which lasted about a thousand years from the mid-Bronze Age into the Iron Age. The first time we got an opportunity to stop and look at a nuraghe I was very excited and walked briskly for about 20 minutes up a steep path for the privilege. By the next day we had seen so many that we only stopped if they were in particularly attractive settings, or they were in recognised archaeological sites that we intended to visit. After a week or so we had almost ceased to notice them. Apparently around 7,000 remain of an estimated 10,000, and Sardinia is not that big, so it is hardly surprising that you keep coming across them.

Nuraghe Santa Barbara near the town of Macomer, which I walked 20 minutes to see. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

We noticed that many or most nuraghi bore the names of Christian saints. I didn’t read anything that said they were ever used as churches (although who can say what happened in early medieval times). But if a nuraghe was associated with a saint then perhaps they were considered to come under the that saint’s protection, and maybe that is why so many survive, at least partially. No doubt there are scholars who can answer that.

Nuraghe near Suni — Unnamed but picturesque nuraghe near the town of Suni, right beside the road so no walking needed. You might think that it was in a cultivated park, but that is all just native “macchia” scrub. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

But let us step back a bit and try and put the Nuragic culture in context. Signs of human habitation in Sardinia date back to palaeolithic times, including temples and Stonehenge-style dolmens. But it was in the Bronze Age that signs of a distinctive, thriving and wealthy culture start to appear.

Female Divinity — Statue of a female divinity from the late Neolithic, Cagliari Archaeological Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Chieftain — Bronze Age figure of a chieftain, with a dagger worn across his chest. The museum has an example of an actual dagger with the same characteristic crooked hilt, but my photograph of it was ruined by reflections in the glass. Cagliari Archaeological Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Warrior — Bronze figure, of what I am not sure. Cagliari Archaeological Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Votive boats — Votive models of boats, with dogs and birds. Cagliari Archaeological Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

I mentioned briefly in the earlier article how Sardinia is geologically different from mainland Italy. One feature of that geology that it was rich in minerals that were less common elsewhere. These included silver, tin and copper – the latter two of course being the constituents of bronze. So the Sards had things to trade, and some artefacts from Mycenaean Greece have been found in Sardinia. Wealth means the emergence of a hierarchical society, included priestly and warrior classes.

Most nuraghi are single round towers, but some major ones, described as palaces, were complexes of towers. Our guide book recommended one such, called Santu Antine, near the town of Torralba, so we paid it a visit.

Nuraghe Santu Antine. The little hut in the foreground is mostly a reconstruction. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge)

Not only is Santu Antine bigger than the average, but it is surrounded by the remains of a couple of dozen houses, so it must have been a substantial community. For something that is about four thousand years old, and of drystone construction (ie. made without mortar) it is in very good condition. What is even more remarkable is that you can access the internal chambers and climb up the narrow staircase that winds up inside the walls. Rather than an empty cylinder with levels separated by wooden floors, the nuraghi were actually more like a series of domed stone chambers on top of each other, so very robust and hence still largely intact. The timescales involved challenge the imagination. Santu Antine has been abandoned for two thousand years, but was continuously inhabited for fifteen hundred years before that.

Like every nuraghe we saw, the upper part was missing. The technique of building them was that as the tower got higher, the basalt blocks of which it was made got smaller and lighter. This presumably made the upper stones easier to scavenge for reuse in other buildings. We certainly saw a few churches that had what looked like nuraghi stones in the walls.

The little 11th-Century Church of Santa Sabina and its associated nuraghe, near the town of Silanus. The church looks as if scavenged stones from the nuraghe have been incorporated into the structure. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Archaeologists say that the tops of the towers would have supported wooden platforms, and there was an illustration at the Santu Antine site with a hypothetical reconstruction, suggesting that the original building would have been quite a lot taller, and more sophisticated.

Santu Antine illustration — Information panel at Nuraghe Santu Antine, showing a hypothetical illustration of the complete structure, looking almost medieval. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

In the ticket office we downloaded an audio guide to the site, which was interesting, although it was a bit revisionist – trying to argue that because there was evidence of trade between Nuragic centres, the society was more peaceful than previous historians thought. We thought this a case of projecting 21^st-Century AD attitudes onto the 19^th Century BC. Firstly, trade and conflict have never been mutually exclusive states of society. Secondly, most European Bronze Age cultures were warlike; we know that not only from surviving artefacts such as weapons and figurines of armed men, but also because population increase led to competition for resources such as agricultural land and cattle (many of the heroic battles of the archaic age, celebrated in legend, might have been just cattle raids). And finally there is the practical aspect. There is a lot of work in building a strong tower out of large basalt blocks. It is not something you would do simply in order to enjoy the view from the top.

The price of the ticket to visit Santu Antime includes entry to the modest museum in nearby Torralba – probably not worth a visit otherwise, but since we’d already paid for it we went along.

Colonies and Empire

Mediterranean trade in the second millennium BC was surprisingly extensive. You can’t have a Bronze Age without bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, and the Phoenicians famously went as far as Cornwall in search of the latter. So in due course the Phoenicians established trading posts on the Sardinian coast, which in time became towns which were governed by the colonists, but where most of the population were native Sards. A bit like places such as Singapore and Hong Kong in the 19^th Century, I suppose.

Grinning mask — A grinning mask of either Phoenician or Carthaginian origin, Cagliari Archaeological Museum. The manic expression is intended to scare evil spirits away. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

In time the Phoenicians were replaced by Carthaginians (Carthage was itself a Phoenician colony), and after the Punic Wars the Romans replaced the Carthaginians. Being Romans, they brought the place more formally into imperial administration, although not without some local revolts from Carthaginian remnants.

Even though all of Sardinia was nominally part of the empire, the central parts remained essentially ungoverned. These days the region is called the Barbagia, a name which supposedly derives from a rude remark by the Roman orator Cicero, who described it as being inhabited by barbarians. The term is now a badge of pride for the locals, referring to their independence from central government rule over many centuries. And one can see why. Although the mountains are not enormously high they are very steep and spiky – a punitive military force would have had great difficulty catching up with locals who knew the terrain. Until the mid-19th Century most of the various dynasties that claimed ownership of Sardinia took their lead from the Romans and left the people of the interior largely to their own devices as long as they didn’t do anything completely outrageous – small local disputes were OK.

I read somewhere a suggestion that the inhabitants of the Barbagia retained pagan or semi-pagan beliefs into the Middle Ages, which is plausible, I suppose.

Milestone — Roman milestone in the Civic Museum at Torralba. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Romans, unlike other Mediterranean powers at the time, invested in public infrastructure (in the words of Monty Python, “what did the Romans ever do for us?”). The photograph above is of a milestone on display in the Civic Museum in Torralba. The inscription is too hard to make out in the photograph, but someone has gone to the trouble of transcribing it, and according to the adjacent information panel, it was dedicated to the recently-deceased Emperor Aurelian in around 275 AD, and is 118,000 paces from… somewhere (the museum curators didn’t tell us).

A Roman Coastal Town

I mentioned in the post on Sant’Efisio that after the main parade around the streets of Cagliari, the saint’s effigy was then carried to the traditional site of his martyrdom, a town called Nora about 40km down the coast. On the way there, local communities turn out for mini-versions of the parade. Nora also has a highly-rated archaeological area, so we decided that on our way from Cagliari to our next stop on the west coast, we would first head south west to Nora.

On the way we were occasionally held up on the road by decorated carts or people on horseback, on their way to honour the saint. Passing by the modern town of Nora, we arrived at the archaeological area, which is close to where the little Romanesque church, dating from 1089, marks Sant’Efisio’s martyrdom site.

Chiesa di Sant'Efisio — The 11th-Century church of Sant’Efisio at Nora, where the Saint’s procession finally ends. It’s very pretty from the back, less so from the front where there is a plain rendered facade next to a wall with pictures of the parade. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

On the approaches to the church, people were setting up for a traditional Italian religious festival, which is to say they were setting up trailers from which would be sold sweets, nuts, children’s toys and in Sardinia, great quantities of nougat.

The history of the site starts with the fact that it is next to a little headland that would no doubt protect trading vessels that anchored there. This anchorage led to the establishment of a Phoenician trading post, then a settlement. These days the headland is occupied by a watchtower of Spanish origin.

A stone found in the 18^th Century, bearing an inscription in the Phoenician language and now in the Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, records the Phoenician presence there and, according to one interpretation, shows that the island was called Sardinia as long ago as the 9^th or 8^th Century BC. Adding to the story is where this precious stone was was when it was identified – ignorant of its meaning, medieval builders had found it lying about at Nora and used it as building material for the apse of the church of Sant’Efisio. Fortunately the inscription was facing outwards where it could be recognised, or it would still be there.

As the Phoenicians were supplanted as a trading nation by their colony Carthage, Nora became in due course a Carthaginian colony, then after the Punic Wars a Roman one. It is therefore a palimpsest of early Sardinian colonial history, although to the casual observer what you see is mostly Roman. Of the Phoenicians, a few burial sites were found in the 19th Century before the sea washed them away, and on a small rise there are the remains of a Carthaginian temple, although when I was there it was hard to distinguish any pattern in the stones under the profusion of spring wildflowers.

Temple of Tanit — Nora. Under all this is a Carthaginian temple to the god Tanit. I assume that the fence on the right is the boundary of the as-yet unexcavated military reserve. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Looking at the remains of Nora, one is reminded that the “Pax Romana” was a real thing. While the Dark-Age people that followed Rome all had to live in fortified towns on hilltops for fear of attacks, the Romans, during their centuries of peace, generally got to choose, like us, places that were nice to live in, if they could afford it. And Nora is a lovely place beside the sea. It must have been very pleasant indeed to live there.

Nora Mosaic — Nora, mosaic floors. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

With some of the ancient town lying under land owned by the Italian Ministry of Defence and yet to be excavated, Nora doubtless has a few secrets still to be revealed.

Nora road — Nora, the road through the centre of town. The grassy bank in the distance marks the current limit of excavations. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

After Rome

After the fall of the Western Empire Sardinia was invaded first by the Vandals (despite the name, presumably unrelated to the current graffiti problem in Cagliari) and then the Goths, but with the end of the Gothic War on the mainland, and the failure of the Lombards to invade, Sardinia remained part of Byzantine domains.

Byzantine carving — Byzantine-era carving, Cagliari Archaeological Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

In time Byzantine power in the west became ever more attenuated, and unable to assist against the next threats, which were from Muslim Spain and North Africa. At that point Sardinia turned for help to the maritime republics of the mainland – Pisa and Genoa – and we may say that antiquity, as far as Sardinia was concerned, was over.

Postscript: Flamingos

The salt flats that surround Cagliari are famous for their flocks of flamingos. I was excited for the photographic possibilities and brought my longest lens along on the trip. However on the drive from Cagliari to Nora the flamingos were uncooperative, mostly with their heads underwater. Not only that but the vivid pink colour featured in my childhood book of birds was quite absent – they were practically white. The lens stayed in the bag.

Eventually in one of the toy stalls set up outside the church of Sant’Efisio in Nora I was able to photograph some, but not quite in the way I had anticipated.

Flamingoes — Flamingos at Nora. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

May 22, 2025May 24, 2025

Ancient Todi – Before the Romans

Todi is a town in Umbria, rising on a rugged hilltop beside the River Tiber. These days it is known for its almost perfectly-preserved medieval town centre, but there are traces of a far more ancient town, and many of them are not hard to find.

Todi has two things that marked it as a good site for a town – firstly a steep defensible hill, and secondly, despite its height above the valley, it is a hill on which there are sources of fresh water. Water falls on the Martani mountains to the east and seeps down through the limestone, but then gets trapped under a layer of impermeable clay in the valley, where it builds up pressure. Todi’s hill is a plug of limestone up through which the water is forced, emerging in multiple places as springs.

So it was the obvious place for a settlement, and there are signs of there having been continuous occupation since Neolithic times, when the river valley below was variously swampy or even inundated by a huge lake.

The Legend of the Eagle

However the foundation myth of Todi is a bit more elaborate. According to the story, Todi was originally intended to be built by the banks of the Tiber, and after the first morning’s work, the builders stopped for lunch (that part is believable, at any rate). But as soon as the tablecloth was laid, an eagle swooped down, seized it, and carried it away to the top of the hill. Augurs interpreted this event as a sign that the town should have been built up there, and so the plan was changed. And thus it also was that the eagle became emblematic of Todi. It is still on the town’s coat of arms.

Eagle and tablecloth — The eagle disrupts lunch, and the story of Todi begins. 17th-Century fresco from the Episcopal Palace, Todi. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Who knows how old that story is, but it may have been a medieval invention because the first recorded appearance of the eagle in a Todi context was not until 1267. It is conventionally represented as clutching the stolen tablecloth in its talons, and it is often also seen sheltering two eaglets under its wings; these represent the towns of Terni and Amelia, which were subject to Todi for a period in the 13^th Century, something of which modern Tuderti (Todi citizens) remain very proud.

Eagle on Palazzo del Popolo — The eagle, with its junior partners under its wings, and the tablecloth, on the exterior of the Palazzo del Popolo. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Eagle on Palazzo dei Priori — This very imposing bronze version of the eagle has been on the front of the Palazzo dei Priori since 1339. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Fanciful though it all is, I rather like the fact that the very first event recorded in Todi’s long story is… lunch.

Umbrians, not Etruscans

Turning from legend to things of which we are a bit more confident, it seems that in pre-Roman times the Tiber marked the boundary between the territories of the Etruscans and the Umbri, the latter – unlike the Etruscans – being an Indo-European people who spoke a language related to Latin. We actually have some examples of the ancient Umbrian language thanks to the improbable survival of the “Iguvine Tablets” of Gubbio, something else I intend to write about some day.

So Todi was a frontier town, and its very name – Latin Tuder, Umbrian Tutere, is said to come from a word meaning “border” (although whether that original word was Etruscan or Umbrian depends on which source you read). Away to the north on a clear day, in the 21st Century AD as in the 6^th Century BC, one can see Perugia, then the easternmost of the twelve cities of the original Etruscan league, and the Tiber winds down from the north as a constant reminder of the boundary between the two territories.

It is common in Todi to refer to anything from the pre-Roman era as “Etruscan”, which makes a sort of sense, as everyone knows that the Etruscans came before the Romans. So for example there is a Via Mura Etrusche which leads down to the pre-Roman walls, and many guidebooks assert that Todi was Etruscan. But as we have seen, it is not strictly accurate – Todi was Umbrian, not Etruscan. A couple of years ago we went on a guided walk through Todi organised by the Fondo Ambiente Italiano (a bit like the UK’s National Trust). The guide was a pleasant and very knowledgeable chap who pointed out many interesting things, but he got quite agitated when someone (not us, fortunately) referred to the pre-Roman period as ”Etruscan”. It was obviously a sensitive subject for him.

Not Etruscan Walls — On top of the (not) Etruscan walls. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

So what were the ancient Umbri like, apart from not being Etruscan? Well, according to a 2020 genetic analysis, quite like the modern Umbrians, it seems. That’s quite interesting, because by and large Italians in most regions are anything but ethnically homogeneous – many waves of invasions, from the ancient Gauls to the Lombards and the Normans, have seen to that. Culturally, we can expect that the Umbrian inhabitants of Tutere would have shared a lot with their Etruscan neighbours – not just because of proximity but because they were at a similar stage of technological development.

Certainly, like most other Bronze Age cultures, they seemed to live in a society shaped by warfare. Apart from the obvious fact of having built their towns on defensible hills (whether or not eagles told them to), there are some other clues. The Iguvine Tablets from Gubbio make several references to enemies.

One of the 3rd-Century BC “Iguvine Tablets” from Gubbio, in the ancient Umbrian language. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bronze swords, spear tips and helmets also survive. Another clue is that in local museums you can see votive figures retrieved from sacred springs, where supplicants prayed to the gods for assistance. Some figures represent pregnant women, obviously offered in the hope of conceiving or of having a safe childbirth. But an awful lot of them clearly represent warriors, with plumed helmets and shields, and in aggressive stances. Not the sort of offering you would make if you were praying for a good harvest, but one you might make if you were hoping to come home alive from a battle in order to bring the harvest in. While most are tiny little figurines, the most famous and elaborate of such offerings is the so-called “Mars of Todi”.

The so-called “Marte di Todi” or “Mars of Todi”, but despite that probably not a god of war. This is a facsimile in the Museo Civico di Todi, with the original now held in the Vatican Museum. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

This extraordinary life-size bronze statue, dated to the 5^th or 4^th Century BC, was dug up in 1835 at a place just outside Todi called Montesanto which at various times has been a monastery and a castle, and in ancient times was very likely some sort of religious precinct. Unfortunately for Todi, anything like that which came to light during the centuries of Papal domination went straight to the Vatican, which is where the Mars of Todi remains; what you can see in Todi’s Civic Museum is a facsimile made in the 1990s and paid for by a local citizens group. (That is one of the reasons why the local museum has such a comparatively poor showing: the other is what Italian historians accurately call the “Napoleonic Despoliation”, when French troops methodically stripped northern and central Italy of the artworks that are now mostly in the Louvre. It’s strange – people go on and on about the Elgin Marbles, but no-one ever asks the French to give anything back. However I digress.)

The armoured figure, with (now missing) spear and helmet, was at first identified as a god of war, hence the name “Mars of Todi”. But modern scholars, pointing to the fact that the statue’s right hand probably held a libation bowl (the bowl in the facsimile is not in the original), more plausibly suggest that this depicts a human warrior making an offering to the gods before battle. It was found under blocks of travertine stone, so it was deliberately buried. Whether it was made to be buried as an offering, or that was something that happened to it later, we will never know.

It is believed to have been made in the Etruscan city of Orvieto, a manufacturing centre for such bronzes, and it carries an inscription in Umbrian characters saying that it was a gift from someone called Ahal Trutitis. This is said to be a name of possible Celtic origin (the Celts, whom we now associate with Britain and Ireland, started out probably in central Europe and, as the Gauls, invaded Italy in about the 5^th Century BC, not long before the statue was made). So someone, living in Todi and speaking Umbrian but perhaps of foreign ancestry, was wealthy enough to commission what must have been an extremely expensive artefact from Etruscan craftsmen. It is all rather tantalising.

It does tell us that the area was wealthy and that despite wars, societies traded with each other as they always have. Some of those trade links were surprisingly extended. On the southern slopes of Todi, below where you now see the Renaissance church of La Consolazione, an extensive pre-Roman necropolis or burial area was discovered in the 19^th Century.

Todi from South — Todi from the south, with the domed Tempio della Consolazione on the left. The pre-Roman necropolis was found in the area now covered by modern housing, outside the town walls. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50C digital back, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens (click to enlarge).

Most of the objects found here in the 19^th Century were dispersed to collections elsewhere in Italy or overseas, but finds continue to be made. On the road which runs beside the south side of Todi’s medieval walls (Via Orvietana) is a rather ugly modern building which houses among other businesses a CONAD supermarket.

CONAD — The modern supermarket, on the site of a pre-Roman necropolis. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

It was in 2007, while excavating for the foundations of this building, that they found pre-Roman graves containing many fine glass bowls of Alexandrian manufacture. These did not end up very far away and you can see some of them in an excellent display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia.

Alexandrian glass bowl — Glass bowl from Alexandria, recovered from a grave discovered during the building of the supermarket in 2007. Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX-50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The most obvious reminder of Todi’s pre-Roman era, however, is in the stones that make up the first of the town’s three circles of walls.

Primo Cerchio delle Mura — The “first circle of the walls” – vestigial pre-Roman walls in the foundations of a later house, Via Santa Prassede, Todi. There was a town gate here which started to fall apart in the early 17th Century and was illegally demolished by a nearby landowner so he could enlarge his house. The town council retrospectively approved the demolition (things like that happen in Italy). Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Todi’s first circle of walls dates, I understand, from the 6^th or 5^th Century BC, the second circle from the late Roman period around the time of the Gothic invasion of the 6^th Century AD, and the third is a rank newcomer from around 1200. The two later circles are largely complete and I will probably write about them separately one day, but the first and most ancient wall is fragmentary – in many places it was incorporated into later walls and kept repaired.

Remnants of Todi’s original pre-Roman walls in Piazza Montarone, showing many signs of later repairs. Google Nexus 6P phone camera (click to enlarge).

1st circle of walls — Another part of the First Circle of Walls, where 2,500-year old stonework has been incorporated into the foundations of a modern house. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The walls beneath “The Eagles Nest”, looking up at the convent (now an art gallery and the town cinema) that occupies the site. Most of this stonework is late Roman or medieval, but the large regular travertine blocks are characteristically pre-Roman. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Western walls of Todi — The massive western walls of Todi. Originally pre-Roman, these would have been maintained through the late Roman and medieval periods. The gap at the base of the wall is where one of the many freshwater springs comes out, and where thrifty locals who can stand the taste of limestone refill their bottles. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

My final example of pre-Roman stonework is easy to miss, and one that I would love to say that I discovered for myself, but in fact I first came across a picture of it in a book. It is just below the summit of Todi’s hill, leading up to what is now a park on the site of the medieval Rocca Albornoz.

Pre-Roman ramp — Wall showing original pre-Roman ramp. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

On first glance this is a stone wall that could have been built as a single edifice, but on closer inspection there is a discontinuity – a diagonal line running up from the lower right to the left of the photograph. Below that line, the lower part is a ramp built in the pre-Roman period leading up to the top of the hill. One can imagine processions heading up to the summit, as part of ceremonies for whatever gods the Umbri worshipped. Above that line, less regular than the ancient original, older stones were re-used in late Roman or early medieval times to turn the ramp into a wall. Further above that, several hundred years later, there was built a Franciscan monastery which now contains the town library and a high school, in the cloister of which they put on concerts in summer. And so the life of the town continues, on the most ancient of foundations.

Sources

My qualifications for writing this are simply that I am interested, and that in walking around Todi with a camera I have learned to look for patterns in the stone and ask myself what stories they tell. The guided walk sponsored by FAI was a good source, as is the municipal museum and the explanatory texts in it, while the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia is excellent and well worth a visit. There is a section on local history in the town library (in the old monastery above the pre-Roman ramp illustrated above). We have found a couple of books in Italian which deal mainly in later art and architecture but which refer peripherally to the ancient period. These are Todi, storica ed artistica, written in 1961 by Carlo Grondona and updated and republished in 2009 by his son Marco.

Another, dealing only with a couple of town districts, is TODI: i ‘rioni’ S. Prassede e S. Silvestro, Catalogo delle opere d’arte by Castrichini et al., 1999. One chapter by Lorena Battistoni deals with the Roman and Medieval history of the districts.

In English there is not so much. Umbria, A Cultural Guide by Ian Campbell Ross, 1996, from which I have quoted before, has a couple of chapters dealing with the prehistoric and pre-Roman ages in Umbria generally, although he concentrates more on Perugia and its Etruscan history than he does the Umbri.

A slim book called Todi Walking Tours, self-published in 2018 by Bernard Mansheim and Claudio Peri is available in local bookstores. It is a good way to make an initial acquaintance of the town, although some of the historical assertions in it are debatable.

I intend to follow this post in due course with one on Todi in the Roman era, of which there are more substantial remains than from the pre-Roman.

May 14, 2025May 25, 2025

Sardinia, Cagliari and the Festa di Sant’Efisio

The procession for the Festival of Sant’Efisio in Calgiari is one of the most spectacular – and authentic – religious festivals in Italy, and a celebration of Sardinian folk culture.

Musicians at the Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

In 25 years of visiting Italy, and more recently of living here for part of each year, there was one region of the country that we had yet to set foot in – Sardinia. So in May 2025 we finally rectified that, and took the overnight car ferry from Civitavecchia to Olbia for a ten-day visit.

First Impressions of Sardinia

We weren’t sure what to expect, but despite Sardinia being another large island stuck out in the Mediterranean, it didn’t feel like Sicily, and that impression was only strengthened over the next few days as we got to know the place better. Sicily is geologically part of the Apennines, while (as I discovered in the archaeological museum in Cagliari) Sardinia and Corsica broke off from southern France and sort of drifted south-east.

The geological difference means that there are lots of lumps of basalt lying around which lend themselves to building things (of which more in a subsequent article). And unlike the limestone of most of mainland Italy, the basalt of Sardinia means that the tap water is comparatively pleasant to drink. The vegetation is much more reminiscent of the maquis of southern France or the macchia of Italy’s northern Mediterranean coast than anything you would see in Sicily, and while Sardinia’s mountains are not extremely high, they are very rugged and steep, especially in the interior, making manoeuvring difficult for any army trying to establish control, so few did.

“Macchia” vegetation on the west coast of Sardinia. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Culturally and historically Sardinia is very different from Sicily as well. Not for Sardinia were the momentous conquests by the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the Angevins and so on. Instead many Mediterranean powers established towns around the coast, or took possession of existing ones, but these were in effect just trading posts for Sardinia’s abundant minerals. In medieval times these outposts – Pisan, Genoan, Aragonese and Catalonian – exerted strong local cultural and linguistic influences. According to our guide book, some of the regional dialects were so different that after Italian unification Sardinians were quick to adopt standard Italian as a means to mutual intelligibility, and that it is for this reason that Sardinians pride themselves on speaking the clearest Italian. We can attest to that. Overhearing people in the street talking to each other or on their phones, it was like listening to the state broadcaster RAI.

Another source of linguistic pride is that of all Italian dialects, Sardo is considered by some to be “purest” in the sense that it is closest to vulgate Latin. I’m not sure how that squares with the idea that there was so much linguistic diversity, but no doubt there is a coherent path through it all. As in other areas of Italy, the monoglot policy of previous eras has been replaced by official endorsement of the minority language in the form of duplicate place names and street signs. How much effect that will have on preserving Sardo remains to be experienced by future generations, but Sardo is is definitely identified with regional politics – political posters often use it instead of Italian. And on a bilingual Italian/English information sign outside a church, someone had placed a sticker over the Italian text which read “e in Sardo?” (“and in Sardinian?”).

History also took Sardinia on a different path into the unitary state of Italy. Before unification Sicily was part of the deeply conservative southern kingdom of the Bourbons, ruled from Naples. Sardinia was part of the state of Piedmont, comparatively forward-looking and aligned with northern European countries like France and Britain. And when Italy was finally united, it was under the Piedmontese, so Sardinia was on the winning side, in a sense. How much notice the shepherds in their remote mountains took of all this is another question.

Sardinia has a reputation for truly awful roads, and this is completely deserved. The one decent road is the main north-south highway, still called the “Carlo Felice” after the king who commissioned it, but everything else is pretty bad. One learns to watch the car ahead as it weaves between patches of broken tarmac, and to adapt accordingly. At one point I put the left front wheel of our leased Peugeot into a monstrous pothole. I was sure that I had inflicted some mortal injury on the car, but it seemed OK. The next time we took that route we kept a lookout for the pothole and successfully avoided it, but I had noticed a tow truck following us. Sure enough, a couple of hundred metres past the pothole an expensive Mercedes was pulled over with its hazard lights flashing, and the tow truck pulled in behind it.

Cagliari

The capital city of Sardinia is not blessed with a spectacular setting. Certainly there are distant mountains on three sides, and the sea on the fourth, but closer by are salt pans, an oil refinery, power stations and wind farms. In the centre of the old town is a modest hill called the Castello on which was the old fortress. Unfortunately during the war Cagliari was a major naval base and was severely bombed as a result. Much of the inner town is therefore rather ugly postwar reconstruction.

Children playing football on the Bastione Saint Remy, Castello district, Cagliari. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Cagliari from the Castello. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Cagliari; the Castello from below. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

It must also be said that Cagliari has a rather severe graffiti problem. That’s a problem in most Italian cities these days, but in most the graffitists avoid the older monuments. Not here, alas. Some of it, especially around the university, is political. Some is ironic comment in the tradition of Italian pasquinade; at a lookout over some soulless 1950s buildings, one graffito says “bel cimento, no?” (“nice concrete, eh?”). But most of it is unoriginal and destructive.

Cagliari graffiti — Cagliari; graffiti in the Marina district. Fujifilm GFX50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Festa di Sant’Efisio

But nonetheless we wanted to come here, and were glad to be here on the 1^st of May, because that is the feast day of Cagliari’s patron saint, Sant’Efisio, when there is a spectacular parade in his honour. Not one of the better-known saints elsewhere, Efisio was apparently a Roman soldier from Antioch in Asia Minor called Ephysius who was posted to Sardinia and martyred at a place called Nora a few miles from Cagliari during the persecution of Diocletian. And that’s it. History tells us nothing else about him, but that is enough for the Cagliaritani and indeed the rest of the Sardinians to have adopted him as their own. His statue, in the church dedicated to him in Cagliari, shows a cheerful-looking fellow in ornate armour with curly light brown hair and a neat little moustache and goatee beard.

But obscure as he may be, the Sardinians throw a huge party for him every year, with what is said to be the longest religious procession in the Mediterranean. It was certainly long – it took about two and a half hours to pass.

As I discussed in The Serious Business of Dressing Up, many such processions elsewhere are comparatively recent revivals going back to perhaps the 1980s at most. Of course statues of saints have always been carried about town on their feast days, but as for lots of people dressing up in historic costumes of varying degrees of authenticity, that’s a more recent thing.

Not here. The Sant’Efisio parade is a genuine survival, and what’s more the costumes are not based on the participants’ own somewhat elastic interpretations, but are the traditional dresses worn by men and women from towns and villages all over Sardinia. The contingent from each place walk (or ride) together, and the costumes they are wearing are those proper to the town or village. And they are extremely ornate, especially the women’s ones. A few days later we visited an ethnographic (ie folk) museum in a town called Nuoro in central Sardinia. The costumes there, whether from the 1950s or the 1850s, could have been those worn in the parade.

Nuro Museo Etnografico — Costumes on display at the Ethnographic Museum in Nuoro. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The male costumes are mostly fairly similar – white blouses and baggy pants with a black, embroidered or coloured waistcoat or tunic and black gaiters. Sometimes the tunic is extended to become a sort of kilt. Sometimes the kilts are separate, and sometimes they are actually rather baggy shorts. They wear tubular hats, usually black, which are folded or rolled in different ways. Some shepherd costumes featured a coat made from the hide of a sheep that looked as it would have been very warm on a cold and wet mountain top, although less suited to a sunny day in Cagliari in May. There were also some very exotic-looking fellows in orange jackets and orange flower-pot hats who looked very oriental, like Ottoman Bashi-Bazouks or something, but the Ottomans were one of the few Mediterranean cultures not to have touched Sardinia, so I can’t explain that.

Sant'Efisio male costume — Male costume, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Shepherds costumes — Shepherds in their nice warm coats. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bashi-Bazouks — Male costumes, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Musicians, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

The female costumes, on the other hand, were of a beauty and variety that defy description, so you will have to look at the photographs. I say “variety”, but the variety is between places, not within them. Every lady (and young girl) from the same place was dressed similarly. I guess that if you want to wear something very different, you have to move to a different town. According to the ethnographic museum, these dresses were wedding dresses as well being as for special occasions.

Many of the women (and a few of the men) were also wearing elaborate jewellery; again, of designs that were indistinguishable from examples in museums that were a couple of hundred years old.

Some of the ladies’ dresses seemed like something rather avant-garde from a Milanese catwalk. These involved the hem of an outer layer of the skirt being lifted up and turned into a sort of hood.

Sci-fi — Avant-garde. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Hems as hoods — The hems-as-hoods seen from behind. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Even before the saint or any clergy appeared, the religious nature of the festival was apparent. Participants sang hymns, many of the ladies (and a few men) carried rosary beads, and a few men walked the cobbled streets barefoot while carrying crucifixes.

Crucifix — A barefoot penitent carrying a crucifix, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

The parade was led by highly-decorated carts drawn by oxen (also decorated). These enormous beasts, hugely powerful but very patient and placid, would once have drawn ploughs but although that job has presumably been taken over by tractors, I’m glad people keep them around for this sort of thing.

Sant'Efisio Ox Cart — Ox cart, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Oxen, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Oxen, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Ox cart, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

The carts were decorated with flowers, some artificial but many natural, which makes the point that this is a sort of spring festival as well. Each cart carried the name of the town it came from, and many of the people on the carts were singing hymns.

Singers, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

The singing was in unison rather than harmony, but often men and women would take alternate verses. The singing style was quite nasal and very penetrating – useful for calling across mountain valleys, no doubt, but not unpleasant. There were instruments too – mainly a sort of double-reed thing. We thought these surprisingly loud for their size and shape, until when I was processing the photographs on the computer I noticed that some crafty fellows had taped microphones to them and had battery-powered speakers attached to their belts.

Musicians amplified — If you look closely you will see the microphones and amplifiers. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Musician — Unamplified musician, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Junior musicians — Junior unamplified musicians, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

After the carts came a large number of groups on foot, each preceded by a sign saying where they were from, and when the contingent from each town or village came in sight there was an excited cheer from their fellow-citizens in the crowd.

After the pedestrians came a number of groups on horseback. Initially these were dressed like the pedestrians – the women in gorgeous dress sitting side-saddle, and some of the men carrying enormously long muskets – and then some chaps looking as if they might have charged with the Light Brigade; presumably in uniforms of the pre-unification Piedmontese military.

Horsemen, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Female riders, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Female rider, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Hussars — Cavalry, Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Eventually the saint’s effigy appeared, and a large section of the crowd joined in behind it. The festival officially goes for four days, with the saint’s effigy progressing to the little church at Nora that marks the traditional site of the his martyrdom. As it makes its way along the coast there are mini-parades put on by local communities. But most of the participants in today’s parade would have taken the rest of the day off; no doubt there were some very sore feet, especially among the ladies who had covered the whole route in high-heeled shoes. Despite that everyone looked as if they had enjoyed themselves and by the sound of it quite a few people partied well into the evening.

Female costume. Like many of the ladies, this one is carrying rosary beads and a lace handkerchief. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

Candle — I have no idea what these fellows are carrying but I’m guessing it might be a large candle. Whatever it is they are taking it seriously. Festa di Sant’Efisio. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

The end. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

April 27, 2025May 15, 2025

Paleochristian Churches Part VI – Santa Maria and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Returning to the theme of Paleochristian churches, we visit Trastevere, one of Rome’s trendiest districts, to see two churches that have been there since the third and fourth centuries, although it must be admitted that you have to look quite hard to see the older parts.

Trastevere

“Trastevere” (the stress is on the second syllable) is the Italianisation of its ancient Latin name, Trans Tiberim, which simply means, rather prosaically, “across the Tiber”. Being on the western side of the Tiber, in Rome’s earliest days it was actually in Etruscan territory. As Rome grew, fishermen and immigrants settled there, until under Augustus it formally became part of the city. At around this time wealthy Romans built luxurious villas beside the Tiber – we saw artefacts from some of these in the article on The Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme.

Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme Roman room — These frescoes, now in the museum of Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme, once decorated the walls of a room in a villa beside the Tiber in Trastevere. The display is the same size as the room in which they were found. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

In the 3^rd Century Trastevere was enclosed within the Aurelian Walls, which marked the ancient city’s greatest extent. Devastated in the barbarian invasions, in medieval times it again became the home of the poor and the fringe dwellers – including Rome’s Jewish population, until they were moved across the river to the new ghetto. The cycle began again in the Renaissance when wealthy families like the Farnese built villas there.

The Villa Farnesina in Trastevere, located not far from where the frescos in the previous photograph were found. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

These days Trastevere is one of the most popular areas of Rome with both locals and visitors. It has a bohemian feel and its bars, trattorie and restaurants seem uncountable, although it also has some quiet back streets. On any evening it is full of cheerful crowds.

Trastevere Fiat pickup — This vintage Fiat pickup, parked permanently outside a restaurant, is a Trastevere fixture. Fujifilm GFX 50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm

W.H.Auden, text to “Hymn to Saint Cecilia” by Benjamin Britten

My childhood religious education was not big on saints, so my first encounter with St Cecilia was through music, in her capacity as patron saint thereof. As such, composers from Henry Purcell and Alessandro Scarlatti[1] to Benjamin Britten have written pieces dedicated to her, but that being said, I have to say that the justification for awarding her that particular portfolio seems a bit slim: the story goes that at her wedding she disdained the musicians playing live, preferring to sing silently to God in her heart. That doesn’t really make her sound like a music lover to me, unless the band was particularly bad (we’ve been to weddings like that). Anyway, she went on to convert her husband Valerian to Christianity, they both remained chaste virgins, and in due course both were martyred. There has been a church on the site of her house since the 3^rd Century.

There is of course another possibility. We saw in the article on Santa Sabina that the Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill may be called that because it was built on land donated by a wealthy Roman lady called Sabina, and that over time “Sabina’s Church” became “Saint Sabina’s Church”, necessitating the invention of a hagiography for an apocryphal saint. It seems that there is a possibility that something similar may have happened here – that a wealthy lady named Cecilia donated her land in Trans Tiberim for the founding of a church. Between the founding of the 3^rd-Century church and its rebuilding by Pope Paschal I in 822 came several centuries of war, destruction, societal collapse and poor record-keeping, and over time “Cecilia’s Church” may have become “Saint Cecilia’s Church” in popular memory.

Or maybe she founded the church and was then martyred; the two versions are not entirely incompatible. Whatever really happened, the remains of a 1^st-Century Roman house have been found under the church, and however her story may have evolved since, there seems no reason not to think that there was a Roman lady called Cecilia, who became a Christian, and who lived here. That’s good enough for me, whether she actually liked music or not.

Saint Cecilia at the Spinet, by Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639) in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. Gentileschi was a friend of Caravaggio and adopted his chiaroscuro (dramatic lighting) style. These days he is more famous for having been the father of Artemisia Gentileschi who is honoured as an early professional female artist. Fujifilm GFX 50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

St Cecilia Cagliari — Saint Cecilia, a 1930s version from the facade of the Cathedral in Cagliari, Sardinia. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 56mm lens (click to enlarge).

When you approach the church, you would be forgiven for thinking that you were in the wrong place and there is no church there at all. Instead there is what looks like an office building from the 18^th Century, dedicated not, it would appear, to the saint, but to the cardinal who commissioned it, one Francesco Acquaviva d’Aragona.

Santa Cecilia gatehouse — This doesn’t look like a church, but you are in the right place. Fujifilm GFX 50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The building turns out to be a kind of gatehouse, and passing through it you find yourself in a pretty courtyard, at the end of which is the church. The initial impression is again baroque, and again the most important dedicatee appears to be Cardinal Acquaviva, who had the church redecorated in 1725. But behind is a campanile from the 12^th Century, and above the columns supporting the portico are mosaics which, although presumably 18^th Century as well, do a reasonable job of replicating the style of early churches. I have not been able to find out whether they are based on something that had been there before, but it would not surprise me if they were.

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere; inside the courtyard. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Inside, it is all still very baroque. You have to go all the way down to the altar to see the apse mosaic from the 800s. If you remember the article which included a description of the church of Santa Prassede, you might find this one a bit familiar. Both were rebuilt by Pope Paschal I, and as in Santa Prassede, Paschal has not just placed his monogram over the apse but has included himself in the mosaic.

That’s him on the left, with the conventional square halo given to someone who was still living at the time of the portrait. He’s holding a model of the church which he is presenting to Saint Cecilia, who has her arm round his shoulder in a very friendly way. Either side of Christ are Saints Peter and Paul, and on the other side from Paschal and Cecilia are two saints who are apparently Valerian – Cecilia’s husband – and Saint Agatha of Sicily.

Under the ciborium is a glass case containing a sculpture of the uncorrupted body of the saint as it was said to have appeared when her tomb was opened in 1599. However the supposed remains of the saint were only placed in the church during Paschal’s rebuilding, six hundred years after her martyrdom, so there is some room for doubt.

There’s not much left to excite the paleophile. There’s a 14^th-Century fresco which good old Cardinal Acquaviva had whitewashed over. It has since been restored, but you need to make special arrangements with the neighbouring nuns to see it. Nonetheless as amateur musicians paying respect to a patron saint who probably existed, and may or may not have liked music, we were glad to have visited. And also, while lots of things in Rome are old, here is a spot where one can feel fairly confident that at least some aspects of the story have a basis in the historical fact of an ordinary person who lived here 17 centuries ago.

So let’s move on.

Santa Maria in Trastevere

Heading north from Santa Cecilia one passes into the trendiest bits of Trastevere and ends up in the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, in front of the church of the same name.

The first church here was founded in the 200s, on the site of a retirement home for Roman soldiers. Some claim it to have been the first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, although I believe that honour is more conventionally given to Santa Maria Maggiore. Inside the portico you will see that the walls are lined with a good many ancient inscriptions, most of which appear to be funerary.

Santa Maria in Trastevere. It can be hard setting up a large format camera on a tripod in public places in Rome, so I took this picture very early in the morning when the piazza was deserted. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 210mm lens, 4×5-inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).

Above the portico is a 13^th-Century mosaic depicting the Madonna and Child suckling, flanked by female saints.

Entering the interior you step back nine hundred years earlier than the exterior mosaics, with the floor plan and the walls dating back to the 340s. Even though there are a lot of later additions, it is not too hard to get an impression of what it might have been like in the 4^th Century.

If you look at the columns that line the nave you will note that they are of different heights. They were scavenged from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, and have been evened up by the use of different sized capitals.

Some of the capitals were originally decorated with faces which scholars in the 19^th Century identified as being various pagan deities. When the arch-conservative Pope Pius IX heard about it, he had the faces chiselled off.

In the apse vault is a 12^th-Century mosaic of The Crowning of the Virgin, which includes the Pope of the day (Innocent II) holding a model of the church – its most significant rebuilding occurred during his reign.

So far, apart from the columns, there is not a lot that merits the “paleochristian” label. There is an 8^th-Century icon of the Virgin in a side chapel but alas it was too dark for me to take a photograph.

However I had read that in the sacristy there could be seen some mosaics from the 1^st Century, perhaps from the old soldiers’ home that was previously on the site. There was a chap in a cassock bustling about arranging things in the nave so I approached him and asked about them. He (maybe he was the sacristan) was very obliging and let me into the sacristy, saying only that I should shut the door behind me when I was finished.

1st Century mosaic in Santa Maria in Trastevere — 1st Century Mosaic in the sacristy of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

1st Century mosaic, Santa Maria in Trastevere — 1st Century Mosaic in the sacristy of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

[1] Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Saint Cecilia Mass”, only rediscovered in the 1960s, is a real cracker. It was dedicated to Cardinal Acquaviva, mentioned above, however its first performance was not here but in Santa Maria Maggiore in 1720.

March 4, 2025May 19, 2025

Capri: Emperor Tiberius, Axel Munthe and Norman Douglas

Capri – the home of a supposedly perverted emperor, a philanthropic Swedish doctor, and a fugitive Scottish-German aristocrat who became a great travel writer. I’ve been thinking for a while about how to try and pull these stories together, so here goes.

The photographs that illustrate this post were all taken on a visit to Capri in 2011, when I was still shooting film on a Hasselblad medium-format camera. We were staying in a village near Amalfi called Pogerola, which I described in my post on Amalfi and the Sorrentine Peninsula.

There is a fast ferry service from Amalfi to Capri. Actually it starts out from Salerno, and calls into Amalfi on the way. We got to the jetty early in the morning and while we waited for the ferry we breakfasted on coffee and pastries and I was able to take some nice photographs of Amalfi in the early light.

Shortly before the ferry arrived some buses deposited about a hundred German tourists who all piled on to the ferry as well. It was quite windy and the sea was a bit rough. As the ferry roared away from Amalfi a couple of genial-looking crew members strode up and down the aisles with lots of plastic bags sticking out of their pockets. The intended use for these became apparent as we hit the swell and before long various fellow-passengers started urgently requesting the bags to throw up into. Preferring to take my chances out in the weather I went upstairs to the open deck and before long Lou followed. We had pretty good views of the Sorrentine Peninsula as we went.

Approaching the tip of the Sorrentine Peninsula (Punta Campanella) from the ferry, with the Capri sea stacks in the distance. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).

It had been a bit overcast in Amalfi but we arrived in Capri in bright sunshine. As expected the port was heaving with tourists, but it was better than the heaving tourists on the boat.

Porto Capri — Approaching the port of Capri. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).

Tiberius (42 BC – 37 AD)

Arriving at the port of Capri, we headed up to the main town. Seeing the length of the queue for the funicular up to Capri, we decided to walk the kilometre or so up the hill.

At this point I should introduce the first of our three historical characters: Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, the second emperor or Rome, who reigned from AD14 to AD37. Tiberius has been dealt a doubly bad hand by history, getting stuck with a job he didn’t want, then being libelled by ancient historians for his troubles. The stepson and adopted son of the first emperor Augustus, he was manoeuvred into the succession by Augustus’s second wife, Tiberius’s mother Livia, who, as I discussed here, was probably not as bad as she has been portrayed, but a fairly forceful character nonetheless.

What is not in doubt is that Tiberius was an able administrator, a successful general, a competent lawyer, and – apparently – a reluctant emperor. Happily married to a woman he loved, he was forced by Augustus to divorce her and to marry Augustus’s own daughter Julia (now Tiberius’s step-sister) who proved to be unfaithful and promiscuous. Humiliated by this, forbidden to meet his beloved former wife and treated with hostility by the senatorial class, Tiberius announced his retirement from public life to the Greek island of Rhodes. But this deprived Augustus of an obvious successor, and Tiberius came under considerable pressure to return to Rome.

Eventually he did return, Augustus died (probably not poisoned by Livia, whatever Robert Graves may have written in I Claudius), and Tiberius became emperor. As only the second-ever emperor of Rome, Tiberius’s constitutional position and the legitimacy of the imperial office were still rather vague. Tiberius’s own view of the proper form of government for Rome is unknown, but he declined several of the traditional titular honours that Augustus had held. Unfortunately the Senate and the aristocratic class chose to interpret this not as a sign of humility, but of arrogance and hypocrisy.

Before long Tiberius had had enough of all this, and left Rome to live the rest of his life on Capri, maintaining overall control but leaving the day-to-day administration in the hands of the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus (who eventually showed imperial ambitions of his own and came to a sticky end). The conventional explanation for Tiberius’s departure is that he was distrustful of the Senate and fearful of assassination, which is plausible enough. That being said, I have seen an article suggesting that he was actually trying to get away from his mother Livia’s constant interference, which is also plausible (a view shared by Norman Douglas; see below).

On Capri Tiberius built several villas, but mainly lived in a luxurious palace called the Villa Jovis (Villa of Jupiter). This is located at the north-eastern corner of the island with a view back to the mainland which includes Vesuvius and the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula.

Capri Villa Jovis — Capri, looking northeast from the town towards Vesuvius. Villa Jovis is over the hill to the right. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).

Map of Capri, showing the location of the Villa Jovis (right), the Villa San Michele (top centre) and Monte Solaro (lower centre). (Click to open in Google Maps).

The stories that have come down to us about Tiberius’s supposed depravities on Capri are lurid, and include employing young boys to swim up to him underwater to perform various intimate acts, and forced sex with otherwise virtuous women and young men, sometimes resulting in their deaths at their own hands, or on Tiberius’s orders.

What are we to make of this? It may all have been true, but I can think of two reasons for scepticism. One is that this behaviour does seem completely out of character with what we know of Tiberius before he retired to Capri. A second is that we must always remember that due to the loss of so many ancient manuscripts, we actually do not have very many historical sources for this period, and what we know about Tiberius comes mostly from only two historians – Tacitus and Suetonius, who have therefore been enormously influential in shaping the perceptions of later ages. Neither historian was a fan of the Julio-Claudian family – both were players in the politics of their own times, and had their own factional prejudices and axes to grind. Moreover they were writing under a subsequent imperial dynasty, and like Shakespeare with the Tudors it would have been in their interests implicitly to praise the virtues of the present regime by inventing stories of the wickedness of its predecessors. Tiberius, in other words, has had the same sort of bum rap as Richard III, and for similar reasons.

The most eloquent and erudite defence of Tiberius that I have seen comes from his fellow Capri resident Norman Douglas, of whom I will say more below, but while the salacious tales of Tiberius’s debaucheries have been debunked by modern scholars, nothing sells like scandal. So you will unfortunately find them repeated in much tourist literature, and no doubt in the spiels of the guides leading their troops of foreign visitors around.

Axel Munthe (1857 – 1949)

But next, to a Swedish doctor and writer who lived an eventful life, became a British citizen, and wrote a famous autobiography called The Story of San Michele. The San Michele in question is a villa, high on the northern cliffs of Capri, which Munthe purchased as a ruin, restored, and lived in for many years.

West from Capri — Looking west from the town of Capri, with the island of Ischia in the far distance. The town of Anacapri is around the other side of the cliff. Villa San Michele is the little white dot on the edge of the cliff, above the road up which our daredevil bus driver took us. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner, two images stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

In the photograph above, you can see the scar in the side of the distant cliff where a narrow road climbs up from the town of Capri to the island’s second town, Anacapri. Just on the edge of the cliff, above the road, you can see a little white dot of a building with some trees behind it. That is San Michele, or one of its near neighbours.

To get to Anacapri from the town of Capri we caught a little local bus. The Capri residents, on their way home with their groceries, rushed on first and took all the seats, leaving us tourists to stand and hang onto the straps. This, while less comfortable, made the journey very memorable. If you look again at the photograph above, you will see that the road hugs a nearly sheer cliff face. The bus driver, like many Italians a secret racing driver, hurled us up that road, with – for those of us standing up on the right-hand side of the vehicle – near-vertical views down to the sea as we screeched round the bends. People have paid a lot of money for rides that are less scary than this was. While the standing tourists gasped in terror, the seated locals chatted amiably or read their newspapers.

From Anacapri we continued our ascent by taking the seggiovia, or chairlift, to the top of Monte Solaro, from which we enjoyed a magnificent view – from the Sorrentine peninsula to the east, past Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples to the islands of Ischia and Procida. Here are some photographs of that view, after which we will return to the subject of Axel Munthe.

Monte Solaro Panorama — View from the summit of Monte Solaro, looking east. The town of Capri is below, with Tiberius’s Villa Jovis on the hill behind it. Beyond that is the Sorrentine Peninsula with Amalfi away to the right and Sorrento away to the left. At the far left is Vesuvius. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner, four images stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

Munthe attended medical school at Uppsala University in Sweden, then continued his medical studies in Paris. It was during his student years that he visited Capri, and like us made the ascent to Anacapri. There he found an old peasant’s cottage next to a ruined chapel dedicated to San Michele. He immediately formed the ambition to return one day, buy both buildings, and rebuild them into a villa in which he would live. And looking at the pictures above, who could blame him?

The Villa San Michele is quite a long way from Tiberius’s Villa Jovis, as you can see on the map above, but there were Roman remains on the site, and Munthe was quite convinced that these were the remains of a villa of Tiberius. Given that Tiberius apparently had several villas on Capri, this is by no means unlikely, particularly as the view would have been as spectacular in the First Century as it was in the Nineteenth .

Munthe’s medical career combined lucrative practising to high society and the wealthy (including the Swedish Royal Family), and philanthropic care to the poor without charge. In due course he became personal physician to, and a close friend of, Queen Victoria of Sweden, who would later spend several months each year on Capri on his advice.

He was a regular volunteer during natural disasters, and it was shortly after helping out during a cholera epidemic in Naples in 1884 that he finally was able to buy the Villa San Michele, and commence the long restoration. The workmen on the site were as convinced as he was that they were excavating one of Tiberius’s villas; when one of them uncovered an old clay tobacco pipe, he presented it to Munthe saying “look, Tiberius’s pipe!”. To help defray the costs of the restoration, Munthe opened a clinic in Rome.

After the 1908 earthquake that destroyed Messina in Sicily, Munthe went to assist and his account of the earthquake’s aftermath in The Story of San Michele is quite horrific.

Munthe married a wealthy Englishwoman and during the First World War he became a British citizen and served in the Ambulance Corps. Their son Malcolm became a member of the Special Operations Executive and a clandestine operative behind German lines in Norway in the Second World War.

I have to admit that I am not sure quite what to make of Axel Munthe. The first time I read The Story of San Michele, many years ago, I came away with the impression that it was all rather self-serving and self-glorifying, with many rather tendentious episodes demonstrating his virtue. It seems I am not the only one to think so. The part of the book that deals with his time in Paris and the pioneering French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, which ends up with his “rescuing” one of Charcot’s clinical hypnosis subjects, has been comprehensively debunked.

That being said, it is possible that Munthe himself was alive to this criticism. On re-reading the book some years later in a different edition, I paid a bit more attention to the preface, written in 1928, in which the aged (English) Munthe seems to confront an imaginary version of his youthful (Swedish) former self. It is worth quoting at length.

Unfortunately I have been writing The Story of San Michele under peculiar difficulties. I was interrupted at the very beginning by an unexpected visitor who sat down opposite me at the writing-table and began to talk about himself and his own affairs in the most erratic manner, as if all this nonsense could interest anybody but himself. There was something very irritating and un-English in the way he kept on relating his various adventures where he always seemed to turn out to have been the hero – too much Ego in your Cosmos, young man, thought I… Medicine seemed to be his special hobby, he said he was a nerve specialist and boasted of being a pupil of Charcot’s as they all do… At last I told him to leave me alone and let me go on with my Story of San Michele and my description of my precious marble fragments from the villa of Tiberius.

“Poor old man,” said the young fellow with his patronizing smile, “you are talking through your hat! I fear you cannot even read your own handwriting! It is not about San Michele and your precious marble fragments from the villa of Tiberius you have been writing the whole time, it is only some fragments of clay from your own broken life that you have brought to light.”

Norman Douglas (1868 – 1952)

Norman Douglas was born in Austria to a Scottish father and a German mother, both aristocrats. Educated in England and Germany, he joined the British Diplomatic Corps and was posted to St Petersburg, but in what was to become a pattern, his diplomatic career came to an early close after a series of scandalous affairs with Russian ladies, one of whom he abandoned when she was pregnant.

He married a cousin, with whom he moved to Italy and had two children. Soon afterwards however the marriage ended in divorce, based – perhaps surprisingly – not on his infidelity but on hers. After that Douglas’s sexual tastes tended towards young people, both boys and girls, which would have got him into very serious trouble today. As it was, in both 1916 and 1917 he was charged in London with indecent behaviour with underage boys and, on the second occasion he skipped bail and moved to Capri, these being the days before Interpol warrants. In 1937 he had to leave Florence in a hurry, this time over allegations involving a young girl.

D.H. Lawrence based the character James Argyle in Aaron’s Rod on Douglas, and it has been claimed that he was the model for Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita. Given the literary circles in which he moved, it is hard not to imagine Douglas as the model for a few rascally characters in contemporary literature who are regularly getting into trouble and having to make a quick exit. One thinks of Evelyn Waugh’s Captain Grimes and Lawrence Durrell’s Scobie. But as with Caravaggio and Bernini one should try and consider the artist’s work separately from his crimes, so let us do just that.

Looking up at Monte Tiberio (the site of Villa Jovis) from Porto Capri. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).

Based mostly on Capri for the rest of his life (he spent the Second World War in London where presumably the bail-jumping of three decades earlier was overlooked), Norman supported himself on a modest family income, and writing: mostly novels and travel books. His travel books would not be to everyone’s taste – as guidebooks they would be useless, and his narrative meanders about with frequent historical and literary diversions which make no allowance for the reader’s own level of knowledge. One must follow along as best one can, and occasionally get a bit exasperated.

But if you enjoy being in an ancient landscape and reflecting on the palimpsest of history and literature that lies behind the views and the tourist attractions, then Douglas becomes an engaging and erudite companion. One can imagine accompanying him along some mountain track in Capri while he waves his walking stick about pointing out where some episode from The Odyssey is supposed to have occurred, or the location of one of Tiberius’s villas, followed by a forensic critical analysis of Tacitus and Suetonius. It would be great fun, although you might not bring the children along.

Of his many books, one of the first – Siren Land – is about Capri and the Sorrentine peninsula, more or less. That was written in 1911, and in 1917 he followed it with a novel – South Wind – in which the setting is a fictional version of Capri and various expatriates appear in thin disguise. Its theme of the brittleness of conventional morality was considered quite scandalous at the time.

I mentioned earlier that Norman Douglas mounts an eloquent and erudite defence of Tiberius. In other words, a known 20^th-Century pederast defending a 1^st-Century emperor against charges which included pederasty. I suppose that makes him some sort of expert witness. Anyway, this is from Siren Land:

After a youth of exemplary virtue, and half a century more of public life, during which the manners and morals of Tiberius were an honour to his age, he retired in his sixty-ninth year to the island of Capri, in order at last to be able to indulge his latent proclivities for cruelty and lust. So, at least, the wisest of us believed for twenty centuries. We have all heard of the reformed rake; Tiberius was the reverse: from being an Admirable Crichton, he became the prototype of the Marquis de Sade. But it is needless to go into this res adiudicata; historians like Duruy, Merivale, and Ferrero, however much they disagree upon other questions, are at one upon this: that no scholar of today, with a reputation to lose, should stake it upon the veracity of Tacitus and Suetonius…

And on he goes in this vein, for several pages, in which he questions Tacitus’s mental health, and attributes the historian’s extreme adherence to the aristocratic anti-Tiberius faction to the fact that Tacitus was a social climber and dreadful snob, trying too hard to fit in. He wonders whether posterity was the more ready to accept these calumnies due to the fact that it was during Tiberius’s reign that Christ was crucified, despite the fact that Tiberius would not personally have had anything to do with a local public order matter in Palestine.

While not going so far as to call Tiberius a closet republican, Douglas suggests that Tiberius “attempted the experiment of constitutional rule, interfering as little as possible in the machinery of the state, while reserving to himself the last word upon all graver matters.“

Having thus made Tiberius the very model of a modern constitutional monarch, Douglas then compares Tiberius very favourably with actual “modern” (ie 1911) monarchs:

The idea of retiring from the cares of government may seem absurd to us. But we must consider the kind of work which confronted Tiberius. Modern sovereigns, whose most violent physical exercise takes the form of shooting tame pheasants or leading a drowsy state-ball quadrille, would be killed outright by a single one of his many campaigns: the economic problems with which he grappled day after day would permanently liquefy their brains.

And off he goes in yet another direction, but always – eventually – bringing us back to the sun-drenched coasts of southern Italy.

Douglas ends his discussion of Tiberius with the hope that science will one day allow us to read the carbonised scrolls of Herculaneum and find among them some more objective histories of the early imperial era. Now, more than a hundred years after he wrote that, we seem very close indeed to doing just that. I hope I live long enough to see it.

__________________________

Three fascinating characters, each very different, but all of whom trod the steep hillsides of Capri and gazed into the blue expanse of the Bay of Naples. How I would like to have talked to them. Was Tiberius the evil pervert described by Suetonius, or the serious and responsible Roman citizen that he seems to have been in his early life? Axel Munthe’s conversation would have been expansive and informative, although some of his stories about himself might need to be taken with a grain of salt.

But I have no doubt that it would be Norman Douglas who would have been the most erudite and (albeit somewhat scandalously) entertaining.

January 15, 2025February 8, 2025

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) and Pienza

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance there were some bad Popes, some worse Popes, and some truly despicable ones. Were there any good ones? There were some who were undoubtedly spiritually good men, but woefully incompetent rulers, like Celestine V whom we met in my post about visiting his hermitage in Abruzzo.

Quite a few were effective administrators and statesmen, but worldly, proud and vengeful, and curiously uninterested in spiritual matters. The best example of that sort is probably the irascible Julius II, who personally led the Papal forces into battle a couple of times. Others were interested in doctrine, but only to the extent of fiercely resisting intellectual freedom and scientific modernisation.

A “good” 15^th-Century Pope was Nicholas V (1447-1455), who was the first to genuinely try to reconcile the Church with Renaissance humanism. Nicholas re-established the Vatican Library and commissioned important works of art from the likes of Fra Angelico – in the process taking the Domenican friar and artist away from his work in the Duomo of Orvieto.

But the Pope of whom I wish to write today is, to me, an even more fascinating character. A scholar, a writer, a diplomat and at one point a secret agent, the young Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was not perhaps an obvious future Pope (John Julius Norwich describes his poetry as “mildly pornographic”). He did not even take holy orders until he was in his 40s. Nonetheless he became Pope in 1458 and took the name Pius II.

As Pope, Pius took an unusual approach to establishing his legacy. While not averse to promoting his own family, he avoided outrageous nepotism and self-enrichment. Instead he left two more enduring monuments – one physical and one literary. And a third was created in his memory by his nephew (another Pope, Pius III).

The physical monument is his home town of Corsignano, which he had rebuilt in the latest Renaissance style by the architect Bernardo Rosselino, and then renamed it Pienza after himself. Visitors to Pienza cannot fail to be struck by its beauty, but as they marvel at the views or sample the wine, cheese and salume, not all of them realise that its beauty is no accident; it was designed like that.

Pienza from Val d'Orcia — Pienza from the Val d’Orcia, with the famous Cappella della Vitaleta in the foreground. Taken on our very first visit here in August 1999. Who could not have fallen in love with this place? Canon EOS 50e 35mm film camera, Sigma 100-300mm lens, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

We have visited Pienza many times over the last 25 years. Although it is a bit more crowded these days than on our first visit in 1999, it always feels special. Among its attractions are the magnificent views from the town walls over the Val d’Orcia – I have published a few on this site, including in the post called A Storm in the Val d’Orcia and A Return to the Val d’Orcia. This article will give me an opportunity to post a few pictures of the town itself, taken during several visits over many years, while telling the story of Aeneas.

Pienza from Lucignanello — Pienza from the other side, showing the Duomo and the clock tower on the town hall. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Evening in Pienza, looking over the rooftops to the spire of the Duomo and the clock tower. Fujifilm GFX 50R digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Walls of Pienza — On the walls of Pienza, with the Val d’Orcia beyond. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Pienza Corso Rosselino — Pienza, the Corso Rosselino. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

And the literary legacy? Like many a Renaissance humanist, Aeneas did a bit of writing on the side – rather a lot actually – and he was named Poet Laureate at the Imperial court. In addition to the erotic poetry, he produced plays, a novel (also erotic) and some histories. But the legacy I am referring to is an autobiography called the Commentaries, written in the third person during the last years of his life, and published posthumously and pseudonymously. It brings to mind Winston Churchill’s observation that “history will be kind to me, because I intend to write it myself”.

The third element of the legacy is to be found in the “Piccolomini Library” in Siena cathedral, established in Aeneas/Pius’s memory by his nephew, the future Pope Pius III. This library is decorated with ten frescoes by the master artist Pinturicchio, depicting episodes in Aeneas/Pius’s life, in some cases presumably drawn from the Commentaries. We met Pinturicchio in my post titled “Tough Guys in Art – The Baglioni of Perugia“.

Siena Piccolomini Library — The Piccolomini Library in the Duomo of Siena, showing two of the Pinturicchio frescoes. I believe that the one on the left is Aeneas, as Bishop of Siena, presiding over the meeting outside Siena between the Emperor Frederick III and his future bride, Eleanora of Portugal. The one on the right, I think, is Aeneas receiving his cardinal’s hat from Pope Calixtus III. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Note: my photographs of the Piccolomini Library were taken with a film camera on a visit to Siena almost twenty years ago. Because I was using slow outdoor film and tripods were not permitted, I needed to steady the camera on bits of furniture which meant they were all taken from rather low down, and from further away than I would wish. I hope to revisit Siena soon and will attempt to take better ones – if so I will update this article.

The Name’s Piccolomini, Aeneas Piccolomini

So what about the secret agenting? I’m glad you asked, but let us start at the beginning. Aeneas was born in Corsignano (later Pienza) to an ancient but somewhat impoverished Sienese family. It seems that the young Aeneas actually helped his father with farm work, which is not necessarily evidence of absolute poverty – in this era genteel families often owned farms, and tending vines and olive trees was considered an appropriate way for people to cultivate not just the land but philosophical thoughts. Whatever it tells us about Aeneas’s childhood, it is however an excuse to show some pictures of agricultural land just outside Pienza.

Outside Pienza, just near the village of Montichiello. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Pienza farmhouse — Farmhouse outside Pienza. This is beside the main road out of town so is very much photographed and appears on postcards and in calendars and books. Canon EOS 50e 35mm film camera, 17-35mm lens, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Pienza and Val d'Orcia — Pienza and the Val d’Orcia in Spring. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, 4×5 inch film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. Scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).

At university in Siena and then Florence, Aeneas studied humanities, including history, and civil law. He returned from Florence to Siena intending to teach, but soon took a post as secretary to a cardinal on his way to the Council of Basel. These 15^th-Century councils had their origins in the earlier period of schism after the Avignon Papacy, as bishops, archbishops and cardinals tried collectively to exercise authority over the Popes. And when you had two or even three rival Popes all claiming to be the ultimate authority in the Church, appointment of a general council of senior churchmen was an obvious method to try and resolve those competing claims. It was a short step from that to the councils deciding that they were in fact superior to the Pope of the day in the church hierarchy.

The notion that the Church should be governed by councils rather than Popes – known as conciliarism – gained a good deal of support in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries. The Popes did everything they could to frustrate the councils – sometimes ordering that they be dissolved, which the councils tended to ignore. Sometimes a council would even declare the Pope deposed and elect their own (known now as antipopes).

Aeneas in Genoa — Aeneas sets out for Basel, starting with a sea voyage to Genoa, after which he crossed the Alps into Switzerland. In his “Commentaries” he describes being caught in a terrible storm (he was not destined to be lucky in his sea journeys) which Pinturicchio depicts in the background. I read somewhere that this is the first depiction of a storm at sea in Western art, but I’m not sure about that. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

So Aeneas went to Basel, and a few years later in 1435 he found himself working for one Cardinal Albergati. Albergati, it seems, had a special job for the young man. In my post on Catherine of Siena, Cardinal Albornoz and Sir John Hawkwood, I mentioned in passing that the Church was desperate to bring an end to the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Decades later this was still the case, and Albergati’s cunning plan was to send a secret mission to King James I of Scotland to persuade the Scots to launch a surprise attack on England, thus diverting English military resources away from France.

Aeneas set sail for London, intending to travel overland from there to Edinburgh, but the English, suspicious, refused him permission to land and he had to return to the Netherlands, whence he took a ship directly to Scotland. Or at least it would have been direct had a fierce storm not blown them almost all the way to Norway. Fearing for his life, Aeneas vowed that if he made it to Scotland he would walk barefoot to the nearest shrine to the Virgin Mary. This he did, over several miles in very cold weather which gave him arthritis for the rest of his life.

Aeneas in Scotland — Aeneas at the court of James I of Scotland, as imagined by Pinturicchio. From this I think we can be confident that Pinturicchio did not have the faintest idea what Scotland and the Scots might have looked like. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Just how successful Aeneas was is hard to say – the Commentaries are apparently a bit vague on the outcome of the mission. History tells us there were a few border skirmishes in the 1460s between Scotland and England which do not seem to have had a particularly decisive influence on the Anglo-French war and would probably have happened anyway.

After Scotland Aeneas made his way home; this time he was able to make it across the border and travelled down through England disguised as a merchant (doubtless he was not keen on another sea voyage). The Commentaries contain some fascinating observations of life in 15^th-Century Britain: for example, there is nothing the Scots enjoy more than hearing abuse of the English, while across the border the English men and children withdrew to the safety of fortified towers each night for protection from raiders, leaving the women downstairs (apparently Scots raiders would not kill the women). They also left Aeneas downstairs as well, which worried him greatly, even though the women were beautiful and, he wrote, sexually available. He claims to have declined their offers though, and spent the night hiding in a stable hoping to avoid a visit from Scottish raiders. Fortunately none appeared, although he was unable to sleep because of the nanny-goats that were stealthily pulling the straw out from his mattress.

Germany and the Empire

On his return to Basel he found himself working as secretary to the last Antipope of the Great Schism, Felix V, previously Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy. Felix sent Aeneas on another mission – not a covert one this time – as an emissary to the Diet of Frankfurt and the Court of the German King (or Holy Roman Emperor) Frederick III. Frederick recognised his literary talent and it was he who made Aeneas Poet Laureate, which Aeneas repaid by writing a biography of Frederick.

Aeneas in Frankfurt — Antipope Felix V sends Aeneas to Emperor Frederick III. I’m guessing this doesn’t look much like Frankfurt either. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Aeneas resigned his job with Felix and followed Frederick to Vienna where he spent the next few years of his life under the patronage of the Imperial Chancellor, writing works of literature, history and theological and political tracts. This was the most productive period of his life in various ways, since as well as his literary output he fathered several illegitimate children.

Aeneas was sent to Rome in 1445 where, it seems that despite having spent all his working life with the conciliarist faction, he changed sides and returned to Vienna on a mission to reconcile the German princes with the Papacy. In this he was very successful, and on the death of the current Pope (Eugene IV), Felix the Antipope voluntarily resigned his office and was not replaced. The “Great Schism” was at an end.

Holy Orders

It was now that Aeneas finally took holy orders, having refused ordination previously on the grounds that he did not want to give up sex (something which did not appear to have been an insuperable obstacle for many other senior churchmen of the day). His promotion was rapid – a bishop in a year, a cardinal within a decade, and Pope two years after that in 1458.

Pius II (as we shall now call him) was one of the most talented men ever to become Pope, but he was not destined to be a great one. It wasn’t all his fault – circumstances were against him. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks in 1453, to the general horror of Christendom, and Pius thought that his diplomatic skills would be enough to pull together a coalition of European states to mount a crusade to retake the city. It was not to be. Pius invited all the rulers to a conference at Mantua, but most either declined or gave ambiguous replies, and when Pius turned up at Mantua there were almost no other delegates. It was a humiliating illustration of the loss of Papal authority, and Pius concluded that it was the fault of the conciliarist movement of which he had been such a partisan and advocate. He issued a bull declaring any appeals to a general council of the Church to be heretical – in which, obviously aware of the awkward contrast with his previous position, he said “reject Aeneas and accept Pius”.

He didn’t give up. Buoyed by the news that Hungary and Venice were minded to join the crusade, he arranged that all the forces should meet at Ancona on the Adriatic Coast before proceeding. But after an arduous journey he reached Ancona to find virtually no-one there. A few days later the Venetians did arrive, but the fleet was far smaller than expected. It was too late anyway; Pius was dying. When the news came of his death a couple of days later, the “crusaders” quickly turned around and went home. It was over.

Pienza

Let us not end the story with that disappointment though, but return to Pius’s gift to his birthplace, his family and to us in posterity: the beautiful town of Pienza. I have been unable to find a detailed description of what if anything remains from the medieval village of Corsignano, but looking at the map I see no winding medieval lanes. A broad street (now named Corso Il Rosselino after the architect) connects the two main town gates, and all the other streets more or less follow a grid pattern. That looks like deliberate design, and since I don’t believe Corsignano had ancient Roman origins, it is plausible that the previous streetscape was obliterated.

What is beyond doubt is that the focus of the new town is a central Piazza (Piazza Pio II, the Italian for Pius II), bounded three sides by the town hall, the Duomo or cathedral, and the Palazzo Piccolomini, built for Pius’s family and now an expensive hotel.

Pienza Duomo — The Duomo from the town walls at dawn. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back in portrait orientation, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. Forward tilt on front standard to maximise depth of focus. Scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).

The Duomo has been the source of some concern over the years as the apse end of the building was built out over a steep slope and there has been some subsidence. If you enter the building you can see that the floor is lower at the far end. Reinforcement work has been undertaken, and you can have a look around inside without worrying about ending up down in the valley below.

The Courtyard inside the Palazzo Piccolomini. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Looking along the Corso Rosselino towards the Town Hall. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

There are more recent marks of history. As I described in my post on Iris Origo, in 1944 the Val d’Orcia was the scene of some fierce fighting between the advancing British and the retreating Germans. Pienza was in a strategic location to control northward movement. If you look at the gate at the eastern end of town, the Porta al Murello, you will see above the arch a plaque saying “destroyed 15 June 1944, reconstructed October 1955”. The reconstruction is stylistically consistent with the rest of the town (thank goodness) so hopefully it is an accurate replica.

Porta al Murello — The repaired gate. Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

And on the outside of the Duomo (at the end that threatened to slide down the hill) you can see damage from bullets and shrapnel, left deliberately unrepaired as a witness to those difficult times. We must be grateful that the damage was not greater.

War damage to Duomo — War damage to the Duomo. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Sources

Pienza is a major tourist destination, so there are many sites online which describe its history and rebuilding, with varying degrees of historical accuracy. One site of which I had high hopes is one supposedly maintained by the Italian Government on UNESCO sites, but it has been down whenever I tried to reach it. You may have better luck, in which case it is here.

And Aeneas/Pius was an important historical figure, so he is mentioned in many histories, both in books and online. As always The Popes, A History by John Julius Norwich (2011) is both informative and entertaining.

January 2, 2025May 25, 2025

The Abbey of Sant’Antimo in Tuscany

The Abbey of Sant’Antimo is a nine-hundred-year-old Romanesque jewel, and a jewel, moreover, in a setting of great beauty. That setting is a remote Tuscan valley, about ten kilometres south of Montalcino, below the little town of Castelnuovo dell’Abate. We first visited in 1999, and have been back several times since – if we are bringing friends to visit Pienza and the Val d’Orcia, we usually make the trip here via Montalcino.

Map of Sant'Antimo — The location of Sant’Antimo relative to Montalcino, San Quirico d’Orcia and Pienza (click to open in Google Maps).

There seems to have been some sort of monastic foundation here from the 800s, perhaps built over the remains of an ancient Roman villa or temple, but the current building mostly dates from the 1100s.

Which Saint?

The first question is – to whom is this abbey dedicated? Conventionally, most sources I have found say that it is St Anthimus of Rome. He was a 3^rdor 4th-Century martyr of whom little is known, and that mostly legend. Not an obvious dedicatee.

Interestingly, there is another candidate, mentioned in the Italian-language Wikipedia article, but not the English one. He is Anthimus the Deacon of Arezzo, also martyred in the 4^th Century. Arezzo is not terribly far from the Val d’Orcia, and it appears that there was a story that his martyrdom took place somewhere near the abbey’s location, and a small oratory was erected over his remains.

So on the face of it, it would seem much more likely that the abbey is dedicated to the local boy, Anthimus the Deacon from Arezzo. There is only one problem with this: Anthimus the Deacon was an Arian, an adherent of the sect which rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Arianism was condemned as heretical by the Catholic church, which would therefore not have considered this Anthimus eligible for sainthood.

I do have a theory: the memory of Anthimus the Deacon is quite likely to have been kept alive in local tradition. The early Middle Ages were not conspicuous for keeping methodical historical records, and it is plausible enough that such a local tradition of a “Saint” Anthimus was conflated with the official saint, thus keeping the locals happy while avoiding the awkward problem of commemorating someone unacceptable. We have seen similar possible examples of hybrid hagiographies in my posts on Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese and Santa Sabina.

What about Charlemagne?

There is another legend about the foundation of the Abbey in the 800s. In the year 800 Charles, King of the Franks, called “Charles the Great” (Charlemagne in French, or Carlo Magno in Italian), travelled to Rome after defeating the Lombards in northern Italy. There Pope Leo III – to Charles’s surprise, by some accounts – crowned him as Holy Roman Emperor, a title that was to shape the politics of the Middle Ages and continue until the 19^th Century.

Charlemagne would have returned to France on the ancient road known as the Via Francigena, which passes not far to the west of the abbey, on a route now largely followed by the main road known as the SS2. Unsurprisingly, given that the abbey dates from the same era, a story arose that he had been the founder. There is no contemporary evidence of this, and no dedicatory inscriptions, so the best one can say is that it is not impossible, but not very probable. Among the very oldest parts of the abbey is a chapel probably dating from the 9^th-Century which in deference to the Charlemagne legend is known as the “Carolingian Chapel”.

Exterior of Sant'Antimo showing Carolingian Chapel — Exterior view of Sant’Antimo. The small building at the lower left, distinguishable by its much rougher stonework, is the 9th-Century chapel known as the “Carolingian Chapel”, or in Italian the “Cappella di Carlo Magno”. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Interior of the “Carolingian Chapel” in Sant’Antimo. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Medieval Abbey

The building as we see it today was built in the early 1100s – the date of 1118 is carved into the altar step – with money bequeathed by a member of a wealthy local family. There are many interesting features on both the interior and exterior – some part of the original design, some apparently added later, and some which look as if they have been scavenged from older structures.

Sant'Antimo distant view — Distant view of Sant’Antimo. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, scanned on Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).

Sant'Antimo door — Sant’Antimo – the main door with architectural elements possibly scavenged from older sites. Fujifilm GFX 50R medium format digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Sant'Antimo Daniel — Sant’Antimo: carved column capital depicting Daniel in the lions’ den, with the lions devouring his accusers. This is attributed to a French sculptor called the “Master of Cabestany” who was active in the second half of the 12th Century. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Like many medieval abbeys, Sant’Antimo acquired significant landholdings, and the secular power that went along with them. One of its properties, which became the residence of the prior, was the rocca or fortress of Montalcino.

Montalcino Rocca — Tower of the Rocca of Montalcino, once the property of the Abbey of Sant’Antimo, with the town of Montalcino behind. Leonardo da Vinci once drew a picture of the town from the top of this tower. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

But the period of the Abbey’s greatness was relatively short-lived – only a century or so. As Siena expanded its territory southwards, many of the Abbey’s properties were expropriated and with those properties went their rents and other income.

Decline and Rebirth

The end came with the ascension to the Papacy of Aeneas Piccolomini as Pius II in 1458. Before his election Piccolomini had been a famous humanist writer and accomplished papal diplomat (who among other things left an account of a perilous and secret diplomatic mission to Scotland). But importantly he was a local from the small town of Corsignano, not far away. Many medieval and Renaissance Popes enriched their families, but Pius went further and decided to make Corsignano a perfect Renaissance town. He achieved this by demolishing it and having it rebuilt by one of the leading architects of the day. He then renamed it Pienza, after himself. That does explain why today Pienza looks such a beautiful place – it is because it was designed to be so.

Pienza at sunset. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Unluckily for Sant’Antimo, Pius was determined to enrich Pienza as well as to beautify it, and he suppressed the Abbey on charges of moral laxity, transferring its remaining assets to the newly-created diocese of Pienza and Montalcino.

At some point after that Sant’Antimo ceased to function as a religious institution and by the 19^th Century a local farmer was using the Abbey as a barn and its cloisters as a stable.

In the 1870s the fortunes of the beautiful old building took a turn for the better, as the new Italian state took it on and commenced a programme of restoration which took place over the next century or so. At some point it was reconsecrated, but only occasionally used for services. In the 1970s it was used as a location for the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, by Franco Zeffirelli.

Sant'Antimo and Castelnuovo — Sant’Antimo, with the town of Castelnuovo dell’Abate up on the hill behind. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

From 1992 the Abbey again housed a religious community, with the arrival of a group of French monks from the Premonstratensian Order. These were still there in 1999 when we made our first visit, and I remember it as a very peaceful place, with recordings of Gregorian chant playing softly in the interior.

Sant'Antimo interior — Interior of Sant’Antimo. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

The French monks returned to France in 2015. Although the Abbey is now affiliated to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Oliveto, there are no longer any monks resident there.

Sant’Antimo is now administered directly by the diocese with a view to generating some income – it is available for weddings, the monks’ cells are available as accommodation, the upper galleries of the nave can be accessed for a fee, and there is a shop which sells herbal remedies and similar products, and various medieval-themed souvenirs such as bags or mouse mats with reproductions of old manuscripts. It’s all quite tastefully done, and in the Abbey grounds there is an apiary and a garden where medicinal and culinary herbs are grown. The Abbey now has its own website which you can find here. And you have to pay to park your car.

Sant'Antimo cloister and garden — Sant’Antimo, the cloister and garden. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Sant’Antimo, the cloister. Fujifilm GFX 50R medium format digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

It is still a wonderful and peaceful place, and well worth the short drive from the more famous attractions of the Val d’Orcia.

December 12, 2024May 15, 2025

Cola di Rienzo… and Mussolini?

In my post on the return of the Papacy from Avignon to Rome in 1376, I told the story around three rather extraordinary characters: Saint Catherine of Siena, the Spanish Cardinal Gil Àlvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, and the English mercenary leader Sir John Hawkwood. In passing I mentioned a fourth larger-than-life personality known as Cola di Rienzo, and undertook to write a separate article on him if I could assemble enough photographs. So here goes.

Rome During the Avignon Period

Histories talk a lot about what things were like in Avignon when the Papacy was there, because that’s where the action was. But what about back in Rome? Things were pretty bad there, actually. The city had descended into an anarchy in which powerful families like the Colonna and the Orsini fought each other, controlling their districts in the city and retreating to their castles in the towns outside Rome when they needed to. Violent crime was rife, not just fighting between the partisans of the great families, but with cutthroats lurking in the streets and bandits in the countryside. Bodies were fished out of the Tiber on a daily basis, and pilgrims visited Rome at their great peril.

Such pilgrims, and the Romans themselves, were surrounded by the pathetic remains of antiquity – once the centre of the civilised world, the ancient Forum was now known as the “cow pasture”, and the ruins therein were half-buried, thanks to the failure of ancient drainage systems and the innumerable floodings that had taken place. Inside the Aurelian walls, built when Rome was close to its largest extent, much of the former urban area was now woodland, wasteland or pasture, with the inhabited zone shrunk to the area between the Capitoline Hill and the Vatican. To thoughtful Romans, this must have been a constant reminder of the decline of Rome since antiquity.

Young Cola

One such thoughtful Roman was a young man called Nicola Gabrini, known to history as Cola di Rienzo (or de Rienzi). Various stories surround his birth and his early life, the less plausible, such as him being the bastard son of the Holy Roman Emperor, being his own inventions. It seems instead that he was probably the son of an innkeeper and a washerwoman. You can still see the house in which, by tradition, he was born about 1313 and grew up.

Casa dei Crescenzi — The so-called “Casa di Rienzo”. Note the various ancient Roman bits incorporated into the medieval structure. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The “Casa di Rienzo” is beside the Tiber, just downstream of the Tiber Island, and close to the Temple of Hercules Victor and the so-called Bocca della Verità in front of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Rebuilt in 1123, it looks now much as it would have done in Cola di Rienzo’s day. The crowds queueing at the front are not afficionados of medieval architecture, but are waiting to take selfies in front of the so-called “Bocca della Verità” (Mouth of Truth) which is actually an ancient drain cover. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

It isn’t true though. It is not Rienzo’s house, although it is fascinating in its own right. Built sometime after 1040 and correctly known as the House of the Crescenzi, it controlled the ancient watermills on the river, and served as a tollbooth for a nearby bridge. But I have read that Cola probably came from somewhere nearby, so I decided to walk from there to the Capitoline Hill and the Forum, something that he himself must have done himself many times as he mused on past glories.

Tempio di Ercole Vincitore — The circular Temple of Ercole Vincitore (Hercules Victor), with the square Temple of Portunus beyond. The “Casa di Rienzo” is just behind the Temple of Portunus. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Because despite his humble origins, the young Cola somehow got himself at least a partial education, and immersed himself in the idea of Ancient Rome as the most powerful and civilised place in the world – a sad contrast to its contemporary degradation.

Teatro di Marcello — The Theatre of Marcellus, between the “Casa di Rienzo” and the Capitoline Hill. The two upper stories were added in the 16th Century, so it would have been more of a ruin when the young Cola walked past it. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Foro Olitorio — The Forum Holitorium was Rome’s vegetable market, and was next to the Theatre of Marcellus. As far as I can tell the actual market lies beneath the modern road, but this gate to the market still survives. Fujifilm GFX-50R, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

He became known as an enthusiastic amateur antiquarian, prone to wandering about the ancient ruins that lay everywhere about, and practising what turned out to be a powerful gift for oratory on passers-by. But just as formative was the death of his younger brother, murdered by a member of one of the feuding noble families. This tragedy engendered in Cola a deep hatred for those families, and – not unreasonably – a conviction that it was their power that was the cause of Rome’s woes.

Rupe Tarpea — The Tarpeian Rock, seen from below. This was the spot where, in Ancient Rome, traitors and certain other criminals would be hurled to their deaths. No doubt young Cola was reminded of stern ancient Roman justice when he looked up at it. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Foro Romano — The Roman Forum from beside the Capitoline Hill. In Cola’s day this was called the “cow pasture” and the ground level was higher, covering much of the ancient stonework that became visible after excavation. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5 inch film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).,

With the benefit of his education he became a notary, and around 1342 he was sent as part of a mission to Avignon to plead with the newly-elected Pope Clement VI to return to Rome. The mission was unsuccessful, but his eloquent description of the suffering of the Roman people impressed the Pope who, while declining the invitation to return, expressed sympathy and promised to visit (I don’t believe he ever did). He also undertook to make 1350 a holy year, with the promise of an increase in pilgrims and the associated income.

Avignon Palace des Papes — Avignon, the Palace of the Popes, where Cola di Rienzo undertook his unsuccessful mission to persuade the Pope to return to Rome. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

In what was to become a characteristic display of narcissism, Cola reported this back to Rome as an immense victory, for which he alone was responsible.

Seizing Power

Returning to Rome, his behaviour became increasingly flamboyant. He would make public orations dressed in a toga, and organised a campaign of anti-aristocratic graffiti. The noble families made the mistake of treating him as a harmless eccentric, and would invite him to dinner to hear his ranting speeches. Then one day in 1347, when the Colonna and other nobles were out of town, he put on a suit of armour and marched to the Capitoline Hill with his followers, where he announced that he was taking power with the title of “Tribune and Liberator of the Holy Roman Republic”, and that he would exact harsh justice on criminals and enemies of the Roman people. These and other edicts were endorsed by popular acclaim. The Colonna tried to take back control, but instead had to flee for their lives.

The Capitoline Hill, now the Piazza Campidoglio, seen from the steps up from below. The Renaissance palace, now Rome’s town hall, was designed by Michelangelo to replace the medieval building that would have been here in Cola’s day. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, scanned on a Nikon 9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).

At first things went well. Each district of Rome raised its own militia to keep the peace. Violence and banditry ceased and commerce and agriculture thrived. Corruption was punished. Cola himself rode around Rome dressed in brightly-coloured silk costumes of his own design, with a banner carrying his (fake) coat of arms inscribed on it. He summoned the noble families to the Capitol to pay homage, which they did.

Not content with having restored, as he saw it, the ancient Roman Republic, he started on the restoration of the Empire. Emissaries were sent to all the major Italian cities inviting them to send representatives to a national parliament in Rome. It says something for his reputation that he received respectful replies and twenty-five cities undertook to send delegations. He also received encouraging replies from the Pope and the poet Petrarch in Avignon.

Then it all started to go wrong. Cola was becoming visibly afflicted with not just imperial but messianic delusions. The night before the opening of the national parliament, he decided to make himself a knight, spending the time in vigil in the Baptistery of St John Lateran, where he immersed himself in the great granite font in which by (inaccurate) tradition, the Emperor Constantine had been baptised.

St John Lateran Baptistery — The great granite baptismal font in the Baptistery of Saint John Lateran, where Cola spent the night in vigil before proclaiming himself a knight. While the outside of the building and the side chapels look as they must have done in Cola’s day, the interior we see now is largely the result of a comprehensive remodelling by the sculptor Bernini in the 17th Century. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Emerging the next day he proclaimed himself “Candidate of the Holy Spirit, the Knight Nicholas, the Severe and Clement, the Zealot for Italy, the Friend of the World, the Tribune Augustus”. He went on to announce that Rome once again had jurisdiction over the rest of the world, and that he and the Pope would decide who could be Holy Roman Emperor. Needless to say this went a fair way beyond the sort of loose federation the other Italian cities had in mind, and they quickly lost interest.

Even more dangerously, Cola demanded that the Papacy should renounce its temporal power and its Italian territories. Alarmed, the Pope quickly repudiated him and opened negotiations with the Roman nobility. Even those who supported Cola’s vision of the restored imperium of Rome started to doubt whether someone so obviously deranged could pull it off.

Now wearing imperial regalia, Cola brushed off the papal legate sent from Avignon and in a battle which originally looked to have gone the nobles’ way, his popular forces prevailed. But it had been noticed that during the battle he himself had shown distinct cowardice, which lost him much support. Then the Pope issued a bull instructing the Roman people to depose him – with the implication that if not, the announced Holy Year, with all its profits, would not go ahead. Cola decided to abdicate, and left the city. The papal legate took possession of Rome in the name of the Pope, and declared that the Holy Year would go ahead as planned.

Accompanied only by his fantastic dreams, Rienzo wandered slowly north, staying with remote hermit communities on the way. Eventually he ended up at the court of Charles IV, King of Bohemia, to whom he proposed that Charles would become Holy Roman Emperor while he would be Duke of Rome. Understandably dubious, Charles referred to the Pope, who instructed the Archbishop of Prague to put Rienzo under arrest for heresy and send him to Avignon.

Things would have gone very badly indeed for Cola there had Pope Clement not died soon after his arrival, but Clement’s replacement, Innocent VI, looked more favourably on his strange prisoner. Cardinal Albornoz, whom we met in my earlier post, had recently been given the job of subduing the independently-minded Italian cities, and Innocent thought that Cola might be able to assist him with Roman hearts and minds. So his sentence of excommunication was lifted, and he was released to return to Rome, seven years after having fled.

Initially he was welcomed back, but he behaved as a tyrant rather than a liberator, raising money with arbitrary taxation and even taking wealthy people prisoner for ransom. It was not long before an ugly mob gathered in front of the palace on the Capitol, shouting for his death. Failing to calm them by appearing on a balcony, Cola lost his nerve. He cut off his beard, put on an old cloak and attempted to slip away through the crowd, occasionally shouting “death to the tyrant!” for verisimilitude. But he was recognised by his gold rings and bracelets, dragged to the bottom of the steps, and, after an agonising interval, run through with a sword. His body was dragged away and hung up by the heels.

It would be five hundred years before anyone else talked about uniting Italy.

Cola in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries

Cola di Rienzo’s tragic – or tragi-comic – story might have ended up as something of interest only to scholars of medieval history, but in the 19^th Century it came to more general public attention. Italian patriots, not unnaturally, saw him as an early member of their brotherhood. Elsewhere, Italian aspirations to unification and freedom from foreign rule were supported by Italophile liberal opinion in several countries, particularly Britain, and in 1835 the prolific Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton published Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes (Rienzi was a common alternative name for Rienzo). In this novel Bulwer-Lytton takes the framework of Cola’s story and hangs on it a tale of love, betrayal and intrigue in his famously prolix language. (It was Bulwer-Lytton, of course, who started one of his novels with ”It was a dark and stormy night…”)

Holman Hunt Rienzi — William Holman Hunt, “Rienzi Vowing Revenge for the Death of his Brother” (1848) (public domain, click to enlarge).

Apparently Verdi contemplated an opera based on Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, but Richard Wagner got to it first, with a much-simplified version of Bulwer-Lytton’s complicated plot. Wagner’s Rienzi is a somewhat Lohengrin-like heroic knight, most unlike the original Cola. That Rienzi is seldom heard today may be due to the fact that the music is a bit turgid even by Wagnerian standards, but probably more so because it was Hitler’s favourite opera, during a performance of which Hitler later claimed to have formed the ambition to unite the German-speaking peoples. The overture was played before Nazi rallies, and Hitler possessed a manuscript copy of the score.

Rienzi poster — Postcard reproduction of a poster for Wagner’s Rienzi (click to enlarge)

When it comes to fascist dictators though, it is Benito Mussolini who is now most often compared to Cola di Rienzo. The parallels are inescapable – the fantasies of restoring ancient glory, the bombastic speeches, the dressing up, and the contrast between violent policy and personal timidity. In the 1920s as in the 1340s, people thought the funny costumes and the flamboyant oratory were a bit strange, but at least he made the trains run on time (the 14^th-Century equivalent would have been Rienzo’s cleaning up of Roman law and order).

But most of all, people were struck by the initial popular adulation and general admiration, followed by the fall, the attempted return, and then both ending with their corpses strung up by the heels by the mob.

It is an object lesson in historiographical fashion. Poor old Cola was rediscovered by history as a noble hero (a description with which he would have heartily agreed), then within a few generations his story was rewritten to make him a strutting deluded buffoon – all because of things that happened hundreds of years after he died.

The medieval palace at the top of the Capitoline Hill from which he harangued the crowds, and from which he then made his ill-fated attempt to flee, was knocked down in the Renaissance and replaced by the present building, designed by Michelangelo.

If you walk up the long stairs to the Capitoline Hill, at the foot of which Cola met his end, about halfway up on the left you will see a statue of a hooded figure, standing on a plinth made of recycled ancient marble, holding out his arm in a declamatory gesture. Most people – like me at first – pass it without noticing. But if you look at the base of the statue you will see the words “Cola Dei Rienzi”. The statue is clearly of the young idealistic Cola rather than the older, sadder, one.

Rienzo statue — Rienzo’s statue beside the Campidoglio steps. Note a certain similarity to Mussolini’s stance in the earlier picture. Fujifilm GFX-50R, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

It seems that the statue was commissioned to mark the 25^th anniversary of the capture of Rome from the Papacy by the Italian Army, but once it was ready the government had second thoughts. Worried that it would upset Pope Pius IX, who as we saw in this post refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Italian state, they pondered what to do about it. After various locations were considered and rejected, the statue was erected discreetly and without ceremony beside the steps to the Campidoglio, in 1887.

The Cardinal and Napoleon’s Sister

Most of the visitors wandering through the Borghese Gallery in Rome probably don’t give all that much thought to the fellow who started it all – I certainly didn’t the first time I came. This is a shame, because his is an interesting if mildly unsavoury story. Visitors almost certainly give a bit more thought to a later occupant of the Villa Borghese, because she is hard to miss. But let’s start at the beginning.

Scipione Borghese

Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633) embodied much that was bad, and some that was good, about the Catholic Church in the early 17^th Century (anglophone art historians may call him by the Latin version of his name, “Scipio”). We will start with the bad: among his many, many, official titles, probably the most important was Cardinalis Nepos – “Cardinal-Nephew”.

You read that right. It was so common for Popes to appoint a relative – often a nephew, sometimes an illegitimate son – to high office, that it became an official position. It was assumed that the first priority of any new Pope would be enriching and ennobling his own family, so it would be best to make that a full-time job for another person. And who better to trust that job to than a family member? The English word “nepotism” was coined specifically to describe this practice.

Scipione was an actual nephew. His father was called Francesco Caffarelli, but his mother was a Borghese, and her brother, his uncle Camillo Borghese, paid for his education. In 1605 Camillo was elected Pope, taking the name Paul V. He adopted Scipione as his son, quickly appointed him a cardinal (in those days the tiresome process of climbing through the ecclesiastical ranks was optional for people with connections) and made him Papal Secretary.

Camillo Borghese, Pope Paul V, by Bernini (Creative Commons Licence; click to enlarge)

Scipione acquired many jobs and titles – in locations which would have made it impossible for him to have been personally present at the same time, but that is not how it worked. If you were, for example, both Abbot of Subiaco and Archbishop of Bologna (as Scipione was), you didn’t have to be in either place. Instead you received the income but stayed in Rome and employed deputies to discharge most of the actual duties. With at least a couple of dozen such offices, Scipione quickly became very wealthy indeed. With wealth came power, and he was able to persuade a few landowners to sell significant estates to him or other members of the family on very favourable terms – by making them “offers they couldn’t refuse”. According to the Wikipedia article he purchased entire towns, and the Borghese ended up owning about a third of the land south of Rome. All the while, his uncle Paul V looked on benignly.

So what was the good part? His legacy of art and architecture. It seems that Scipione may not have wanted the top job for himself – he never seems to have been considered for Pope. He was an enthusiastic builder; inheriting the Palazzo Borghese in Rome from his uncle, he enlarged and modernised it. He also commissioned or modernised several churches. In architectural terms what he is most remembered for are the Borghese Gardens – a large area of former vineyards on the edge of the old city of Rome which he had developed as a park, and the beautiful villa he built there. But what he wanted to do most of all was to collect, patronise and admire art, and the Villa Borghese was – as it still is – the perfect place to house his collection.

Galleria Borghese — Villa Borghese, interior. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

Villa Borghese ceiling — Villa Borghese, ceiling painting showing classical themes. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

Art, Ancient and Modern

Art collecting and patronage wasn’t particularly new at the start of the 17^th Century. Over a hundred years earlier the pattern of the discerning Renaissance prince had been set by Lorenzo de’ Medici (“The Magnificent”) and others like Duke Federigo da Montefeltro and Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. But Scipione seems to have taken it to a new level. In addition to art by his contemporaries, he was an enthusiastic collector of ancient Roman statuary; again this was nothing new, but the taste for collecting ancient art meant that collections were available to be bought, and new finds would be coming on the market from time to time.

Roman antiquities in the Borghese Gallery, with faux-Roman “grottesque” decorations behind. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Isis as Ceres — Ancient statue, originally of the goddess Isis, restored and converted to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and corn, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Perugino Virgin — Virgin and Child by Perugino, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Crucifixion with Saints by Pinturicchio, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Raphael Deposition — Deposition from The Cross by Raphael, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Disreputable artists – Bernini and Caravaggio

Two artists who will always be associated with Scipione Borghese are Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Michelangelo Merisi, the latter better known to history as “Caravaggio” after his birthplace in Lombardy. Both behaved reprehensibly in their private lives, but both were geniuses. It seems to me that in their virtues and their vices they represent something about the time and the place – in early 17^th-Century Italy emotions were intensely felt and intensely expressed.

Bernini Persephone — Bernini, The Abduction of Persephone (Proserpine) by Hades (Pluto), Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

Bernini was recognised in childhood as “a future Michelangelo” and he certainly was – his ability to conjure life out of cold marble has probably never been matched. Both Scipione and his uncle commissioned major works from him, including the baldacchino (altar canopy) in St Peters, and the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona.

St Peters Baldacchino — St Peter’s Cathedral, showing Bernini’s baldacchino. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

But some of his unquestioned masterpieces are in the Villa Borghese. After the death of Paul V, the next couple of Popes continued their patronage.

Bernini Aeneas — Bernini: Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius flee the fall of Troy. This scene from Virgil’s Aeneid was particularly popular in Italian art because the Trojan hero Aeneas, carrying his father and the household gods, escaped the destruction of Troy and in due course went on to found Rome. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bernini Apollo and Daphne — Bernini: Apollo and Daphne. The scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the nymph Daphne escapes the god’s advances by turning herself into a laurel tree. Her fingers are becoming leaves, her toes roots, and her skin bark. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

The darker side of Bernini’s character was shown when he started an affair with a woman called Costanza, the wife of one of his workshop assistants. However in time Costanza also had an affair with Bernini’s younger brother Luigi, who worked in the same studio. When Bernini found out about it he attacked Luigi in a jealous rage, chasing him through the streets of Rome into Santa Maria Maggiore. Bernini then had one of his servants go to Costanza’s house and slash her face several times with a razor. The servant was jailed for the assault, and Costanza was jailed for adultery. Bernini, though, thanks to friends in the highest of places, got away with it completely. After exonerating Bernini, the Pope ordered him to marry a Roman woman called Caterina Tezio with whom he was to have 11 children, which appears to have settled him down a bit.

Bernini David — Bernini: David. The young David gets ready to use his sling. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The overlapping worlds of art and Papal politics in Rome in the 17^th Century were spiteful places. Bernini had plenty of enemies and when in time the Papacy came into the hands of a different faction, they struck. He was falsely accused of incompetence in his design for two bell towers for St Peters, which were starting to crack (subsequent investigations showed that the builder of the foundations was to blame). But he was fined a massive sum and withdrew from public life. An unfinished statue in the Borghese Gallery, titled Truth Unveiled by Time, is a work he undertook to console himself that the truth would come out in the end, as indeed it did.

Bernini Truth Unveiled — Bernini: Truth Unveiled by Time, unfinished sculpture, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

If Bernini’s was the life of an artist disfigured by a crime, then Caravaggio’s was a life of crime ennobled by art. Caravaggio’s list of offences would have been as long as one’s proverbial arm, or much longer, unless it had been in very small writing, and on both sides of the page. Yet he was as much of a genius as Bernini, and even more influential. More so than any of his predecessors, he understood how light works, and his use of chiaroscuro (literally “light and dark”) transformed painting. For that reason I feel that every photographer should study him – “photography”, after all, is Greek for “painting with light”.

But if you really want to see where Caravaggio has had a great influence, look at modern cinematography. I am an inveterate watcher of films without sound, over other people’s shoulders in aeroplanes. In those circumstances one tends to notice the visual aspects, and on one such occasion it occurred to me that a film that had received much praise for its cinematography was exemplifying Caravaggio’s style very well, with extreme lighting contrasts adding drama to the plot – whatever that might have been.

Caravaggio St Jerome — Saint Jerome Translating the Bible into Latin, by Caravaggio, Borghese Gallery. The intense dark backgrounds of Caravaggio’s paintings, plus his glossy oil paints, made it very hard to photograph these without picking up reflections from the strong lighting in the gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

When the young Caravaggio arrived in Rome – characteristically he was on the run from the authorities in Milan after wounding a police officer – he quickly came to Scipione Borghese’s attention. A couple of his early works are in the gallery, and the story of their acquisition gives us some insight into Scipione’s modus operandi. Caravaggio had been working in the studio of a man called Giuseppe Cesari, and these paintings were in Cesari’s collection. Scipione made Cesari an insultingly low offer for them, which Cesari refused. He should have realised that he was being made an offer he couldn’t refuse, because Scipione then arranged to have him arrested on trumped-up charges, and then simply appropriated the entire collection, including the two Caravaggios.

Caravaggio Sick Bacchus — Caravaggio, self-portrait as “Sick Bacchus”. This youthful work was one of those “acquired” from Cesari’s collection by underhand means. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

The government of the Papal States was meticulous in its record-keeping, and Caravaggio’s police interviews fill many pages. A man of fiery temper, he frequented low inns and brothels, associated with criminals and prostitutes, and was frequently arrested for brawling in the street. To make matters worse, he claimed that his status as painter to various noblemen made him a gentleman and gave him the right to wear a sword. This was not actually true, and got him arrested several times for carrying a weapon illegally. Inevitably he ended up using that sword (the quarrel was over a prostitute called Fillide Melandroni who had modelled for him) and this time he ended up on a murder charge that even his influential patrons could not get him off. He was sentenced to death by decapitation, and fled Rome with that hanging over him. It can be no coincidence that many of Caravaggio’s subsequent paintings featured severed heads – Holofernes, Goliath, John the Baptist etc – and that in some cases those severed heads were self-portraits.

Caravaggio David and Goliath — Caravaggio, David and Goliath, with Goliath being a self-portrait, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

To spend more time on Caravaggio’s many misadventures would take this article off in the wrong direction, so let it suffice for now to say that eventually he was able to secure the promise of a pardon from – who else? – Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and was on his way back to Rome when he died, in slightly mysterious circumstances, but probably of nothing more sinister than a fever.

Caravaggio may hold the record among great artists for the number of his paintings that were rejected. Typically he would receive a commission from a wealthy art lover for a painting of a particular subject – The Virgin and Child, the Conversion of Saint Paul, whatever – and would produce something marvellously realistic, with models who were beggars, thieves or prostitutes. The authorities in the church or institution in which the painting was to be hung would then reject it in horror. Dirty real people were not what they wanted their congregations to see. Still, there was always Cardinal Scipione Borghese to resolve the embarrassing situation by buying the unwanted picture – at a discount, of course.

Caravaggio Maddona dei Palafrenieri — Caravaggio, Madonna and Christ with St Anne, Borghese Gallery. The Madonna is helping the infant Christ crush the head of a snake, watched by his grandmother. This painting was commissioned by the confraternity of Papal Grooms for their chapel in St Peter’s, but the church authorities hated it, not just for its unconventional theme, but because the model for the Madonna was Maddalena Antonietti, a prostitute, professional artists’ model and sometime mistress of Caravaggio’s (she is certainly very pretty). When it was rejected, Scipione Borghese was happy to add it to his collection. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Scandals

So we know that Scipione, in addition to having an eye for great art, didn’t mind associating with some of the seamier elements in society. He wouldn’t be the last wealthy and powerful person to enjoy that sort of thing. But there were other rumours too. Some see a strong homoerotic element in his choices of art, such as the Hermaphrodite, and some of the pictures painted for him by Caravaggio. I have even seen a description of Apollo and Daphne which suggests that Daphne’s transformation was a veiled reference to changing sex (I have to say that I didn’t see it myself).

The Hermaphrodite, Borghese Gallery. This is a Roman copy of a classic Greek statue of a person with a body that looks female in every respect except for its male genitalia. There is a version of this in the Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme where the male parts are clearly visible, but here in the Borghese Gallery the management has rather coyly positioned it so you can’t see them. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

But as is often the case in Italy, the best contemporary sources of rumour and gossip are the diplomatic and espionage reports which went back to other Italian states. According to these, Scipione had several homosexual affairs, and arranged for his lovers to be appointed to church offices – even to be made cardinals. There is also a shocking story about a young man who was murdered by Scipione’s servants after leaving the Cardinal’s bed.

Caravaggio John the Baptist — Caravaggio, John the Baptist, Borghese Gallery. It is possible that Caravaggio painted this rather louche-looking boy as an offering to Scipione to persuade the cardinal to pardon him. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Scipione died in 1633, aged 56, and is buried in the Borghese Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The position of “Cardinal-Nephew” was abolished in 1692; after the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation, being that blatant about the material benefits of Papal office was presumably felt to be in poor taste.

Pauline Bonaparte

The Borghese family had come a long way from their middle-class origins in Siena, and Scipione had done his job as Cardinal-Nephew very well. He was an astute investor and the family’s income from their enormous property holdings meant that they would no longer be dependent on playing the risky game of Papal patronage for access to wealth and power. What is more, marriages with ancient Roman aristocratic families like the Orsini and the Aldobrandini meant they acquired those families’ fortunes as well as their princely titles.

Once such prince, Camillo Borghese, enlisted in the Napoleonic army and became a general. In 1803 he married Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Bonaparte.

Pauline had an interesting life; both her original marriage to the French General Leclerc and, after his death, to Camillo Borghese, were entered into at her brother’s direction. She accompanied Leclerc to Saint-Domingue in the West Indies (modern Haiti) where he recaptured the island after a slave rebellion, and became its Governor-General. After his death she returned to France and was then married off to Camillo in the hope of improving relations between the Romans and their French rulers (it didn’t work).

Perhaps because these were arranged marriages, it seems that Pauline felt under no obligation to remain faithful to either husband, and she acquired a reputation for promiscuity which she seems to have enjoyed. When Camillo arranged for the leading Italian sculptor of the day, Antonio Canova, to create a statue of her as the virgin huntress goddess Diana, she is said to have insisted on being portrayed as Venus because no-one would believe she was a virgin.

Canova Pauline Bonaparte — Canova, Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix, holding the apple that she won when the shepherd Paris decided that she was the most beautiful goddess, Borghese Gallery. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Since Pauline’s naked body in the statue is just a standard idealised classical nude, it is of course perfectly possible that she only posed for the sculpture of her head and face, and that Canova finished it without using her as the model. But Pauline would not want to ruin a good story any more than the rest of us would, and scandalised Roman society by insisting that she had indeed posed nude. When a shocked Roman matron asked how she could possibly have done so, Pauline replied that it had not been difficult because she had ensured that there was a stove in the studio to keep her warm.

Even though Napoleon had treated her as diplomatic currency, in the end she was more loyal to him than any of their other siblings. When he was deposed and exiled to Elba she liquidated all her own assets and moved to Elba to be near him and to use the money to improve his living conditions. After Waterloo and his final exile to St Helena, she moved back to Rome and lived out the remainder of her brief but eventful life under Papal protection.

The Sala Dei Notari in Perugia

The Sala dei Notari (Room of the Notaries) in Perugia is not just an imposing and beautiful space, but something that tells us how Perugians thought of themselves, in the Middle Ages and today.

To visit, or live in, a central Italian town is to be constantly aware of the Middle Ages. Not just the architecture, but the medieval town districts, and the celebrations and parades that I documented in my posts on The Serious Business of Dressing Up and its successor. Over time I have come to think that there is more to this than the admittedly great fun of a street parade in funny costumes. To some extent I believe that it is because towns are celebrating what is seen as a golden age. Why? It is unlikely to be the regular wars and the bubonic plague. But it is likely to be about community memories of identity and self-determination. Let us explore that idea in the context of Perugia.

An enjoyable aspect of central Italian cities – to the history nerd anyway – is the fact that many of the noble civic buildings are still used for public administration. These buildings generally date from the period of the independent communes in the 11^th-13^th Centuries, when cities developed their own institutions of self-government – law courts, regulation of commerce and public works, and self-defence.

One of the best examples is in Perugia. In my post on The Buried Streets of Perugia I wrote about how the subjugation of Perugia by Pope Paul III led to the relocation of power to the new Papal fortress built at the southern end of the town, and how, during the centuries of neglect that followed, the magnificent Gothic civic buildings at the other end of town nonetheless survived. But before Perugia fell, there were few better examples of the assertive, self-governing and self-confident medieval Italian city.

Perugia Palazzo dei Priori — Perugia – Piazza IV Novembre, the Fontana Maggiore and the Palazzo dei Priori on a busy Sunday morning in late summer. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

After the defeat of Papal forces by the new Italian government in 1860, the fortress was demolished and replaced by the palaces which – with obvious symbolism – housed the government of the Region of Umbria and the Province of Perugia as elements of the modern Italian State. Meanwhile, at the northern end of town, by the Duomo, the Palazzo dei Priori continued to house the local government offices, as it does today, along with the excellent National Gallery of Umbria.

While there is much to admire about the period of the independent communes, one very unfortunate aspect – which was to fatally weaken Italy in following centuries – was the intense factionalism of the time. City fought city, and internally, factions and powerful families fought each other. These factions were often proxies for the overarching great-power rivalry of the Middle Ages, between the Papacy (the Guelphs) and the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines), but the existence of that rivalry did not cause Italian bellicosity, it simply channelled it.

The Perugians were famously warlike, and there can have been few cities in central Italy they did not fight with. They were particularly unable to get along with their near neighbours in Assisi, and in 1202 there was an encounter between Perugia and Assisi at a place called Collestrada, near today’s Perugia Airport. In that battle a wealthy young man serving as a soldier in the militia of Assisi was taken prisoner and spent a year in Perugian captivity, where he underwent a spiritual conversion. His name was Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, but history knows him by his nickname Francesco – or in English, Francis of Assisi.

Francis’s peaceful message didn’t change things very much. In the photograph below, the iron chains and bar that hang above the door of the Palazzo dei Priori were taken from the gates of the town of Torrita di Siena after a battle between Perugian and Sienese forces in 1358. The gryphons, by the way, are the symbol of Perugia, and you can see them everywhere in the city, and also on packets of “Baci” chocolates made by the Perugina chocolate company.

In the end, the factionalism and fighting doomed the independent communes. Fighting created mercenary armies, their commanders became warlords and strongmen who seized power, and some of those went on to become counts, marquises and dukes. They in turn fell to foreign powers, or in central Italy, to the Papacy.

But those collapses of self-government did not happen straight away. That they did not happen sooner was due in part to an admirable institution devised to deliver effective government while keeping factionalism under control. This was rule by a podestà. A podestà was an official – well-born, but not of the higher ranks of the nobility, typically of the rank of knight – and typically with legal experience. Crucially, a podestà had to come from somewhere else, so could not have ties to one of the local factions. And he served for a fixed term (usually two years) so he was not around long enough to “go native” with one of those local factions. A podestà was not a dictator, more like a chief magistrate. His authority was balanced by councils and assemblies, other magistrates and the factions themselves, but he was expected to act as a mediator between them all, and take decisions in the best interest of the city as a whole.

In some places the podestà was felt to be too closely aligned to the interests of the gentry rather than the growing middle class, (populares in Latin) so an additional official position was created, that of capitano del popolo, who like the podestà was appointed from somewhere else and served a fixed term. Perugia too took that route.

In Perugia today, at the top of a flight of stairs leading up to the Palazzo dei Priori from what is now called Piazza IV Novembre near the famous Fontana Maggiore, is a large room called the Sala dei Notari, or “room of the notaries”. It is a large chamber, originally used for meetings of the popular assembly. Later, after Perugia came under Papal control and popular assemblies ceased to be meaningful, it became the headquarters of the guild of notaries, from which it takes its modern name.

These days the room is once again an assembly hall, of sorts, where public meetings are held, lectures given, and city councillors meet. Weddings are held there, and last time I was there they were holding a prizegiving for a fun run. But what a magnificent place it is to hold any kind of ceremony.

The Sala dei Notari. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The frescoes date from the 13^th Century, and some depict biblical stories, Aesop’s Fables, and other improving maxims. There are also commemorations of the medieval podestàs of Perugia in the form of their coats of arms. All were, however, heavily restored in 1860 by a local artist named Tassi – and show it, especially the podestà memorials. The style is 19^th-Century and the writing is in the sort of Victorian mock-gothic script that in England one sees in calligraphy by Augustus Pugin and William Morris. Nonetheless the effect is still very striking, and what is more, this was not just a simple exercise in nostalgia or fashionable neo-gothicism, but a historically significant act. Look at the date. 1860 was the year that Perugians finally – after several bloody failures – threw off the Papal yoke and became part of united Italy. Of course they were going to emphasise and celebrate anything that reminded them of their historical autonomy.

A selection of these commemorations follows, with my attempts at translating the (often abbreviated) Latin.

The noble and puissant knight Gozzadinus de Gozzadini of Bologna, honourable podestà of the city of Perugia, AD 1395. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The noble and puissant knight Minus Karnli de Montani of Siena chief magistrate (?) of the commune of Perugia 1360. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The puissant man Pazinus, Lord of Palle de Strozis of Florence, honourable Podestà of the people of Perugia, 1435. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Two people commemorated here: Rodolfus de Panciatici of Pistorio, podestà in 1347, and somebody called Gabrieli from the Piccolomini family, from Siena, Capitano of the Comune of Perugia in the same year. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The noble and puissant knight Enricus de Obizi of Lucca, honourable podestà of the city of Perugia, 1378. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Noble and puissant knight Jonus Jacopus de Gianfigliazzi of Florence, honourable podestà of Perugia, 1421. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Jhoannes de Boccadeferris — Gentle knight Lord Jhoannes de Boccadeferri of Bologna, honourable podestà, 1417. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Noble and puissant man, Lord Ciprianus de Manassei of Terni, honourable podestà of Perugia, 1433. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

I am struck by how far away some of these podestàs come from: Bologna, Siena, Lucca and so on. But these are all other independently-minded cities, and presumably shared the Perugians’ commitment to self-determination. It is appropriate, therefore, that the Perugini should have honoured them at the time, appropriate too that their descendants should have renewed the honour in 1860 after the end of Papal domination, and appropriate still that their coats of arms should look down on the Perugini today as they get married, debate council taxes, and hand out medals.

September 2, 2024September 22, 2024

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome

In 2019 I wrote a post called The Garden of Livia Drusilla in which I described a visit to the Museum of Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome. It is a museum that we think is well worth one’s time. It isn’t right at the top of the charts like the Capitoline Museum, the Borghese Gallery or the Villa Farnesina, so it is usually not too crowded, and it is close to Termini station, thus easy to get to. The palazzo is a large 19^th-Century building built on the pattern of a 16^th-Century Renaissance palace, and the terme from which the palazzo gets its name are the Baths of Diocletian, close nearby.

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: Altar to Mars and Venus. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Everything in the Palazzo Massimo is from ancient Rome. That 2019 article put particular emphasis on the amazing frescoes recovered from the villa of the Empress Livia, wife of Augustus (and villainess of Robert Graves’s novel I Claudius). To me those frescoes are still the main reason to visit, but in hindsight I was a bit jaded in my attitude to the rest of the museum, partly because of what one might call “gallery fatigue” (a common affliction among visitors to Rome) and also because the place was overrun with bored schoolchildren.

Recently we paid a return visit and I found myself in a much more receptive mood. It was August and all the kids were at the beach. And museums and galleries are mostly air-conditioned; an encouragement to cultural virtue in hot weather if ever there was one. Instead of reflecting on how all the marble busts start to look the same after a while, this time we noticed the differences between the styles of different eras, and between realistic busts done from life compared with mass-produced figures of emperors and empresses.

Portrait of a Woman — Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: portrait of an elderly lady, possibly for a funerary monument, but surely done from life, given the realistic features. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

It was also interesting to see the changes in fashion. It is curious and – to the history nerd – somewhat irritating that people seem to think the ancient Romans never changed the way they looked. In art and cinema, Roman clothing, armour, weapons and so forth look the same whatever the period. From the oath of the Horatii in pre-Republican days, through to the Punic Wars, the Caesars and the fall of the empire in the 5^th Century AD, everyone dresses like Augustus and Livia, senators wear togas and the soldiers wear helmets and armour like those on Trajan’s column. But this is a period of six or seven hundred years – it is as if we in the 21^st Century were all still wearing Elizabethan ruffs around our necks, and our military were wearing steel breastplates and carrying pikes.

Principessa — Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: bust described as “portrait of a Julio-Claudian princess”, showing a hairstyle that must have been many hours in the making. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Portrait of the Empress Plotina, wife of the Emperor Trajan. She was an adherent of the Epicurean school of philosophy, and is credited with many of the good policies of Trajan’s reign. Having no children, she persuaded Trajan to adopt Hadrian as his heir. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

A good museum, with informative labels on the exhibits, can go a long way to dispel the impression that Rome never changed. Given that most of the realistic statues in the museum are busts, the most obvious indicators of changing fashions are hairstyles, and the presence or absence of beards for men.

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: Head of a Man. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Nemi Ships

One very impressive section contains remarkably preserved bronze fittings from the “Nemi Ships”. Nemi is a small volcanic lake southeast of Rome, sacred in antiquity, where the Emperor Caligula had two large and luxurious ships built. They seem to have been partly for religious ceremonies but also, like modern superyachts, they were symbols of great wealth and power. After Caligula’s assassination the ships were deliberately overloaded with rocks and sunk, presumably on the orders of Claudius. They were recovered in the 1930s after the Italian Navy temporarily drained the lake, and housed in a purpose-built museum. Alas they were destroyed by fire in 1944 (either as a result of Allied artillery or German sabotage; opinions vary). Fortunately several of the bronze pieces survived and are now housed in the Palazzo Massimo.

Nemi ship protome — Bronze “protome” (sculpted head) of a lion, holding a mooring ring, from the Nemi ships. The exhibits were behind thick glass and I was unable to take many pictures without reflections, so this picture is from Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge).

The relics of the Nemi ships are in amazing condition and show extraordinary workmanship, as you might expect when Caligula was the customer. No doubt the penalty clauses in the contract were severe.

The Frescoes and Mosaics

For us, the main attractions of the museum are the frescoes and mosaics, which I covered in my first post. These are wall and floor decorations recovered from several ancient villas in and around Rome, and in some cases displayed in spaces that are the same size as the original rooms. It does give you a bit of an idea of what it would have been like to be in one of those brightly-coloured rooms.

Palazzo Massimo Frescoes — Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: a frescoed room from the “Transtiberina” villa, found in the gardens of the modern Villa Farnesina when the Tiber embankments were being built. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

I don’t propose to duplicate material from that earlier post, especially the frescoes from Livia’s villa. But here are some additional pictures. The dark frescoes are apparently from a dining room, where the black colouring would not show smoke stains from the fires used to warm the food.

Dining room fresco — Fresco from a dining room. The description rather coyly says that the pictures are illustrations of popular stories, but looking at them, one would love to know more. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Mosaic of cat and ducks — Mosaic of a cat killing a bird, and a pair of ducks. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Caryatids supporting columns beyond which are rural scenes alternating with what look like dramatic masks. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Caryatid — A caryatid in close-up. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Greek stuff

It is well-known that the ancient Romans looked up to the Greeks culturally, and had a bit of an inferiority complex about them, even after having incorporated them into the empire. After all, it was from Magna Graecia (the Greek colonies in southern Italy and Sicily) that the Romans, when still a bunch of cattle thieves in their huts by the Tiber, were first exposed to advanced art and philosophy. Conventionally they also adopted the Greek pantheon as well, but I suppose we will never know the extent to which the Olympian gods matched the already-existing local Latin deities (my guess is, probably a lot: there’s nothing particularly novel in having a God of War, a Goddess of Love and so on).

Greek statues — Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: Greek (or Greek-inspired) statues. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Antinous. The Emperor Hadrian took Philhellenism to extremes, having a Greek youth called Antinous as his lover. After Antinous mysteriously drowned in the Nile, Hadrian had him deified. Here he is is pictured as Sylvanus, god of the woods. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Many of the more expensive bronze statues found in Italy are the product of Greek workshops, and we know that because some of the most spectacular survivals have been dredged up from the wrecks of the ships on which they were being imported.

Presumably most of the cheaper marble statues copied from Greek originals came from local Italian workshops, including the many copies of the diskobòlos (discus thrower), originally in bronze by the sculptor Myron in around 450 BC. Given the number of copies that have been found, it was obviously a top seller, which is fortunate as the original is lost. Like modern copies of Michelangelo’s David, the diskobòloi came in varying sizes and qualities.

Diskobòlos — Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: A Roman copy of the Greek “diskobòlos” statue. Fujifilm X-Pro3 Camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The bronze statues were made using the “lost wax” technique, where the original was sculpted in wax, then encased in clay. The clay was heated, the wax melted and drained out, and the resulting clay mould could be used to cast the final bronze.

There are two extraordinary examples of such bronze statues in the Palazzo Massimo, both apparently of Greek manufacture. Both were excavated on the slopes of Rome’s Quirinal Hill in 1885, and it is thought that they would have originally decorated the nearby Baths of Constantine. They appeared to have been deliberately buried to safeguard them, perhaps during the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 AD. Burying them turns out to have been a good idea – going undiscovered for so long almost certainly preserved them, because in the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance, Popes tended to order rediscovered ancient bronze statues to be melted down for re-use in religious art or even cannon.

We are used to seeing such bronze statues with empty eyes, but this is misleading. The originals had realistic-looking eyes made from coloured stone.

The first statue is known by art historians as the “Hellenistic Prince”, and it is not known who it is intended to be. It might be an actual ruler of one of the Hellenistic kingdoms (that is, the states founded by the generals of Alexander the Great after Alexander’s death). Or it might be a depiction of a Roman emperor, but so highly idealised that the identity of the subject eludes us. Either way, there is a great deal of character in the depiction.

But in terms of sheer humanity that speaks to us across the centuries, the Hellenistic Prince comes a long way second to the “Resting Boxer”.

The boxer is seated after a fight, bleeding from wounds (picked out in copper) and clearly exhausted. He bears the scars of many bouts, one of which broke his nose, and others which left him with cauliflower ears.

The “Resting Boxer”. When we were there the statue was roped off so I could not get a full-length picture. This one is from Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge).

This would have been a great work in any era, but – for it was probably made between 350 and 50 BC – it is very special to see something that is so very old yet has such emotional force for us today. I found myself humming The Boxer by Paul Simon.

“In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade, and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame, ‘I am leaving, I am leaving,’ but the fighter still remains.”

A statue from 350 BC and a song from 1969 AD, and the same emotional reaction.

People talk and write a lot of nonsense about art, and what it is for. My view is simple, and not particularly fashionable. When I see a work like this, or one of the mosaics in Monreale, or I listen to a piece of music by Monteverdi, I am experiencing an emotional response which to varying degrees is not unlike what someone long dead might have felt under the same circumstances.

Great art reminds you what it is to be human.

August 16, 2024May 24, 2025

Catherine of Siena, Cardinal Albornoz and Sir John Hawkwood

This is a story about how three very different individuals were involved in the return of the Papacy to Italy in the 14th Century.

In my article about the Avignon “captivity” I talked about how the French King basically took over the Papacy, moved it to Avignon in Provence, and stacked it with Frenchmen. Now I am going to talk about its return to Rome, almost 70 years later. It’s a complicated story, which I propose to simplify by concentrating on three people, only one of whom – Saint Catherine of Siena – was Italian. The other two are a Spaniard and an Englishman. Gosh, where do I start?

Catherine of Siena

Let us start with Catherine, whom history has long credited with being a major force in pressuring the last Avignonese Pope (Gregory XI) to return with his curia to Rome. Apparently modern scholarly opinion varies on just how influential she was, but as we shall see, she had by then acquired a reputation for holiness. Giving her the credit might therefore have been a deliberate move – listening to a saintly person would have been a more acceptable story than acknowledging some of the more worldly considerations Gregory might have had.

Catherine (her full name was Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa) was born in Siena in 1347, just before the Black Death struck Europe. Her father was a cloth dyer and must have been reasonably well-off, going by the size of the house in which Catherine lived with her long-suffering family, and which you can still visit.

Siena Catherine's house — Siena, the house of St. Catherine’s family. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, 28-135mm IS zoom lens, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge)

Catherine is known, among other things, for some fairly extravagant acts of asceticism and mortification of the flesh, some with psycho-sexual overtones, that today would provide plenty of material for a doctoral thesis in forensic psychology, or at the very least a conference paper. At a minimum she would be diagnosed with anorexia. But we must be careful not to judge the past too much by the standards of the post-Freudian present, at least not without trying to understand what it must have been like to live then. During her childhood, the plague killed more than half the population of Europe – and an even greater proportion of the population in crowded medieval Italian cities. I have seen one reference to over three-quarters of the population of Siena having died. You can still see the effects today – in 1339 Siena had started a significant project to enlarge the cathedral, which stopped during the plague and never restarted.

In the absence of any scientific understanding of what had caused the catastrophe, it is hardly surprising that many people assumed they were living through the early chapters of the Apocalypse, and responded accordingly. Confraternities of flagellants paraded through the streets whipping themselves. Others thought about prophecies of false saviours and false preachers, and looked hard at the contemporary church, obsessed as it was with wealth and power. This was the world in which the young Catherine grew up; how could it not have affected her and her contemporaries?

Although she is often portrayed in the habit of a Dominican nun, it seems that she was probably not a nun but joined a lay sisterhood associated with the Dominicans. Given the considerable freedom she seemed to enjoy, including living at home with her family, and travelling around Italy urging clerical reform, it does seem more likely that she was not actually a nun. Either way, she lived a life of virgin piety, acquired a reputation for holiness, and a habit of dictating letters to popes and princes telling them what they ought to be doing (the lay sisterhood taught her to read, but the fact that her books and letters were all dictated suggests that she did not write).

One of her lucky targets was Pope Gregory, who received a series of letters arguing for the return of the Papacy to Rome, and for reforms to the Church and the Papal States. John Julius Norwich, in his book The Popes, suggests that Gregory had already decided that the Papacy belonged in Rome, but as Catherine’s fame spread, associating her with the cause would have been an astute move. Gregory, like the rest of the Papal court, was French, but many of his fellow-Frenchmen did not share his enthusiasm for Italy, so he would have needed to make it look like he was yielding to a mass movement.

Her body worn out by self-inflicted privations, Catherine died in 1380 aged just 33, but she was quickly canonised, adding yet further spiritual lustre to the return-to-Rome movement. Another woman who had agitated for a return to Rome – Bridget of Sweden – was canonised as well, suggesting that the Papacy had no objections to such advocacy.

Cardinal Gil Albornoz

Gregory was not the first Avignon Pope to contemplate a return to Rome. Fifteen years or so earlier Innocent VI had the same idea, but he faced a problem, not with the Papacy’s spiritual power, but with its secular power in Italy, which had attenuated during the time in Avignon. The Popes’ claims to secular sovereignty were based on a bare-faced and not very competent 9^th-Century forgery known as “The Donation of Constantine” according to which the Emperor Constantine had rather implausibly handed over the entire Western Empire, including Italy, to the Pope to rule as sovereign territory. In practice, the Papal power to govern states only really ran until it encountered a stronger power: in the North, the Holy Roman Empire, in the South, the Normans followed by the Angevins and Spanish, and in the West, Spain and of course France.

In much of Europe the Middle Ages saw the growth of unitary states with all powers vested in monarchs. In contrast, Central and Northern Italy saw the emergence of independent communes in which towns and cities developed the institutions of government for themselves, and an admirable system (rule by an independent podestà appointed from another city for a fixed term) to keep them working.

Over time the communes failed and became counties and dukedoms, or the notionally independent institutions remained in place but effective government took place behind the scenes under the control of powerful families like the Medici.

In the longer term the future for Italian cities was either direct control from Rome or passing into the possession of a foreign dynasty, but back in the 14^th Century none of that looked inevitable. The Visconti of Milan were growing in power and many other cities were quite content with the de facto independence they enjoyed with the Papacy all that distance away in Provence. Two things turned all that around – one was the Black Death, which temporarily stopped all economic activity and created a significant labour shortage. The other was Cardinal Gil Àlvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, the Pope’s Vicar-General.

In theory the Vicar-General was a cardinal delegated to assist the Pope with the management of the Papal States, but as Vicar-General, Albonorz was more of a general than a vicar. An example of the church militant if ever there was one, Albornoz led armies, besieged cities, killed thousands, and built a lot of fortresses in the process of completing his task to re-establish Papal control.

He had started his career as a mere archbishop of Toledo leading his forces in Spain against invaders from Morocco. Without apparent ironic intent, Innocent VI gave him the title “Angel of Peace”.

So in 1353 Albornoz was given the job of subduing these independently-minded city-states, and he and his small army of mercenaries turned out to be very effective at it.

All through central Italy, in towns like Urbino, Assisi, Orvieto, Spoleto and Narni, you will find castles built by Albornoz after the towns were taken by Papal forces. In other towns such as Todi you might find the remains of one subsequently dismantled. The name and the history behind them are well enough known that they may simply called “Fortezza Albornoz” or “Rocca Albornoz”.

Assisi Rocca — Assisi, the Rocca Maggiore. Reconstructed by Albornoz on the site of an earlier castle. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar 150 CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Under Albornoz, the role of these fortresses was not to defend the towns they guarded. It was to subdue them, and in cases like Narni, it was to control a strategic road – the ancient Via Flaminia where it passes through the gorge of the River Nera.

Narni Rocca — Narni, the Rocca, built by Albornoz, and rebuilt after destruction by Charles V’s “landesknechte” in 1527. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Urbino Fortezza Albornoz — Urbino, foundations of the Fortezza Albornoz. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Orvieto Rocca Albornoz — Orvieto, the Rocca Albornoz. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

Todi Rocca Albornoz — Todi, remains of the Rocca Albornoz. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

But now we need to turn our attention to the third person in this story – and one just as unlikely as the other two.

Sir John Hawkwood

Some people say that “Hawkwood” sounds like the name of a character from a fantasy novel, but it makes me think of a 1970s prog-rock band. I’ve just discovered that there is also a character by that name in a popular video game. Whatever associations his name might have for English speakers, the Italians couldn’t really cope with it and mangled it into “Giovanni Acuto”, which since that means “John the Sharp” or “John the Astute”, is not actually a bad fit. It turns out that Albornoz wasn’t the only person leading a band of mercenaries around Italy, and that this particular person – Hawkwood – had a considerable effect, for good or ill, on the conduct of warfare and politics in Italy. He was loathed and execrated, but ended up being celebrated as a hero in Florence.

How did an Englishman find himself in that position? It was in part the unintended consequence of a peacemaking exercise by a Pope. In 1360 the Hundred Years’ War between England and France was still only the Twenty-Three Years’ War, but after the disasters of Crécy and Poitiers, and the taking into captivity of the French King, things were going badly for France. Innocent VI (like all the other Avignon Popes a Frenchman) had been keen to engineer a truce, which he did with the Treaty of Brétigny.

The unintended consequence of peace was that, because a large number of troops on both sides were not feudal levies but mercenaries, they were promptly discharged in situ in France, either to starve or to form themselves into “free companies” and keep on soldiering, but this time on their own account. One such group was called the White Company, led by a German called Sterz, but composed mostly of Englishmen, including John Hawkwood of Essex.

Pickings were slim in the war-ravaged regions of north-western France, but to the south was a fabulously wealthy place – the Papal state of Avignon. The brigands captured the nearby town of Pont-Saint-Esprit and laid siege to Avignon itself. After a while, and another outbreak of plague, Innocent gave in and paid them a large sum of money to go away. And here’s a fascinating possibility. There is no written record, it seems, of the agreement between the Papacy and the White Company, but it has been suggested that part of the deal was that the Company should continue south into Italy, there to assist Albornoz, who already had several mercenary companies in his pay. Subsequent events are not inconsistent with this scenario.

The free companies hit Italy like a gauntleted fist. Italy had seen a good many armies over the years, but the military professionalism of these foreigners set them apart from the citizen militias that were all that most cities could call on – to the amazement of Italians, they even continued campaigning in winter. And they had the English longbow – the most effective infantry weapon of the Middle Ages.

While working for Perugia, Sterz was imprisoned and executed by the city authorities on a charge of plotting to betray them to the Papal forces, and Hawkwood formally took over command of the White Company. He quickly established a reputation for ruthless effectiveness – you wanted him on your side if you could afford him. And there were plenty who could, or were desperate enough to promise to find the money. Central and northern Italy were in turmoil as Albornoz, the Visconti of Milan and the remaining free communes all manoeuvred for advantage. At this early stage Hawkwood was mostly fighting on the side of the Pope, but on one occasion when he was not, he had a mysterious and bloodless encounter with Albornoz’s forces near Orvieto which may simply have been arranged to create an opportunity for a clandestine meeting between the two.

Hawkwood fought on the Pisan side in an inconclusive Pisa-Florence war, on the Milanese side in a war between the Visconti and Papal forces, and on the Papal side in two wars with Florence. He built closer relations with Milan, marrying Donnina Visconti, the illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti, the Lord of Milan. It seems she had inherited her father’s force of character and proved an effective deputy in managing Hawkwood’s affairs.

The White Company — A tent at the annual spring medieval festival in Bevagna, Umbria, bearing Hawkwood’s arms: argent on a chevron sable, three escallops of the field. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Pope Innocent died and was replaced by Gregory XI. Albornoz died on campaign and was replaced as Vicar-General by Cardinal Robert of Geneva, a vicious man who in the name of the Church perpetrated one of the worst massacres of the Italian Middle Ages, in which most of the population of Cesena were slaughtered, despite having been promised forgiveness if they surrendered.

Hawkwood’s troops were involved in that massacre; by one contemporary account he tried to persuade Robert to accept the town’s submission without bloodshed, but the cardinal was determined to make an example of Cesena, and thousands of innocent civilians died.

We don’t know whether that was the event that finally turned Hawkwood against the Pope; after all he had not previously shown himself to be particularly sentimental when it came to civilian lives, and there had been other irritants in the relationship, such as Gregory’s regular failure to pay wages. That was not a trivial matter, as Hawkwood still had to pay his men out of his own pocket, causing some serious liquidity problems. On one occasion Hawkwood, in frustration, took the Umbrian town of Città di Castello in the name of the Pope but held it for himself in lieu of wages. But whatever his reasons, after the Cesena massacre Hawkwood mostly turned up on the side of a city for whom he had previously been a nemesis – Florence – and against both of his previous allies: the Visconti and the Papacy.

Florence returned the compliment: they paid him well and granted him Florentine citizenship, and he acquired a good deal of property in the region.

He died peacefully in 1394, at the (for then) advanced age of 70 or 71. The Florentine authorities gave him a lavish funeral in the duomo, where his standards were hung and remained for years. A marble tomb was planned, but the municipal funds were a bit low (perhaps because of all the money paid to mercenaries), and forty years later the Medici employed the painter Uccello to do a mock-marble memorial in the duomo, which you can still see today.

Ucello Hawkwood Memorial — The Hawkwood memorial in the Florence Duomo, by Uccello. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

The inscription reads, in translation: “John Hawkwood, British knight, most prudent leader of his age and most expert in the art of war”.

Why would the Medici bother honouring the memory of someone forty years dead? I doubt they ever did anything out of sentiment. My guess is that it was because Hawkwood ended up on their side against dangerous rivals that still threatened them. A reminder of past victories would be a useful signal to their enemies and their own people of their determination to continue to fight for their independence.

Which brings me to the issue of Hawkwood’s legacy. Much has been written about the great and undeniable harms that the free companies visited upon Italy (although they didn’t really start any wars, they just made existing conflicts worse). And also how much the great condottieri of the next couple of centuries – Gattamelata, Colleoni, the Dukes of Mantua, Federico da Montefeltro, Cesare Borgia – learned from Hawkwood’s example. But did he do any good? The Florentines seemed to think so. Perhaps if had not been for him, Florence and Tuscany might have ended up subject to either Milan or the Papal States, or divided between them. The glories of Medici Florence might never have happened. Now that would have made a difference.

Odds and ends

In 1377, after an arduous and dangerous sea voyage from Marseilles, a small fleet carrying Gregory XI, his cardinals and his court sailed into the Tiber, and the Papacy never left Rome again. It had only been away for seven decades or so, but an awful lot had changed. The Black Death had delivered enormous economic and spiritual shocks to European society, and there was a new breath of intellectual enquiry in the air: the Renaissance was coming.

The end of the Avignon Papacy was not a clean break. Most of the cardinals were still French and shortly after Gregory died and was replaced by the Italian Urban VI, they had second thoughts, walked out, and elected their own Pope – none other than Robert of Geneva, the butcher of Cesena, who took the name of Clement VII. Urban and Clement excommunicated each other, exchanged insults, and the resulting “Great Schism of the West” was to last another forty years. Urban is now considered a canonical pope by the church, and Clement an “antipope”, which serves him right.

I’ve chosen to write this post around three individuals, but there was a fourth memorable character involved – an extraordinary fellow called Cola di Rienzo (or Rienzi). This vain and pompous, but romantic and audacious adventurer rose from humble origins, seized power in Rome, and announced his intention to reunite Italy under a reborn Roman Empire. His bombastic personality, his imperial Roman fantasies and not least his violent end are all strangely reminiscent of Benito Mussolini. It’s quite a story, which has inspired multiple works of fiction and a Wagner opera. If I can assemble enough relevant photographs I might do a separate post on him one day. (Edit: here is that post).

The White Company included not just soldiers, but lawyers and notaries as well, to draw up complex contracts with employers. One oddity of those contracts is a standard clause that they would not act contrary to their loyalty to the King of England. Some have taken this to imply a degree of control by the King (Edward III).

There is some evidence for this. Hawkwood may have been a go-between helping arrange the marriage of Edward’s second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, to the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti of Milan. The wedding went ahead, but Lionel died soon after (inevitably, given the Visconti’s record, there were suggestions of poison). The wedding had taken place in Milan, and the Visconti hired a large force of mercenaries to escort the groom there. That bodyguard was commanded by John Hawkwood.

In Lionel’s retinue was a young diplomat called Geoffrey Chaucer. It is probable that he and Hawkwood met, and plausible that the Knight in the Canterbury Tales is based on Hawkwood, at least in part.

Urbino – the Palazzo Ducale

The Ducal Palace in Urbino was the home of one of the most famous and cultivated courts of the Renaissance. I have previously posted on Urbino – that article was really about the taking of a single large-format photograph, but also gave a quick history of the city, and how its court, under the warrior-humanist Duke Federico da Montefeltro, came to be considered the archetypal Renaissance court under the archetypal Renaissance ruler.

There is something almost theme-park-like about Urbino; the Duke clearly wanted it to be as beautiful as the architects of the day could make it, and so you drive a long way into a comparatively remote part of the country, and then you round a bend and there is a jewel of a small city. Here again is the photograph I took in 2008.

We recently revisited Urbino, which gave me the opportunity to take sufficient photographs to illustrate an article on the Palazzo Ducale (Ducal Palace), in which I can reflect a bit more on the Federico phenomenon. Here is a portrait of him as the donor of a religious work by Piero della Francesca, which I photographed in the Brera museum in Milan.

della Francesca Duca Federico — Piero della Francesca, “San Bernardino Altarpiece” (1465-70) with Federico da Montefeltro as the donor, having removed his helmet and gauntlets to pray. Brera Gallery, Milan. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge).

della Francesca detail — Detail of the San Bernardino Altarpiece. I may be wrong, but to me it looks as if Federico’s helmet has been dented by blows (click to enlarge).

This painting was among the many works plundered from Central Italy by Napoleon, but rather than it ending up in the Louvre, Napoleon placed it in the Brera.

Federico famously preferred only to be painted in profile from the left, after losing his right eye to a jousting injury. And in order that this should not prevent him from seeing to his right on the battlefield, he had surgeons remove the bridge of his nose, giving that profile even more individuality. The bas-relief below shows this clearly. The other man is his (probable) brother Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda, not the half-brother Oddantonio whom Federico succeeded, but a scholar and humanist who established Federico’s famous library for him.

Della Carda and Montefeltro — Duke Federico and Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. The brothers’ respective callings are reflected in the books behind Ottaviano, and the helmet behind Federico, and the fact that Federico is wearing armour while his brother wears the tunic of a civilian. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Federico’s reputation is in a sense the result of a collaboration across the centuries. He himself was, it must be said, a careful curator of his own reputation, and then in the 19^th Century his opinion of himself was enthusiastically confirmed by the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, who more or less defined the idea of the Renaissance as we think of it today, and who was looking for exemplars to support his argument. Later on Kenneth Clark picked up the theme in his seminal 1966 television series Civilisation.

That is not to say that Burckhardt and Clark fell for a cynical exercise in 15th-Century spin-doctoring. Federico really did receive a humanist education, he really did attract intellectuals to his court, and he really did try to be a philosopher-prince. Burckhardt’s story may be a bit of an oversimplification, but being only mostly right isn’t the same as being wrong.

Urbino Palazzo Ducale — Urbino, the Palazzo Ducale. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge)

A visit to the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino will quickly illustrate various aspects of this – starting with the FE DUX (Duke Federico) you see everywhere; he didn’t want you to be in any doubt as to whose place this was.

And the palace is the focus of the townscape without crudely dominating it; it is adapted to the contours of the hill and like Pope Pius’s recreation of the town of Pienza, this was about achieving beauty and proportion at scale as well as in miniature.

Inside there is a large arcaded courtyard with more inscriptions in honour of Federico. After buying our tickets we were ushered into an exhibition of works by a 16th-Century (ie, after Duke Federico) Urbino painter called Federico Barocci who is considered important and influential but who I must say seems a bit third-rate to me. His saints all have pretty faces and rosy cheeks as in the cheaper sort of devotional greeting cards. I guess it says something that Napoleon did not consider his works worth stealing. We did not stay long, and were soon heading upstairs into the Palace, which houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche.

A couple of wings were closed for renovation, alas, which meant that we could not access the balconies on the front of the building, but they had moved the important works from those wings so they could still be seen, and we were able to go up one of the towers.

There are many large halls, equipped with huge fireplaces to blunt the chill of the Urbino winters (a bit hard to imagine when we visited in a very hot July). One of the largest rooms is hung with expensive Flemish tapestries.

The “Ideal City”

There are two emblematic works associated with Urbino that are still kept in the palace. The first, a painting of an “Ideal City” was long attributed to Piero della Francesca, then to several others in turn. Now its creator is more cautiously described as “unknown artist”.

The “Città Ideale” or Ideal City, once attributed to Piero della Francesca. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

There is another “Ideal City” painting from Urbino whose attribution to della Francesca is accepted; that one is now in the United States.

The depiction of ideal cities was very much a Renaissance thing and it is quite in character for Federico to have commissioned one or more. Renaissance artists were often architects as well, meaning that they had to have a good grasp of applied mathematics. One way to acquire this – and of course to demonstrate it – was to practice the art of perspective. Moreover when you had big aspirations to redesign a whole town, as Federico clearly did, then imaginary cityscapes, especially those that embodied “classical” Roman aesthetic values, would have had obvious attractions.

The Flagellation of Christ

The second emblematic work, The Flagellation of Christ from 1468 or 1470, is unambiguously attributed to Piero della Francesca (because he signed it). It is a mysterious piece the meaning of which continues to elude art historians, although that has not prevented them coming up with many ingenious theories. One popular suggestion is that it is a coded reference to the death, in suspicious circumstances, of Federico’s predecessor and half-brother Oddantonio, who according to that tradition is the blond barefoot figure in the centre of the group on the right. Oddantonio’s government had not been popular in Urbino and when Federico succeeded him he had promised not to investigate his death or hold anyone to account – this is argued to be the reason why this commemoration had to be so cryptic. Just to add spice, there are also theories that Federico himself was in some way complicit in Oddantonio’s death.

Other interpretations centre around the intriguing figure of Bessarion, a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and notable scholar who nonetheless became a cardinal in the Catholic Church and, in a vain attempt to avoid the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, worked unsuccessfully for a reunification of the eastern and western churches. By that reading the picture could be a lament on the destruction of Eastern Christendom. There is certainly a good argument that the Herod figure is meant to be John VIII Palaiologos, the penultimate Byzantine Emperor – he is wearing the red slippers that only emperors could wear, and the same funny hat that he is shown wearing in other likenesses. So I think that the answer to the riddle has to be found in that direction. But no doubt new interpretations of this enigmatic painting will continue to appear: I don’t think anyone has managed to work in the Knights Templar yet, so there’s an opportunity.

Kenneth Clark was particularly enthusiastic about it, calling it the “best small painting in the world”. One additional mystery is how it survived at all. It was apparently discovered folded in half (or cut in half, according to the panel next to it in the palace) which explains the damage to the face of the Christ figure.

The Studiolo

One of the famous rooms in the palace is the so-called “studiolo”, or little study. It is a tiny room, with a chapel attached, decorated with some of the finest examples of trompe-l’oeil intarsio, or wood inlay, to be found in Italy. It is easy to imagine Federico in here, reading dispatches from his commanders, or letters from other rulers, or perhaps studying a copy of some ancient text that he had acquired for his library.

The Art of War

As I explained in the earlier article, as a second son, (originally illegitimate, but legitimised by the Pope) Federico’s intended career was as a condottiere or mercenary captain. When he succeeded to the Dukedom he found that the duchy’s finances were in a very poor state, so he kept going in that line of work to bring in an income, with the additional benefit to prospective employers that he was not just supplying an army, but an alliance. He was very successful in the profession of arms, so when he was celebrating his achievements, his military prowess tended to be prominent.

In most pictures of Federico, such as the one from the Brera shown above, he is either wearing his armour, or he has it beside him. And the surgery on his nose would always be a reminder that he had been a soldier before he was anything else.

It turns out that Federico commissioned a celebration of his martial profession as part of the external decoration of the palace. If you look at the picture below, there is space for a frieze (now just a blank strip) along the bottom of the wall around the square, above the bench where people are sitting.

Urbino, Palazzo Ducale, the space behind the bench, where people are sitting, was once occupied by the “Art of War” frieze. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Federico was apparently a keen student of the works of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, especially his book on military machines, and so the frieze he ordered was to feature diagrams of those as well. According to Vasari they were originally coloured.

After a couple of hundred years of being out in the weather (and perhaps of the citizens of Urbino leaning against them) the images had become badly deteriorated, and 1756 the Papal governor ordered that they be removed and brought indoors, where they stayed until the 1940s. They weren’t visible when we were last here in 2008, but they have been brought out again and put on display. Some of them are indeed so badly deteriorated that it would be impossible to make out their subject were it not for helpful illustrations alongside, but here are a few of the better ones.

Bombard — From the “Art of War” frieze, a bombard – a primitive cannon that threw large stone balls at fortifications. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bastia — From the “Art of War” frieze. A bastia – a mobile siege platform which could be rolled up against a fortification, and from which soldiers could descend. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Musical instruments — From the “Art of War” frieze. Military musical instruments including trumpets and drums. The information panel says that they include pan pipes, but I can’t see how they would be audible on a battlefield. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Panoply — From the “Art of War” frieze. A panoply, including a bombard, a shield, and some items the description was a bit vague about but which might include an instrument for aiming artillery. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The End of the Story

As I said in my earlier article, the flame of Urbino burned brightly, but not for long. The duchy passed into the hands of staunch Papal allies, the della Rovere family, who put another floor on the palace and furnished it to their own tastes.

Top floor — From the upper (della Rovere) floor of the palace. View through coloured leadlight windows. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The upper (della Rovere) floor. The emblem of the three cylinders with acorns on top appears several times, but we did not find an explanation. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

But the party was already over, and in due course the title was extinguished and the duchy was formally absorbed into the Papal States. From a humanistic intellectual lighthouse to a provincial backwater, Urbino’s fall was far indeed. There is of course one benefit from that long period of decline, which is that architecturally the city remained frozen in time at the period of its greatness. It is now a university town and there is a bit of energy about the place once again. So nowadays you can visit this improbably beautiful city and imagine what it must have been like when it and its ruler were “The Light of Italy”.

July 23, 2024December 9, 2024

A Return to Palermo

A return visit to Palermo gave me the opportunity to take photographs I had been unable to take before, and reflect more on the extraordinary legacy of Norman Sicily.

My post on Norman Sicily was written back in 2019, but illustrated with photographs I took on a visit in 2012. Recently (July 2024) we revisited Sicily, and I was able to take some more photographs. Rather than rewrite the original article and replace the images, I have decided to write a supplementary article, but if you are interested in the fascinating story of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, I recommend that you read the original article for more historical background.

The Photography

Those 2012 photographs were all taken on slow (ISO 50) Fujichrome Velvia film, using either a Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera or a Horseman 45FA large-format camera. For indoor shots I used the Hasselblad, but Velvia is a film meant for outdoor landscape photography, and the colour casts from low-light indoor photography were quite strong. The slow speed of the film also required exposures too long for hand-holding, which meant that I was restricted to situations where I could place the camera on a hard surface or brace it against something like a pillar (tripods are of course not allowed indoors).

This time I had my Fujifilm GFX-50R with me, which had several advantages. With indoor photography using this camera, I generally set the aperture and exposure manually, and leave the ISO on automatic (the GFX-50R goes up to ISO 12800). High ISOs mean greater digital “noise” (like the grain in fast film) but the large sensor on the 50R means the noise is less obvious. When necessary I then used a program called Topaz DeNoise AI to reduce the noise further. I was also able to use digital perspective correction to reduce the “leaning back” effect when things are photographed from below.

Cefalù

After taking our car across the strait to Messina on the ferry, our first stop was Cefalù, on the north coast. This town is spectacularly situated on a headland below a giant rock, and it was here, in 1131, that the Norman King Roger II commissioned a cathedral in which he planned to be buried. I have not come across any explanation as to why he chose Cefalù, but in the event his son William I decided to bury Roger in Palermo Cathedral, so he did not get his wish. It would have been a beautiful and peaceful place though.

Beautiful Cefalù still is, although you could not have described it as peaceful when we visited. The throngs of people were not there to soak up the glories of Norman-Sicilian architecture; these days Cefalù is a beach resort, and they were there to soak up the sun. We were there for the Duomo, however, so proceeded there through the crowded streets. It is a very beautiful building, with – to my untutored eye – a fascinating mixture of architectural styles. The twin campanili have Romanesque double-arched windows, but the front portico is a mixture. In the centre is a curved Romanesque arch, with pointy curved arches either side which are not European Gothic but Fatimid Arab. I suspect the decoration above the portico is also inspired by Arab architecture. Being surrounded by palm trees gives it all an exotic feel as well.

Cefalù Duomo — Cefalù, the duomo showing a mixture of European and Arabic architectural styles. Behind at the right is the giant rock that sits above the town. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

We arrived just as a wedding was about to start, but I was still able to grab some photographs, in particular some of the huge Christos Pantokrator mosaic in the apse. This was executed by Greek craftsmen brought from Constantinople, but it strikes me as not having quite the remoteness that one sees in Byzantine religious art (where iconoclasm was still a memory, and realism not encouraged). Instead there seems to be something of the western preoccupation with the humanity of Christ. And as ever I was struck by how much more sophisticated it is than most of the art that was being produced elsewhere in Europe at the time. A couple of weeks later we were in the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, looking at works from one or two centuries later, and there was no comparison. The first depictions of emotion in post-classical western art are attributed to Giotto in the 13th-14th Centuries, but this came first by a long way.

Monreale

From Cefalù we continued our journey to Palermo, or to be more accurate, to Monreale. This town sits on a hill above the Conca d’Oro – Palermo’s coastal plain. Staying there would provide us with a bit of relief from the July heat at sea level, and also from driving in Palermo’s traffic.

What makes Monreale famous is not the climate or the traffic though, but its cathedral. The duomo was commissioned in the late 1100s by Roger II’s grandson William II (“The Good”), and represents probably the high point of this wonderful Norman-Sicilian syncretic tradition.

Monreale Duomo — Monreale, the Duomo. The nave, with illustrations of stories from Genesis. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

In the photograph above the sort-of Romanesque and sort-of Gothic arches are in fact, like those on the portico at Cefalù, very much Fatimid Arab.

The best part of the Monreale Duomo is the magnificent Christos Pantokrator in the apse, even greater in my opinion than the one in Cefalù. Unfortunately this year the apse mosaics are undergoing restoration and are all behind scaffolding. There is a large print of the mosaics hung on the front of the scaffolding, but it’s nothing like the real thing. So that was a bit disappointing; instead here is a picture I took in 2012.

Another disappointment was not being able to take a close-up photo with a long lens of the mosaic showing William II presenting the church to the Virgin Mary. Here is a version from 2012 – the mosaic would either have been done while William was alive, or shortly after his death.

To give you an idea of the sort of effect I was hoping for, here is a picture of Noah and his ark from our recent visit to Monreale. I zoomed in close, and then used software perspective correction to compensate for the fact that I was taking from below. I had really wanted a picture of the William II mosaic to which I could give a similar treatment. Oh well.

Monreale Duomo, illustration of Genesis (note the bodies of people drowned in the Flood, and separate quarters on the ark for men and women). Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 100-200mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Benedictine Cloisters

Thankfully not undergoing renovation was the adjoining Benedictine cloister, dating from around 1200. This is a lovely peaceful place, especially if you manage to get there between tour groups.

Monreale Cloisters — Monreale cloisters. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 100-200mm lens (click to enlarge).

It’s another wonderful stylistic synthesis: an authentic Benedictine quadrangular plan, Arab arches, Greek mosaic patterns on the columns, Norman-French carvings on the capitals. And the overall exotic flavour is enhanced by the palm trees.

The Cappella Palatina

We then headed down into Palermo, with our destination the complex known as the Royal Palace, or the Palace of the Normans (Palazzo Reale or Palazzo dei Normanni). It also hosts the modern Sicilian Regional Assembly. From the outside the effect is all rather 18th-Century, due to the various accretions it has received over the years, but the core of the building started as a Norman castle built by Count Roger I shortly after the conquest of Sicily in 1072, and over time more was added, most notably the Cappella Palatina (Palace Chapel) in 1132, by Roger’s son Roger II. (Roger II was recognised as King of Sicily by the Pope in return for some military assistance).

Like the cathedrals at Cefalù and at Monreale, the Cappella Palatina shows influences from all the Sicilian cultures. Like the others, there is an overall Norman plan, Latin-themed illustrations executed by Greek mosaic craftsmen, and Arab-inspired arches. There is also an extraordinary Arabic wooden muqarnas ceiling, inscribed with Koranic texts.

Outside there is a stone inscribed with blessings in Latin, Greek and Arabic. No more explicit statement could have been made of Roger’s intent that there should be peace between the various Sicilian peoples.

The Sala di Ruggero

Earlier disappointments quickly faded when we headed upstairs from the Cappella Palatina to the so-called Sala di Ruggero (Roger’s Room). When we last visited in 2012 there was a ban on photography here, which unlike most of the other visitors, I had actually observed. In 2024, to my delight, there was no longer any such ban so I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

This room, presumably a reception room rather than private quarters (some describe it as a bedroom though), is beautiful by any standard but extraordinary by the standard of the 12th Century.

The fierce-looking leopards in the picture above have become a somewhat common sight in Sicily as they have been adopted as the logo of a chain of expensive souvenir shops. I suppose they are out of copyright by now.

The Sala di Ruggero leads off a central “wind tower” (another Arab architectural feature). The idea of a wind tower is that as the upper part heats up in the sun, the hot air rises and escapes through the windows at the top, thus creating an updraft which draws cooler air in from below. It seemed that the upper windows were not open this time, but they had been on our previous visit and it was quite effective then.

The Cathedral

We did not have time to do much more than photograph the outside of the cathedral as we passed, so there will be something to do on our next visit. The cathedral was started in 1185 by an archbishop of Palermo whose name has been variously mangled as Walter Ophamil and Gualtiero Offamiglia, but was originally Walter of the Mill; he was an Englishman.

It was built over, and incorporates, the remains of an earlier Byzantine basilica which had been turned into a mosque after the Arab conquest. In the late 18th Century someone added various neoclassical features, including a lantern and dome. It is this dome, which looks more or less like those over every other baroque church in Sicily, which fooled me the first time I saw it. It draws the eye and, used as I am to making sweeping judgements, it created an immediate impression of baroque architecture and I rather lost interest. But look closer. Even better, use your thumb or your hand (depending on how you are viewing this) to cover the dome.

Palermo Duomo — Palermo Cathedral. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

I find that by blocking out the dome in this way, the other features – the pointy crenellations, the Arab-style arches and so forth – assume greater prominence, and suddenly the building looks much more eastern and exotic.

The End of the Hautevilles

It was all too good to last. The de Hauteville line died out and, through William II’s Aunt Constance, Sicily passed to her son, the Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Frederick was every bit as tolerant as Roger had been, and a polymath who deserved his nickname of “Stupor Mundi“, the wonder of the world. But his tolerance of Arabs and Jews infuriated the Popes, and in due course they engineered the accession of the French House of Anjou to the throne of Sicily.

I find it strange and a bit sad that modern Sicilians look back on the Norman era as a golden age, especially the reign of William II “The Good”. But the Sicilians never really got to rule themselves (some would say that even the unification of Italy only replaced one foreign dynasty with another), and there can be no argument that the cultural synthesis achieved under the Normans all those centuries ago is something to be proud of.

June 9, 2024April 6, 2025

The Avignon “Captivity”

Avignon is a town in southern France. Why are we talking about it on a site about Italian history? Thank you; I’m glad you asked.

If you read my post last year about Abruzzo and the Reluctant Pope, you might recall that after the resignation of the unfortunate Pope Celestine V in 1294, the Papacy fell into the hands of Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, who took the name Boniface VIII. Celestine and Boniface were as unlike each other as two popes possibly could be: where Celestine had been an unlettered hermit, Boniface was a legal scholar who codified canon law, founded Rome University, and re-established the Vatican Library. Where Celestine had been simple, pious and meek, Boniface was ambitious, proud and quick to anger. Where Celestine had worn rags, slept in a cell and been uninterested in the affairs of the world, Boniface was keen to enrich himself and his family, and above all was determined to re-assert the secular political power of the papacy over the emerging unitary states of Europe, particularly France. Trouble was brewing.

Another article I posted last year was Viterbo – Wet Bishops in the Papal Palace. In that I talked about how a conclave to elect a new pope was deadlocked for two years in 1269-71, because all the French bishops were under orders to vote only for a Frenchman, and all the other bishops were determined to have anyone but a Frenchman. The town authorities in Viterbo, where the conclave was taking place, were obliged to take drastic measures to try and break the deadlock. That was about thirty years before Boniface.

Boniface’s papacy was to be overshadowed by increasing hostility between Rome and the King of France, Philip IV (“the Fair”). Philip was planning a war with England, and thought that it would be a good idea to finance it by taxing church property. Not surprisingly, Boniface thought this was a rotten idea, and issued a Bull forbidding such taxation without permission from Rome. Philip responded by barring the entry into France of papal tax collectors, Boniface fired off another Bull, and things quickly got out of control.

Philip accused Boniface of all sorts of crimes and dispatched troops into Italy to capture him, and bring him back to France to face trial in front of a General Council of the Church. These troops were accompanied by Italian mercenaries led by members of the Colonna family – one of the strongest families in Rome, whom Boniface had unwisely and unnecessarily antagonised. Boniface confronted the invaders and was briefly taken captive and beaten before being rescued by the Orsini family, the traditional rivals of the Colonna. But he was old by then and it was all too much. He did the only thing he could to reduce the tension of the situation, which was to die. Dante passed judgement on recent events by placing both Celestine and Boniface in Hell, which was a bit unfair on Celestine.

Boniface’s successor need not detain us long, because he didn’t bother anyone for very long, lasting less than a year.

So there we were again in another deadlocked conclave, again meeting in Perugia, and which went on for eleven months without resolution. Since Gregory X’s reforms to the election process after the debacle of Viterbo, only cardinals could take part, but none of them could gather enough votes from the others. Eventually, having rejected everyone in the College of Cardinals, they again decided to pick someone from outside, and their choice fell on Bertrand de Got, Bishop of Bordeaux, and yes, a Frenchman.

Bertrand, who took the name of Clement V, could have been a strong and effective pope, had he been Italian. As John Julius Norwich writes, “Although a shameless nepotist, the new Pope was a distinguished canon lawyer and an efficient administrator. He concentrated on the missionary role of the Church, going so far as to establish chairs in Arabic and other oriental languages at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca.”

But he wasn’t Italian; he was French, and a subject of Philip IV. Norwich goes on to say that from the moment of his election, he found himself under almost intolerable pressure from his master, King Philip, who insisted that he be crowned in France, and afterwards insisted he remain there.

For a while Clement and his cardinals moved from place to place in France, then in 1309 Clement decided to settle the court in Avignon, which was not technically part of the kingdom of France. The eastern side of the Rhône was in the territory of Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence and King of Sicily. But Charles was a vassal of the King of France and in Provence Philip’s influence was unchallenged. So Clement was still very much under the thumb, so to speak.

Avignon from the bridge — Avignon: the Palais des Papes from the famous bridge. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

In the Middle Ages it was certainly not uncommon for the Papal court to spend time out of Rome; sometimes disease or fighting made Rome a dangerous place to be, and we have already seen how the court moved to Viterbo for a while. But Avignon was a long way away indeed. Philip’s earlier attempt to abduct Boniface to face a kangaroo court in France would have left no doubt about his determination to exercise control, and now the Papal Curia was in a much more convenient location for him to do so.

So what was Avignon like when this dignity was unexpectedly bestowed on it? Quite a small place, it seems – only about 5,000 inhabitants – but not insignificant. This is because it occupied an important position in European trade; it was situated at the furthest point downstream where the Rhône could be bridged (sort of; see below). Down the Rhône valley came the wool and fabrics of England and Flanders. Up the Rhône from the Mediterranean came manufactured goods from Italy and Spain, over the alpine passes came the grain of Lombardy and the armour and weapons of Milan. It must have been a fairly cosmopolitan place even before the Papal Curia arrived.

But once it had, Avignon was soon bursting at the seams, with one source suggesting that the population rose to around 30,000. The enormous Papal Palace, which still dominates the town, was nonetheless too small to house everyone, and an important official in the Papal bureaucracy was engaged full-time in finding accommodation in which to billet cardinals and their entourages, and the many ambassadors. There are many descriptions of the stinks and filth of Avignon in documents including diplomatic dispatches (it seems it was not a popular diplomatic posting).

Avignon Palais des Papes — Avignon: a medieval-looking corner behind the Palais des Papes. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Clement’s subordination to Philip IV made him an accomplice in the greatest crime of the 14^th Century – the suppression of the Knights Templar. Philip’s earlier unsuccessful attempt to arraign Boniface on fabricated accusations shows his style. This time the charge sheet against the Templars included devil-worship, baby-sacrifice and homosexuality, all of which were admitted under torture, although most victims recanted their confessions just before they were burned at the stake. All of this was for no better reason than that the order was wealthy and powerful, and Philip wanted that wealth and power for himself.

It is quite common to see this period described as a “Babylonian Captivity” of the Papacy, but that is a bit misleading. The Pope and the Papal Court were all quite happy to be more or less in France, not least because the Pope chose the Cardinals, and in a short time the Cardinals were almost all Frenchmen, just like the Pope (in another extraordinary coincidence, four of them were also his nephews).

And it seems that the experience of living in Avignon was improving as well. The overcrowded and smelly village of the early years had been replaced by a large and very wealthy city, with fine palaces for cardinals and ambassadors. The sudden increase in Avignon’s status only increased its importance as a trading centre. Not only was it still on all those major trading routes, but there were now a lot of very rich churchmen there competing with each other to display conspicuous wealth. This drew many Italian merchants to Avignon, including Francesco di Marco Datini, the “Merchant of Prato” of whom Iris Origo wrote. I mentioned that book in my article on her, and it contains some interesting descriptions of Avignon around this time.

Avignon Place du Palais — Avignon: the Place du Palais. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The poet Petrarch was not a fan. He lived there briefly as a child with his family, then returned as he travelled Europe as a scholar and ambassador, and stayed with one of the cardinals in the town of Vaucluse nearby. As an Italian he could be expected to disapprove of the idea of a French Papacy, but as a Franciscan he was genuinely shocked at the luxury and indulgence:

Here reign the successors of the poor fishermen of Galilee; they have strangely forgotten their origin. I am astounded, as I recall their ancestors, to see these men loaded with gold and clad in purple… Instead of holy solitude we find a criminal host with crowds of infamous cronies; instead of soberness, licentious banquets…[1]

Petrarch went on to say that at this rate even the horses would be shod in gold before long. One of the later Avignon popes, John XXII, was indeed famous for hosting stupendous banquets – and also for ensuring there would be enough for the guests to drink by founding the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape (“the new castle of the Pope”).

To answer my original question, the reason we are talking about Avignon in a blog about Italian history is because in 1348 Pope Clement VI bought Avignon and the territory round about from the Angevins – Queen Joan of Naples, to be precise – and it then became an exclave of the Papal States. It remained so long after the Papacy returned to Rome, and only became incorporated into France at the revolution in 1789.

Avignon purchase deed — The deed by which the Angevins sold Avignon to the Pope. You can see Queen Joan’s name “Johanna” on the top line. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

We visited in October 2023, driving into France from Piedmont, which I wrote about in Wine and Truffles in the Langhe. Rather than take the main motorway and the tunnel under the Alps, we took the slower but far more picturesque route over the pass of Montgenèvre, and in doing so inadvertently followed one of the trade routes that made Avignon wealthy.

Sestriere — The road over the Alps via the pass of Montgenèvre. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Continuing down into France, near the town of Briançon. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

We stayed a few kilometres out of town in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region (for historical research purposes only, you understand). Getting into Avignon was easy enough, and there are underground garages in walking distance from the centre, or open garages on the island in the middle of the river, with a shuttle bus into town, so it is fairly well-organised.

The Papal Palace dominates the town, and is quite spectacular, as you might expect. It is after all the largest example of medieval gothic architecture in Europe.

There was a bit of a queue for the palace, but not too bad. Inside several school groups were causing congestion, but eventually we managed to find ourselves in a space between two groups which improved things.

Palais des Papes courtyard — One of the internal courtyards in the Palais des Papes. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Lots of museums these days seem to feel the need for high-tech gimmicks, and in this case the gimmick was “augmented reality” where you were given a tablet and in each zone you would point it at a QR code. You could then point the tablet in any direction and it would display a computer-generated image of what that view might have looked like in the 14^th Century, with furniture, wall hangings and so forth. In a banquet hall you could see a banquet in progress (perhaps one of John XXII’s famous blowouts). The CG images were not too cheesy and seemed to be based on actual research, so it wasn’t too bad, and kept the kids interested.

Palais des Papes interior — Interior view of the Palais des Papes. The objects in the centre of the floor are some rather strange art installations. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

For us the best bit was the outside area, where they have recreated a medieval garden, with medicinal herbs, fruit trees and the like. It was a pretty, peaceful place, and best of all the schoolchildren weren’t interested and kept going.

Palais des Papes garden — Avignon: the garden of the Palais des Papes. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

You can’t visit Avignon and not visit the bridge, even if it means that you will be humming “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” to yourself for the rest of the day. The famous bridge actually predates the Papal period by a couple of hundred years, having been built, as I said, at the point furthest downstream where the Rhône could be bridged (thanks to the island in the middle). Unfortunately it was actually a bit too far downstream for safety, and after it suffered repeated flood damage and was repeatedly repaired over the years, people eventually gave up trying to rebuild it when a flood carried away 18 of the 22 arches in the 17^th Century.

It’s not a bad place from which to look back at the town and the palace, and to think about the tumultuous period when power politics and religion collided here.

The Avignon period was to last 68 years, officially (there was a confusing bit at the end when rival popes operated in both Avignon and Rome). The eventual return of the Papacy to Italy, and the military and political subjugation of many central Italian cities in the process, is an interesting enough topic to merit its own article one day. Edit: here is that article.

[1] Quoted in The Popes by John Julius Norwich. According to Norwich’s bibliography the translation is by E.H. Wilkins.

May 21, 2024February 8, 2025

The Etruscan Heartland – Tarquinia and Tuscania

In 2019 we made a visit to Tarquinia in northern Lazio to see the famous Etruscan necropolis. This is intended as a follow-up to a piece I wrote in 2021 about the Etruscans, titled “Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the Nine Gods He Swore”. That was largely built around a visit to an Etruscan tomb of comparatively recent discovery, near the town of Sarteano, and a visit to Chiusi, one of the 12 principal cities of the Etruscan homeland (and the “Clusium” of the poem by Macaulay from which I took the title of the article).

Another of the 12 cities of the Etruscan League was Perugia, which I can see in the distance from where I am writing this in 2024, although I am in the territory of the ancient Umbri on the other side of the Tiber.

A brief history, even briefer than in the earlier article, is that linguistics and DNA analysis of archaeological remains tell us that the Etruscans were for all practical purposes autochthonous to west central Italy, pre-dating the arrival of Indo-Europeans. They developed from an earlier Bronze Age culture called the Villanovans, and at their height their domains stretched from the Po Valley in the north to the coast south of Naples. Rome was part of their territory, and, of course, grew to rival and then dominate them – although the heroic tales which later formed part of the Roman “history” of writers like Livy can only have been true in the broadest of senses.

Although Rome bested Etruria militarily, Etruscan civilisation did not perish in flames. Instead it gradually became ever more Romanised, until Etruscan language, customs and people’s names ceased to be recognisable as such. The result was mostly but not entirely Roman, although with the exception of a few words of Etruscan origin, it is impossible to know how much Etruscan culture contributed to the synthesis.

“Tarquinia” is the name given by the Romans to the Etruscan city probably called Tarchna, which was also one of the Etruscan League. You will also recall that some of the Etruscan kings of pre-Republican Rome were called Tarquin. It seems extraordinary that the name should have survived unchanged from antiquity… and of course it didn’t. It was known as Corneto until 1922, when the Fascists, in their enthusiasm for ancient glories, changed the name back to the Roman version.

In Italy, the taste for antique Roman references, like Ferragosto for the August holiday, survived the fall of Fascism, so Tarquinia it remains.

On the way we passed the Lago di Bolsena, the lake named for the town of Bolsena – Roman Volsinii and before that Etruscan Velzna, another of the cities of the Etruscan league. It is a very beautiful area, even with the wind farms on the horizon, and it is not hard to convince oneself that the Etruscan heartland must have been quite an idyllic place.

Tarquinia

Tarquinia is located on high ground overlooking the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea – so the restaurants offer excellent seafood. It is a pretty mostly-medieval town with a few towers of the sort you find in San Gimignano, although not as tall.

We stayed in a B&B called “Antiche Mura” (the old walls). This was an accurate description as it was in a building just inside the old town walls, which offer a palimpsest of medieval bits on top of Roman bits on top of Etruscan bits on top of a small number of Bronze Age (Villanovan) bits.

Tarquinia Walls — The walls of Tarquinia, showing the different periods of their construction. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The couple who ran the B&B were very nice and have a son who is living and working in Melbourne, so on the basis of that indissoluble bond we hit it off quite well. Of course it is not uncommon to meet Italians with friends and relatives in Australia, but it used to be that those friends migrated in the 50s and 60s. These days youth unemployment – in part the result of an over-regulated labour market – is so bad that any kid with a bit of get-up-and-go gets up and goes, creating a whole new generation of reluctant and homesick exiles. At least visits home are cheaper than in the 1960s.

Tarquinia, with the Tyrrhenian Sea in the distance, showing the town’s height above the coastal plain. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The necropolis is in a field only a few hundred metres outside one of the town gates so the next morning we went there on foot. It was a warm day with bright sunshine and after a wet spring the wildflowers were going berserk, as were the bees. The whole place smelt like millefiore honey. Also going berserk with weed trimmers and tractor-mowers were the groundsmen employed by the council to mow all the grass and wildflowers, which was a bit of a shame but understandable as it would doubtless become a fire risk in summer.

Tarquinia Necropolis, a mound covering a tomb covered in flowers, before the groundsmen got to them. The “chimney” is an air vent to the tomb space below. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Tarquinia must have been a pretty big place, as demonstrated by the size of its necropolis, which has about 6,000 known graves (of which 24 or so are open to visitors). These mostly date from the 5th, 4th and 3rd Centuries BC. The wealthier Etruscans buried their dead in large walk-in tombs, decorated with brightly coloured frescoes. The tombs in Tarquinia started to be rediscovered in the 1860s, but over the years many have been broken into and despoiled by landowners and grave robbers looking for gold jewellery who discarded or destroyed other relics. And they have been caught up in the illegal trade in ancient artefacts which has seen parts of some frescoes chiselled off and sold overseas. And to complete the sad story, the frescoes in the graves which were uncovered in the 19th Century have gradually faded on exposure to the outside air. In almost every case the colours were much less vibrant than in the Sarteano tomb (excavated in the early 2000s) we visited the previous year.

Tarquinia Tomba di Leopardi — Tarquinia. The “Tomb of the Leopards”. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back, three images stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

The tombs are underground and many of them are visible as small humps in the field. Only a couple can be approached by the original long stone-lined passages; most are accessed by steps leading down from a little hut built for the purpose. When you get to the bottom of the steps there is a glass door preventing access to the actual burial chamber, and you press a button to turn on an electric light to illuminate the interior. You then peer through the glass, trying to see past the condensation on the inside and all the fingerprints on the outside left by the last school group. Making decent photographs is challenging.

Tarquinia Tomba di Baccanti — Tarquinia. The “Tomb of the Bacchantes”. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The paintings are fairly conventional – the spirit of the deceased was believed to hang around the burial place so they tried to paint it to look like a nice place to be. In one case the inside was actually painted rather effectively to look like the inside of a tent pitched on a hunting trip.

Tarquinia Tomba Caccia e Pesce — Tarquinia. The “Hunting and Fishing” tomb. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Tarquinia. A banquet in the “Tomba di Bettini”. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

In many others the paintings are of banquets with musicians and dancers. But in most, in the centre there is a painted false door that symbolises the door to the underworld, and in some cases there are representations of the demons or demigods who will accompany the soul thither. Historians call these figures Charons, like the ferryman of the Greeks, but these Etruscan Charons tended to have blue skin and drove chariots rather than rowing boats. The Charon in the tomb we visited in Sarteano the previous year had white skin and red hair.

Tarquinia Tomba di Caronti — Tarquinia. The “Tomba di Caronti” with the blue-skinned demigods on either side of the door to the underworld. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

We toiled around the entire necropolis and I went into all of the 24 tombs, while Lou was a bit more discriminating and only went down those which looked good on the signs outside, or if I came back up and reported them as worth seeing.

Afterwards we visited the town museum which is housed in a fine palazzo, much renovated over the years to include renaissance and baroque touches on its medieval base. It contains lots more Etruscan stuff, and also some reconstructed tomb chambers containing the original frescoes which were removed and reassembled inside the museum. Nearby there was a fine gelateria, and there was another even better not far away.

Tuscania

After parting from our hostess with many protestations of mutual esteem, we returned to Umbria via a town called Tuscania (which, confusingly, is not in Tuscany but in northern Lazio). We went there because we had driven through it on the way to Tarquinia and thought it looked nice. As indeed it turned out to be – so we stayed a bit longer and had a picnic lunch in a park.

Tuscania is very ancient but was not one of the 12 cities of the Etruscan league. The area is obviously rich in Etruscan remains though, given the number of sarcophagi and funerary statues dotted around as public decorations. It is one thing to read that there there are a lot of Etruscan remains, but when the town council starts using them as garden ornaments, it does kind of make the point.

Tuscania is quite close to the port of Civitavecchia which is where the cruise ships call in to Rome and it is a destination for coach trips for cruise passengers. A couple of buses turned up while we were there but the occupants were all fairly elderly so we managed to outrun them to the ice cream shop, which was possibly even better than the ones in Tarquinia.

April 25, 2024April 25, 2024

Ravello and its Villas

Ravello is a little town perched high above the Amalfi Coast, with spectacular views. This is intended as a short companion piece to my earlier article on Amalfi and the Sorrentine Peninsula – I had originally intended to write about Amalfi and Ravello in the same post but in the end it seemed more sensible to split them due to the number of photographs.

Location and History

Ravello sits on a steep hilltop very close to Amalfi itself. We were staying in the village of Pogerola which was on a similar hill across the deep valley which leads down to Amalfi.

Ravello from Pogerola — A distant view of Ravello from the nearby village of Pogerola. Right in the middle of the picture is a vertical cliff, topped with green vegetation. Those are the gardens of the Villa Cimbrone (see below). Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. Three images, stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

As for its origins, there are a few rather implausible-sounding origin stories (founded by shipwrecked Roman nobles, that sort of thing) but the most likely is that it grew up alongside Amalfi from the 6^th Century or so, sharing its fortunes and misfortunes. Its rugged hilltop would certainly have made it easily defensible.

View southwest from Ravello. I believe the coastal town away in the distance is Maiori. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

It did apparently have its own commercial specialisation, which was dyeing wool derived from flocks of sheep from the surrounding mountains. It would presumably have been dependent on Amalfitani ships to export the finished product. From time to time Ravello asserted its independence for a while, before being reabsorbed into whatever state controlled Amalfi at that moment.

These days Ravello is very much on the Amalfi tourist itinerary – the town itself is charming and the views are magnificent. We visited mainly to see two famous villas – Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone.

Villa Rufolo

Villa Rufolo was built by the Rufolo family which was wealthy and powerful in Ravello’s glory days. There is a reference to them in Boccaccio’s Decameron which is presumably the basis for a story that Boccaccio visited here – I thought that a bit implausible at first but it seems that it is possible; he spent part of his youth in Naples.

The Villa today is a bit of a mixture. There are definitely 13^th-Century parts remaining, but the main living area looks like a comfortable Victorian manor house, which in a sense it was because the place was bought and rebuilt in the mid-19^th Century by a Scotsman called Francis Reid. A famous visitor was Richard Wagner, who was apparently inspired to base the stage set for part of his opera Parsifal on the villa. On the basis of that somewhat loose association there is an annual Wagner festival here.

The gardens of the Villa Rufolo are also very 19th-Century in style, with spectacular views.

Villa Rufolo gardens — Villa Rufolo, the gardens. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Villa Cimbrone

The second famous villa is Villa Cimbrone. Although notionally dating from the 11^th Century, what you see today is mostly from the 20^th Century – the work of another wealthy Briton, one Ernest Beckett, later Lord Grimthorp. Beckett hired a local to rebuild the place, which he apparently did by buying bits of ancient masonry from all over Italy and assembling them into a sort of pastiche of styles. The Beckett family then hosted a “who’s who” of fashionable British literary, intellectual and political types during the 1920s and 30s, including members of the Bloomsbury Group and Winston Churchill.

These days the place is a swanky hotel – the sort of place where the guests are transferred up from their yachts below by helicopter (not an exaggeration; one arrived while we were there). But the gardens are open to the public, and the views from the gardens, if possible, are even more breathtaking than those from Villa Rufolo.

Villa Cimbrone gardens — Villa Cimbrone, the gardens. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Terrazza dell'Infinito — Villa Rufolo, the views from belvedere, the so-called “Terrazza dell’Infinito”. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

April 10, 2024April 20, 2024

Amalfi and the Sorrentine Peninsula

Amalfi is a little jewel of a town on a beautiful rugged coastline which was a major maritime power in the Middle Ages. In 2012 we took a trip around southern Italy; we started with Puglia and the Salentine and now I would like to talk about the Sorrentine peninsula, and in particular its southern coast, called, appropriately enough, the “Amalfi Coast”.

The Amalfi Coast from near the town of Positano. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, 6×6 rollfilm back Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, three images combined in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

The Sorrentine Peninsula – named for the town of Sorrento on its northern side – marks the southern edge of the Bay of Naples. It is very steep and rugged, and even today is crossed by few roads, so the people who live on the Amalfi Coast have always looked to the sea for transport, and for their livelihoods.

The Sorrentine Peninsula (click to open in Google Maps)

History

In the most ancient period of recorded European history, this area was part of what the Romans would later call Magna Graecia (“Greater Greece”), with many Greek colonies, including of course Naples and Syracuse, and even some Etruscan outposts such as Salerno. But as far as I can tell Amalfi was not one of them, with the first reference to it being in the 4^th Century as a trading post. Perhaps it existed in antiquity as a quiet fishing port, just one of many hugging the steep coastline.

But only a couple of hundred years later it had emerged as a significant middle power, a maritime state with the potential to rival Pisa, Genoa and Venice as one of the great “maritime republics”. Exactly why this should have been is hard to pin down for the historical amateur, as it does not seem to be in the most propitious location. But the end of the Western Empire brought new states and new boundaries between them, and where there are boundaries, people will trade across them. And like the lagoons of Venice, the impassable mountains of the peninsula would have protected Amalfi when armies were ravaging the mainland.

Southern Italy had not been spared the ravages of the Gothic Wars, and after the subsequent Lombard conquest most of the south found itself part of the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, with a few nominally Byzantine centres dotted around the coast, of which Amalfi was one. It then came under Lombard rule for a while, before reverting to Byzantium, at least in name.

In time that notional Byzantine suzerainty faded completely and in the 10^th Century Amalfi became a duchy that was independent for practical purposes.

Amalfi Harbour as it is today. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5-inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Whatever the strategic situation may have been, Amalfi was stuck on a steep rocky coast, which did not provide much in the way of arable land for agriculture. Apparently in the 13^th Century the Amalfitani did harness the fast-flowing rivers to power paper mills which created an export industry, but most of the city’s wealth would necessarily come from trading – wheat, salt, slaves and much else, with Arab Sicily and North Africa, the Levant, Sardinia and the Italian mainland. It played an important role in the development of maritime law and trading standards.

In the 10^th Century the Arab traveller Ibn Hawqal described Amalfi as “the most wealthy and opulent Lombard city”, and more important than Naples.

The Lombard duchies in northern Italy had been overthrown by the Franks in the 8^th Century, which led in due course to the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire. But in the south the contest was between the Lombards and Byzantium, until the early 11^th Century, when as I explained in my post on Norman Sicily, the Normans arrived. Within a very short time the Normans under Robert Guiscard had carved out their own state. Guiscard captured Amalfi in 1073, and although there were some short-lived revolts, its independence had pretty much ended. Later it became a possession of Pisa, and in the 1280s there were some hard times in the region due to the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

Amalfi’s wealth did not end immediately with its loss of independence, although it did start to decline. It continued to play an important part in Mediterranean trade, developing the box compass, and maintained its leading role in maritime law. Then in 1343 it all ended in a single day. An earthquake sent half the town into the sea, and the accompanying tsunami destroyed what was left of the port. Amalfi ceased to exist as a trading city.

The abrupt end of Amalfi had one benefit for posterity: the part of town that survived contains some very distinctive architecture that is characteristic of the period and the region. Had Amalfi’s prosperity continued, it would doubtless have been at risk of modernisation at some point in the subsequent centuries.

For centuries the coast remained a backwater, then during the period of Napoleonic rule in Naples, Joseph Bonaparte decided to commission a road from Sorrento to Salerno along the coast. It took decades to build, and was only completed shortly before Italian unification in the reign of the Bourbon King Ferdinand II in 1854. The road was only built to be wide enough to fit the royal coach, which was fine until tour buses arrived in the 20^th Century. These days it is a bit hair-raising to drive along – you quickly learn to look in the convex mirrors mounted at the hairpin bends, because if you are halfway round and you meet a bus coming the other way, it is you that will be reversing. In the last couple of years the local government has imposed restrictions on car traffic – in peak season visitors can only drive on odd or even dates, depending on their licence plates.

Anyway, once the road was completed the area was opened up for visitors, and the spectacular coast became a destination in its own right. Various luminaries including Richard Wagner spent time here. Later, towns like Positano and Ravello as well as Amalfi became resorts for the wealthy.

Positano from the Amalfi-Capri ferry. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The Amalfi Coast from the sea – a little fort on Punta Campanella. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Nowadays tourism has brought wealth back to the coast, but I have read stories from as recently as the 1950s and 60s of people living here in great poverty.

Pogerola and Amalfi

We were staying in a village called Pogerola almost directly above Amalfi. We arrived having driven for several hours from Puglia in terrible weather, and my first impression of Pogerola, as I made several trips ferrying bags several hundred metres down from the car in heavy rain, was not favourable. Our accommodation was one of the smallest places in which we have ever stayed in Italy, with only a sofa bed which we needed to fold away in the morning in order to be able to move around the room. But it had a terrace with a panoramic view, and the owners were friendly and had stocked the kitchen with various local delicacies so we did at least feel welcome.

The owners also advised me where to park – it was signed as two-hour spot but I parked there for a week without adverse consequences. There is no substitute for local knowledge.

The next day was sunny and we forgave Pogerola everything from the night before. There was a remarkable view over the Tyrrhenian Sea, deep blue and dotted with pleasure craft but also cargo vessels of various sorts hurrying back and forth between Naples and Salerno.

Looking about us we saw many terraces built out from the steep hillsides, mostly covered in black nylon netting. These were where lemons were grown, and the netting was presumably because at the end of April it was still cool enough for there to have been a risk of frost. The lemon trees, and lemon-based products, are everywhere. And such lemons – sweet rather than sour, with thick edible pith.

Pogerola is quite close to Amalfi, in fact a running jump and a fall of a few hundred feet would have got me there quite quickly. And since parking was going to be very difficult in Amalfi, it seemed a good reason to go there on foot. This was an opportunity to acquaint myself with the narrow and steep paths that were the only access to the hillside villages until comparatively recently. These are still in use – at one point I passed someone delivering sacks of cement to a building site, carried by a pair of pack mules.

Pontrone and Pogerola — The villages of Pogerola (distant) and Pontrone (closer) seen from Ravello. These villages were once only accessible by mule tracks. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Later, on my way back up the hill, I was making much slower progress. At one point I was pausing to try and catch my breath when down the hill at great speed came a sprightly octogenarian. He was about five feet tall, or at least he would have been had he not been bent over under the weight of a large basket of lemons. I tried to stop panting long enough to wish him a buona giornata, to which he responded affably but in (to me) an incomprehensible dialect. We later discovered that this old gentleman walked down from Pogerola to Amalfi every day with his basket of lemons to sell, and then, more sensibly than me, took the bus back up again.

On another day we did take the bus. The road down into Amalfi was even more narrow and winding than the main coast road, and inevitably when we were halfway down the bus met a truck coming up the other way, with no room to pass and a line of cars and scooters behind both, which made it difficult for either to reverse. In a long, complicated and frankly unbelievable manoeuvre, both drivers managed to work their vehicles back and forth and eventually, with only a few centimetres between the walls and the two vehicles, past each other. In this our driver was assisted, possibly, by a bunch of old blokes from the village who were sitting at the back of the bus and yelling out things like “Vai, vai, Luigi! Aspetta! Vai!” and enjoying themselves thoroughly.

Amalfi from the tiny hamlet of Pastena, on the road down from Pogerola. It was near here that our bus got stuck for a while. The little *campanile* belongs to an 11th-Century Church. In the far distance you can make out Salerno. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5-inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

In fact we had already realised that driving on the roads of the Sorrentine Peninsula requires a good deal of patience. At one point we had been driving up a steep and narrow road and came to a village. There was a small truck in front of us that had lots of crates on the back. On entering the village it stopped in the middle of the road, and sounded its horn. Unable to pass, we watched the greengrocer – for such it was – negotiate a shouted transaction with a lady on a balcony, who then lowered a basket with money in it, and raised the basket again with her vegetables. Fortunately we were not in a hurry, and it was more entertaining than being stuck in a traffic jam of tourist buses down on the main road.

Once the bus had dropped us down in Amalfi we split up and I slogged up a lot of steep alleys on the eastern side of the town in the hope of getting to a vantage point looking over the town with the morning light behind me. Despite my increasing fitness this was not particularly easy, as I was carrying my complete large format camera gear: body, sheet film magazines, three different backs for various film formats, six lenses and shutters on lens boards, and a tripod and head. Probably 20kg or more in total. These days my photography gear is much lighter.

Eventually I found just such a lookout and took several pictures. Even working quickly, taking a single large format photograph takes a few minutes, as I explained in my post titled Crocodile Dundee Shoots Large Format. I went back down into town where we rendezvoused in a bar for coffee and a cake, and then we went to the cathedral which dates from Amalfi’s days of wealth and power. I’m not an architectural expert but it does look quite exotic, with several stylistic features which I took to be Norman-Arabic.

Amalfi Duomo — The *Duomo* (cathedral) in Amalfi. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

After that we walked around to the next little town (Atrani) and I took a couple more large format photographs.

Then we decided to catch the bus back up to Pogerola for lunch. The trip back up started dramatically. There was a bit of a traffic snarl-up in the centre of Amalfi due to another bus impasse a bit further up the hill. One of the local cops was trying to sort it all out and getting a bit exasperated with all the scooter riders who were weaving between the other vehicles and around him, without taking much notice of any of his signals. Just as we were starting to get moving there was a thump and the bus stopped suddenly amid much consternation. We thought the bus might have hit one of a couple of cyclists who had been trying to get across the road, but it turned out that one of the scooter riders had misjudged his weave and hit us. A crowd of people picked him up and dusted him off and he seemed OK. As we pulled away the policeman had whipped out his notebook and was taking the rider’s details, doubtless pleased to have caught one of them at last.

March 3, 2024September 10, 2024

The Frescoes of Fra Angelico in San Marco, Florence

Fra Angelico was a humble monk who happened to be a great artist. In this post we look at his works in the Monastery of San Marco in Florence – this will be a short piece to complement my recent longer post on the Signorelli frescoes in the duomo of Orvieto in which I briefly introduced Fra Angelico.

To recap, the artist and Dominican friar known to his contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, to modern Italians as Il Beato Angelico and to Anglophone art historians as “Fra Angelico” was a talented artist of great piety and personal simplicity. In terms of the periods we ascribe to art history, he straddled late-medieval “International Gothic” and the Renaissance, and painted in both styles as the occasion demanded.

When Fra Angelico was executing commissions for important and wealthy clients, he painted in a formal style, and used the most brilliant and expensive colours. We saw an example of that in my photograph of the two ceiling panels which were all he completed in the Cappella Nuova in the Orvieto Duomo. I will reproduce the photograph again here to save you going to look for it.

Fra Angelico Orvieto — The Fra Angelico panels in the ceiling of the Cappella Nuova in Orvieto, an example of his formal style. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

But there is another aspect to his painting, simpler in style, reflecting his own subject choices, and giving us a bit of an insight into the character of someone who Vasari described, a hundred years later, as not only rarely talented, but humble and modest (in contrast with some of Vasari’s other subjects). To see this side of Fra Angelico, you must visit the monastery of San Marco in Florence (nowadays officially the “Museum of San Marco” – you can buy tickets online at its website).

The Monastery of San Marco

Map of Florence showing the location of the Monastery of San Marco at the top right (click to open in Google Maps).

There had been a monastery, or a series of monasteries, in this location on the northern side of the city for a least a couple of hundred years when, in the 1430s, the previous order was evicted for their laxity. The property was made over to a group of Dominicans from nearby Fiesole, which included Fra Angelico. But the buildings were in poor condition and the new proprietors had to live in makeshift accommodation at first.

San Marco was in the part of Florence known as the “Medici quarter” and it was the head of that wealthy family and the de facto ruler of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici, who decided to finance the rebuilding of the monastery in contemporary Renaissance style. And at some point it was decided that Fra Angelico and his assistant, Benozzo Gozzoli, would paint frescoes in various communal areas of the monastery and also in the monks’ cells.

Fra Angelico Judas — Fresco in San Marco, *Judas kisses Christ* by Fra Angelico. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Probably the most famous of these is his Annunciation, which is a very simple scene compared to what he would probably have painted had he been commissioned to do something for a great cathedral.

Fra Angelico Annunciation — Fresco in San Marco, *Annunciation* by Fra Angelico. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

No doubt in gratitude for his generosity in financing the reconstruction of the monastery, Cosimo de’ Medici was granted a cell there, as a peaceful retreat from the pressures of running Florence while pretending to be just a normal citizen. It is about twice the size of the rest of the cells, but just as austere inside. For this, Fra Angelico put in a special effort. His Adoration of the Magi is very beautful – there is no gorgeous and complex background such as might be seen a similar work by Perugino, but the figures are elegant and richly dressed. Below that is a space for a little altar with an image of Christ.

Fra Angelico Adoration — Fresco in Cosimo de’ Medici’s cell in San Marco, *Adoration of the Magi*. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back, two images merged in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

It is a special experience to visit Cosimo’s cell and imagining him there in silent contemplation, or perhaps reading letters brought to him from Popes and princes.

But despite the beauties of the Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi, the impression that stayed with me was that of a naive, almost cartoon-like literalness in his depiction of gospel scenes. In this Nativity the ox and the ass don’t quite take centre stage, but they certainly do not want to be just minor characters.

Fra Angelico Nativity — Fresco in San Marco, *Nativity* by Fra Angelico. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

In this scene of the women at Golgotha on Easter Sunday, they are rather theatrically peering into the empty sarcophagus, while an angel points upward as if to say “he went that-a-way”.

Fra Angelico Resurrection — Fresco in San Marco, *Resurrection* by Fra Angelico. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

And I will finish with my favourite, a picture of the medieval tradition of The Harrowing of Hell, according to which Jesus descended into Hell, bashed up a few devils and released various worthy souls – prophets who had had to wait until the resurrection before being admitted to heaven. I can recognise John the Baptist, and I think the chap with the forked beard is probably Moses, but I can’t place the others. Perhaps the one grasping Jesus’s hand is Isaiah.

Fra Angelico Harrowing of Hell — Fresco in San Marco, *The Harrowing of Hell* by Fra Angelico. Note the flattened devil. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

But the best parts are the devil hiding round a corner to the left, and the one who has been squashed flat when Christ smashed the door down. It makes me think of the coyote in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

February 24, 2024May 17, 2025

The End of the World – The Duomo and Signorelli Frescoes in Orvieto

In a pretty location in Umbria you may visit an artistic masterpiece of the Renaissance: Signorelli’s frescoes in the cathedral of Orvieto.

Orvieto is a town in western Umbria with a spectacular situation – the area abounds in outcrops of “tufa” – rock formed from volcanic ash, around which the softer rock has eroded away. This makes such sites good choices for defensibility, and it seems that there has been a settlement here from before Etruscan times. The name itself is said to derive from the Latin Urbs Vetus, meaning “the old city”.

Although in the region of Umbria now, Orvieto is located west of the Tiber River and so it would not have been part of the ancient territory of the Umbri, nor, for the same reason, would it have been part of the ancient Roman province of Umbria. The modern region of Umbria, with several other regions, was created when the Papal territories were annexed by the Kingdom of Piedmont during the unification of Italy, and its modern area only approximates that of its ancient one. So Orvieto doesn’t feel particularly Umbrian – the landscape and architecture have more in common with northern Lazio towns like Montefiascone and Caprarola.

Map showing the location of Orvieto, between Rome and Florence (click to open in Google Maps).

As the map shows, Orvieto is approximately halfway between Rome and Florence, and on both the main north-south motorway and the high-speed railway line. This means it is well-placed to receive a lot of tourists, which it does – but there has to be a reason for them to want to come. That reason is an artistic and architectural heritage that seems out of proportion to a place of such modest size. But some important things have happened here. Thomas Aquinas lectured at the university, and from the mid-1200s Orvieto was one of the cities to which Popes removed themselves when conflicts in Rome became too dangerous.

These days the attraction of Orvieto is largely based on the extraordinary duomo, or cathedral. While the duomo dominates the town when seen from a distance, you don’t actually see it as you walk along the narrow streets from the funicular which brings visitors up from the railway station and the car park. Then you suddenly turn a corner and there it is – and it is breathtaking.

Next to the duomo is an impressive medieval building – the Papal Palace, used as a residence when the Pope was in town. These days it houses the tourist office where you buy your ticket to visit the duomo.

The Duomo

Towards the end of the 13th Century, the town authorities decided to build themselves a magnificent church, to be dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, and built of alternating layers of white and black stone, like a giant liquorice allsort – a style common in Tuscan cities like Siena and Pistoia. Progress was a bit slow; the town kept running short of money, and every now and then plague and war interrupted things. In fact it took about three hundred years, so it started in the Romanesque style, most of it was Gothic, and there were some Renaissance bits towards the end.

Orvieto Duomo showing the gothic façade and the black and white stripes. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon-W 125mm lens, 4×5-inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, rising front to correct perspective (click to enlarge).

Apparently one of the more serious problems first encountered was that the structure didn’t appear to be strong enough to carry its own weight – a Sienese architect was brought in who added buttresses and other features based on the duomo at Siena.

And it was that Sienese architect – a chap called Maitani – who designed the first of the cathedral’s masterpieces – the magnificent Gothic façade.

The façade is the most prominent architectural feature in Orvieto and it can be seen clearly in the distant view of the town in the first photograph above. Sometimes, when the setting sun hits its golden mosaics, it shines like a beacon far into the distance. The mosaics date from the late 14th Century, but most were replaced and redesigned in the 15th, 18th and 19th Centuries.

At the base of the four piers of the façade are a series of bas-reliefs depicting stories from the old testament, and a Last Judgement with gruesome-looking devils carrying away the souls of the damned. It is thought that some of the work was by Maitani himself, but that three or four other master sculptors must have worked on it. My favourite part of it is a “Jesse Tree” which was a favourite motif in Christian iconography, showing various ancestors of Christ, starting with Jesse, the father of King David, in the branches of a tree. This has been compared to a medieval manuscript illumination, but carved in marble – I would certainly agree with that description.

Around the door you will see some of the most extraordinarily delicate carving, of marble inlaid with beautiful mosaics. This sort of portal carving is very common in Gothic cathedrals, but seldom is it as elegant as this.

The Interior and the Cappella Nuova

Once inside the “liquorice allsort” one tends to be struck by the comparative simplicity. I like this, as it is probably close to the original impression one would have had in the Middle Ages. Some writers seem to find it too stark a contrast to the glories of the façade, and if you agree with them, then be patient, because the best is yet to come.

And the best – which is what you have come to see – is one of the most memorable works of the 15th-16th Centuries, which is saying something. On one side of the nave is a chapel referred to variously as the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio or simply the Cappella Nuova, or “New Chapel”. “New”, in this case means that it was commissioned in 1408, a bit over a hundred years after work on the cathedral commenced, but consideration about how to decorate it did not begin until the mid-1400s. Perhaps it was a question of money, because that certainly turned out to be a constraint in the decades to come.

In 1446 negotiations were started to secure the services of one of the most famous artists of the day, the Dominican monk born Guido di Pietro, later called Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, but known to anglophone art history as Fra Angelico (NB: not Frangelico – that is a hazelnut-flavoured liqueur). In Italy he is usually called Il Beato Angelico, the blessed Angelico. The title eventually became official in 1982 when Pope John Paul II formally beatified him. I have some photographs of his frescoes from the monastery of San Marco in Florence, which I will make the subject of another post one day. (edit: here is that post.)

In 1447 the cathedral authorities signed a contract with Fra Angelico, and he did spend one summer in Orvieto, preparing designs and executing a couple of ceiling panels – in which he was assisted by the young Benozzo Gozzoli. A combination of papal demands on Fra Angelico’s time and possibly the difficulty of finding the money to pay him meant that he did not return, although apparently Gozzoli stayed on and continued the work for a while.

Fra Angelico died in 1455, and for the rest of the 15th Century no real work was done on the chapel, although the scaffolding remained in place. Orvieto itself went through some hard times with a period of civil disorder caused by the usual conflicts between rival wealthy families, which cannot have helped with the civic revenues.

Every now and then as finances permitted, attempts were made to find a painter to carry on the work, including the great Perugino, who characteristically kept the Orvietans hanging for a decade or so before finally turning them down. At that point, the choice fell on Luca Signorelli.

Signorelli came from the town of Cortona on the border of Tuscany and Umbria. In 1499 he was around 50 years old and presumably at the height of his powers. He had contributed to the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and also to the famous paintings in the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore near Siena, but it was this work in Orvieto that established his reputation in art history. As part of the contract he undertook to complete those parts of the chapel for which Fra Angelico had left drawings, but these were only for the rest of the ceiling panels. Since Fra Angelico’s work featured a Christ in Judgement, Signorelli proposed to continue the theme of the Apocalypse and Last Judgement, in keeping with Fra Angelico’s intent, but also picking up the eschatological tone of the carvings on the cathedral façade.

I have seen a tourist website which states that the Orvieto Last Judgement is based on that of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. This is completely the wrong way round! Signorelli was first, and Michelangelo came after. Any similarities – which there are – are the result of Michelangelo drawing inspiration from Signorelli, and not vice versa.

The Frescoes

Let’s start with the ceiling, which is the only place you can see any work by Fra Angelico. These are the two panels featuring Christ in Judgement and The Prophets.

Orvieto Cappella Nuova — The Cappella Nuova, ceiling panels by Fra Angelico – *The Prophets* (centre) and *Christ in Judgement* (left) Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The rest is all by Signorelli. The upper walls contain several scenes, drawn from the biblical account of the apocalypse and medieval works. In (I think) chronological order, they are The Rule of the Antichrist, The Apocalypse, The Resurrection of the Flesh, The Damned in Hell and The Elect in Paradise. You may find them given slightly different names in different sources.

The Rule of the Antichrist

The central figure in this panel is the false Christ preaching. He is rather shockingly depicted as similar to the real one, but with the devil whispering in his ear. Our old friend the art historian Vasari claimed to have identified real people in the crowd around him, including the young Raphael as the well-dressed long-haired chap in red tights with his hands on his hips. However some modern sources cast doubt on this.

It had not occurred to me until I started writing this article, but this fresco was painted very shortly after the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was convicted of heresy and executed in Florence. Savonarola preached a Taliban-like message of radical asceticism, and for a while was the effective ruler of Florence, declaring it to be the new Jerusalem and the world centre of Christianity. Savonarola was famous for his “bonfires of the vanities”, in which rich Florentines offered their treasures for destruction, and sure enough, on the ground in front of the Antichrist is a pile of such offerings. It seems very probable that people would have made the connection, and moreover that the church authorities would have wanted them to. Then I noticed that behind the Antichrist Signorelli has depicted a group of disputing clerics, prominent among whom are several in the black and white Dominican habit that Savonarola would have worn. I wonder if that was part of the message as well? Not that Savonarola had been the actual Antichrist, but that this sort of puritanism was dangerous heresy.

Elsewhere in the scene, bad stuff is happening all over the place. People are being persecuted and executed for not following the Antichrist. and in the central background the Antichrist is performing bogus miracles. At the top left is the end of this particular part of the story, where the Antichrist has dared to attempt to ascend into heaven, but is quickly dispatched by the Archangel Michael. A group of people below, presumably the Antichrist’s followers, are killed in the collateral damage.

At the lower left stand two men dressed in black, solemnly observing the scene. These are Signorelli himself and Fra Angelico. Signorelli cannot have met his predecessor, and I do not know on what the likeness was based, but it was a generous gesture on Signorelli’s part to include him.

In this as in the other main scenes, you will notice a clever artistic trick by Signorelli – at the bottom of each scene some of the characters look as if they are actually standing on ledges that are part of the structure of the cathedral. It is quite a skilful bit of false perspective, given that you are looking at it all from below. It is not the only part of the chapel where he plays these sorts of games.

The Apocalypse

This scene is painted over the archway that divides the chapel from the nave of the duomo. On the right, in the foreground the Old Testament King David and a Sibyl are predicting the end of the world. Behind them, someone is escaping from a collapsing building, and people are being led to execution. In the distance, a city is in ruins and ships are borne high on huge waves.

On the left, flying devils are laying waste to the earth with fiery breath, while people below flee in panic.

As elsewhere, the foremost figures – David and the Sybil on the right, the terrified refugees on the left, have been painted as if they have come out of the paintings and are standing on the actual architecture of the cathedral.

The Resurrection of the Flesh

In this scene the Last Trumpet is sounded, and the dead emerge from the earth – some already restored to flesh, others still as skeletons. I’m not sure why they did not all come back in complete form straight away.

Signorelli specialised in nude figures, in particular powerfully-muscled males, at a time when this was still a fairly novel thing in a sacred setting (as we have seen, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes came later). I’m not aware of whether the cathedral authorities thought he was being too daring.

The Damned in Hell

Signorelli definitely went to town on this scene. At the top right three armed archangels prevent any escape, while devils seize the damned souls and bear them into the fiery gate of hell at the lower left. There is a heaving mass of bodies below, but it is easy to distinguish the figures from each other – assisted, as one source points out, by the fact that Signorelli gives the devils grotesquely-coloured skin.

There is apparently a tradition that the naked woman being carried off on the back of a flying devil is a depiction of a former girlfriend of Signorelli’s who had jilted him. This would make it an early example of revenge porn, but I have not seen this in any serious discussion of the frescoes so it can probably be discounted.

The Elect in Paradise

The final large scene is a complete contrast to The Damned in Hell – obviously, because it is The Elect in Paradise. The raised dead stand around – most now decorously draped – while angels welcome them with crowns. More angels provide entertainment in the form of a chamber orchestra.

The Zoccoli

All of the main pictures start about two and a half metres above floor level. The walls beneath are painted to look like pedestals (Zoccoli in Italian), which gave Signorelli the opportunity for some more trompe l’oeil showing off. As we have already seen, he painted an apparent flat surface on top of the Zoccoli, which allowed some of the action to appear to spill forward out of the pictures. The Zoccoli are ornately decorated in the “grotesque” style, which in this context does not mean ugly but rather in a style based on the art seen in the ancient Roman ruins that were starting to be excavated. The classical theme is continued by the fact that in the centre of each Zoccolo there is a portrait, not of some saint or elder of the Church, but a poet.

By tradition these poets are Homer, Empedocles, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Virgil and Dante, although some of these are now disputed. Dante is obvious, so no argument there. Ovid is surrounded by illustrations from his Metamorphoses, and Virgil with illustrations from his Georgics and Aeneid.

In medieval legend, the ancient poet Virgil acquired a second career as a magician and prophet. He therefore appears twice here, once in each persona – at least the wild-haired fellow below is thought to be him.

What they all have in common is that they wrote about visits to the underworld. Another feature that they share is that apart from Dante they are reacting to the apocalyptic events happening above them. They look at each other in alarm, or peer out of their little windows at the scenes above. It brings the biblical prophecies and classical literature together in a very Renaissance-humanist way, but it is also a little joke on Signorelli’s part.

Signorelli worked in Rome and elsewhere in central Italy, but I think this is his unquestioned masterpiece. It’s all quite an extraordinary experience, and one that we have yet to tire of repeating. When we first visited I was just impressed by the scale of it all. It was only later that I realised firstly how revolutionary it was in artistic terms, but also how elements of it would have resonated with recent history. We’ve been there a few times over the years, and Orvieto is one of our favourite places to take visitors. It helps that there is an excellent restaurant (Trattoria Vinosus) in the piazza next to the duomo.

A note on sources

These frescoes are an important landmark in Renaissance art, and the Duomo a major example of Gothic architecture, and as such you will find many references to them in art histories and online articles. There are references in Philip’s Travel Guides: Umbria by Jonathan Keats, which was particularly helpful in identifying which of the façade mosaics are later restorations. Much of what I have found on the frescoes comes from Signorelli’s Orvieto Frescoes, A Guide to the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto Cathedral, by Dugald McLellan, 1998. We bought our copy in Orvieto in 1999.

A note on the Photography

In some of the pictures of the Signorelli frescoes, I used a wide-angle lens from below, which introduced some distortion. I have attempted to correct the perspective in software, but only up to a point because of course some of the foreshortening was put there on purpose by Signorelli. If you want to get the full effect of his false-perspective tricks, you will just have to go there yourselves!

December 26, 2023November 24, 2024

Paleochristian Churches Part V – The Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome

Welcome to another article on paleochristian churches – buildings that survive from the early Christian era. In this case, the church is the Basilica of Santa Sabina all’Aventino, in Rome.

As I said in the introduction to this series,”paleochristian” is a somewhat elastic term; in some contexts it is used quite strictly to refer only to the very earliest periods, while in others it might apply more broadly to periods in the first millennium AD when Christian art, architecture and doctrine were all still evolving. I’m not a proper historian so I lean towards elasticity, selecting my examples on the basis of what they can show us that is different to the familiar architectural and artistic conventions of the Middle Ages and onwards, and also because really old things are very cool.

Since the Middle Ages the term “basilica” has meant a large church, granted special privileges by the Catholic Church. But in ancient Roman times, it referred simply to a large public building, used for various purposes including law courts, tax offices and so on; the colonnaded side aisles could be subdivided with curtains so a basilica might serve multiple purposes at the same time. If dog licences were a thing in ancient Rome, that is where you would have gone to buy one.

Basilicas were built to a standard plan, and after the establishment of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine, the basic plan – and the term – was adopted for large churches.

If you are a regular reader you will know that I am often disappointed to find that very old ecclesiastical art and architecture can be hard to find beneath later – often baroque, but also Renaissance – accretions. If you find yourself similarly disappointed, then I can recommend Santa Sabina, which is the oldest surviving basilica in Rome that retains its original appearance. While it did have some internal additions in the 16th Century, these were removed in the 20th.

Dating from 422 or so, the Basilica of Santa Sabina is a couple of decades older than the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – but it is in something much closer to its original condition than the mighty basilica of Santa Maria.

Santa Sabina is also easy to get to if you are in Rome. It stands on the Aventine Hill – that’s the southernmost of the ancient seven hills, beside the Tiber, next to the Circus Maximus and across the river from Trastevere. There’s a pleasant park there called the Giardino degli Aranci (Garden of the Oranges) from which you get one of the better views of Rome.

Map of Aventine Hill — Map showing the Basilica of Santa Sabina in the lower left (click to open in Google Maps)

Unless you arrive there in a bus or a taxi, or on one of those blasted electric scooters, you will probably do what we have done each time and slog up the hill on foot from the Circus Maximus, or from the Lungotevere (the avenue beside the Tiber). If you take the former route you will see a pleasant rose garden on the way. It is on the site of a former Jewish cemetery, and the designers paid their respects by laying out the paths in the form of a menorah.

Via di Valle Murcia — The approach to the Aventine Hill through the rose garden. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

When you get to Santa Sabina, in the car park you might see an immaculate old Lancia or Alfa Romeo with white ribbons on the bonnet, because the church is a very popular place for weddings.

In ancient republican Rome the hill was the site of several temples dedicated to deities associated with the plebeian classes, but by imperial times the hill seems to have become a very up-market suburban area, with luxurious houses owned by aristocratic families, and a temple of Juno. One of the houses is said to have belonged to a lady called Sabina, a Christian convert who was martyred in the 2nd Century and later canonised. I don’t know whether Sabina’s house became a church after her death, but in any case there would probably have been no continuity with the later basilica dedicated to Sabina, because in the early 400s the area is thought to have been completely destroyed when Alaric the Goth sacked Rome. That makes sense – Alaric ordered his troops to respect religious places, but private houses in a wealthy suburb would have had no such protection.

It must be said that even some Catholic sources are a bit dubious as to whether “Saint Sabina” even existed. One scholar argues that the real-life Sabina was likely to have been a wealthy 5th-Century donor of the land on which the basilica was to be built, and that the whole story about the 2nd-Century martyr was an early medieval invention. This is by no means impossible; in my post about Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese we saw how two completely different Costanzas appear to have been postumously conflated into a single rather implausible saint. And it is not hard to imagine that “Sabina’s Church”, ie the church built on Sabina’s land, became “Saint Sabina’s Church” over time, creating the need for a confected hagiography to explain who the purported saint had been.

As we saw in my post on A Return to Ravenna, when the Gothic army left Rome, one of their hostages was the young Galla Placidia, daughter of the Emperor Theodosius, who was later to marry one of her captors and later still became, as regent for her son, the last competent ruler of the Western Empire. As a wealthy Roman lady, might our possible real Sabina have moved in the same circles as Galla Placidia, and perhaps met her? It is an interesting but unprovable speculation.

What is known for certain is that in the 420s, not long after the sack of Rome by the Goths, a churchman called Peter of Illyria commissioned the basilica that when complete twelve years later would become known as Santa Sabina. I wondered what this area might have looked like then. Only a few years after the sack, Rome was already experiencing severe depopulation, and the wealthy people who had lived on the Aventine Hill before the sack (including Sabina?) may well have had country estates to which they could relocate. In my imagination the hill would still have been a place of ruins, perhaps with improvised market gardens or animals grazing where once there had been luxurious houses. (Note: I recently watched an interesting video on the role of population decline in the fall of the Western Empire. You can find it here.)

Looking north from the hilltop, what would one have seen? More ruins across the river in Trastevere, I suppose, and to the right on the Palatine Hill. But Rome was to suffer two more sackings in the next six decades, so it wasn’t yet as bad as it would get.

View from Giardino degli Aranci — A modern view looking north-west from the Giardini degli Aranci towards Trastevere and St Peter’s on the left. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, two images stitched in Capture One software (click to enlarge).

Was the Temple of Juno still standing on the Aventine Hill? As a pagan structure it would not have been afforded any special protection by the Goths, but in any case, given the suppression of the old religion by now-dominant Christianity, it might already have fallen into a state in which it wasn’t worth looting.

The Interior

Inside the Basilica of Santa Sabina, the overwhelming impression is of an austere nobility. Whenever we have been there, there have been no seats in the nave, so you really feel the space. Lining the nave are columns that were taken from the Temple of Juno and re-used. That temple was built around 400 BC and then restored during the reign of Augustus. So you are standing in a building that is over 1600 years old, but the columns are even older – I’m not an expert, but I would guess that elaborate Corinthian capitals like this would date from the Augustan restoration of the temple, making them 400 years older than most of the church.

Above the door is a dedication in Latin hexameters, which I assume is the reason we know that Peter of Illyria commissioned the church.

The windows in the apse, and in the clerestory (that is, along the top of the walls of the nave), contain neither plain nor coloured glass, but shards of a translucent mineral called selenite, mounted in delicate stone tracery. This is apparently a very ancient practice – the first use of glass in windows is supposed to have been some decades after Santa Sabina was built. As far as I can find out, this is one of the very few ancient buildings (or perhaps the only one) where you can still see selenite windows.

The Doors

If you get excited about unlikely survivals of really old stuff, then a highlight of Santa Sabina is seeing the original doors of cypress wood, still in position. They are huge, and are easily the oldest large wooden artefacts that survive from antiquity. Despite their being made of wood, and despite their having been exposed to the open air for around 1,600 years, you can still look at the intricate carvings of biblical scenes.

Santa Sabina doors — Santa Sabina: the doors. The fact that most adults can walk through the opening upright gives an idea of the scale. I believe that the marble door frame, like the columns, started out in another, older, building. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Needless to say the carvings on the doors have been the subject of intense academic study – and the inevitable disagreements – but two things stood out to me. One is a small panel at the far top left. It shows three figures with their arms outstretched, and while there are some alternative interpretations, it is hard to disagree with the conventional view that this is the earliest known representation of the crucifixion of Christ, with the other figures being the two thieves.

The second thing that stood out to me was the panel showing the adoration of the Magi. As in Ravenna and in Santa Maria Maggiore, our three friends are wearing diamond-patterned tights and Phrygian caps (or “smurf hats”, if you prefer). I think that puts it beyond doubt that this was the conventional representation of them in the 5th Century.

Another panel shows a figure being acclaimed by others, standing in front of a church and accompanied by an angel. While there have been various interpretations that this is a biblical event, another theory has it that the person’s costume would make him a Roman-Byzantine Emperor. If so, the most plausible candidate is Theodosius II, the Eastern Emperor at the time that Santa Sabina was built (and the nephew of Galla Placidia). Theodosius convened the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, at which some of the thornier doctrinal questions of the early church were resolved, so you can imagine that this would have been considered worth commemorating.

Later History

The basilica survived subsequent sackings of Rome and the rest of the Dark Ages. In 1216, when the Order of the Dominicans was established, Pope Honorius granted Santa Sabina to them to use as their headquarters. Some internal redecoration occurred in the Renaissance, but the building avoided the worst indignities of the period, especially that of having an entirely inappropriate Renaissance or baroque facade stuck on the front. At one point due to fears for the integrity of the structure most of the windows were bricked in, which must have made the interior very dark.

In the half-dome of the apse there was once an original 5th-Century mosaic, which was replaced in the 16th Century by a mediocre fresco. I have not managed to find a description of the original, but it is suggested that the composition of the replacement mimics that of the original.

During Napoleon’s occupation of Rome the Dominicans were expelled, but returned afterwards. Then when the Kingdom of Italy took Rome from the Papacy in 1870 they were expelled again, and the Italian Government converted the church to a quarantine station, of all things. These days the basilica is again a consecrated church of the Dominicans.

There were two separate restorations during the 20th Century, the first of which was criticised for some of the aesthetic decisions made, including the installation of a rather bizarre pagoda-like ciborium, baldacchino or altar canopy, which was removed, along with other accretions, in the second restoration. At that time the windows were re-opened, with the stone tracery recreated based on the remains of the 5th-Century originals which had been discovered during excavations.

However if you would like to see the ciborium, and you live in California, you can do so. Someone bought it, shipped it to America and reassembled it in the grounds of the Los Angeles Forest Lawn cemetery.

September 24, 2023December 12, 2024

A Walk to Porta Pia

Here is a brief photo essay featuring pictures taken on a walk through the inner Rome suburb of Nomentano to the Castel Pretorio, the Aurelian Walls and Porta Pia. The pictures didn’t really lend themselves to a unifying theme, so rather than trying to manufacture one I thought I would let the walk itself be the theme.

In August this year, at the national holiday of Ferragosto, I again stayed in Rome for a few nights on the basis that Rome is one of the few places in Italy where accommodation actually gets a bit cheaper during August; outside the historic centre the city is considerably emptier then. Last year we visited and I wrote about the origins of the holiday and a visit to the Milvian Bridge, site of one of the more momentous battles in history.

To the extent that I had any objectives other than staying in an air-conditioned hotel room, they were to take more photographs of paleochristian churches for future articles. Since then I have already published one on Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede featuring photos previously taken, and some taken on this visit. There will be at least one more to come.

Normally at this time of year the public transport in Rome is comparatively empty, but this year the authorities had decided to take advantage of the season to close one of the two Metro lines for maintenance, so the buses were rather crowded. Given that, one morning I looked at the map and decided that I could probably achieve some of my objectives on foot.

The map below shows the first part of my route. Because I was intending to take architectural photographs, sometimes indoors in low light, I took my heavy Fujifilm GFX 50R medium-format camera with me rather than the little Fujifilm X-Pro3, despite the extra discomfort.

I started at a favourite Sicilian bar in Nomentano, and after coffee and a pastry, set off down Via Catanzaro. One of the advantages of being in Rome during Ferragosto is that one can from time to time step into the street to compose a photograph without being immediately flattened by surging traffic, as would happen at any other time of year.

When I first realised that the word palazzo in Italian can mean “apartment block” as well as palace”, it struck me as a bit odd, but looking at some examples in Rome one realises that it is not entirely inappropriate – the architects were clearly trying for that sort of effect.

The rococo palazzo in the picture below, in Via Morgagni, was very striking; it was apparently built in 1926. The inscription on the front – NON DOMO DOMINUS SED DOMINO DOMUS is a quotation from Cicero, meaning that it is not the house (or family) that confers honour on its head, but the behaviour and bearing of the head that brings honour to the house. I don’t know what the significance of the snails at the top is, but they are a nice touch.

One sees quite a lot of early 20^th-Century public artworks in Rome, and the tendency is to mentally label the more monumental examples as “fascist” art, because, well, fascists liked that sort of thing. And since public art is usually paid for by the state, it often appears in contexts associated with the ideology of the government of the day. But it is correlation rather than causation – sculptors in non-Fascist regimes like Jacob Epstein in Britain were producing public works in similar styles.

In Italy, one clue is to look at the dates on public inscriptions. If there is a date, followed by a smaller number with “A” and/or “EF” then they are saying “Year (Anno) X of the Fascist Era (Epoca Fascista)”. Once you know to look, it is actually rather surprising how often you still see this in Italy – there was nothing like the sort of comprehensive removal of reminders of Nazism that happened in Germany after the war.

Another clue is classical references in the architecture. Identification of the modern Fascist state with imperial Rome, right down to putting “SPQR” on the manhole covers, was ubiquitous.

Below is a building from 1925, the Dopolavoro of the Italian railway workers in Rome, on Via Bari.

Dopolavoro Ferroviario, built in 1925. Via Bari, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

What was a dopolavoro? Literally meaning “after work”, the dopolavori were social clubs for industrial and agricultural working people, and as elsewhere in Europe had their origins in the late 19^th Century. Some were created by trade unions, and many by so-called “mutual assistance societies”. With the advent of Fascism, the trade unions were banned and the independent societies were incorporated into state-controlled organisations. The dopolavori proliferated, though, because the Fascist government liked the idea of them. The movement continued after the war and these days if you go to the website of the Dopolavoro Ferroviario (DLF) you will find an organisation offering cultural opportunities and cut-price travel.

Continuing along Via Catania I saw to my left the wall of a large building of obvious ancient Roman construction. This was the Castra Praetoria, or in modern Italian, Castel Pretorio – a name familiar to me from the metro station of the same name, but actually the remains of the barracks of the famous Praetorian Guard.

The walls of Castra Praetoria (Castel Pretorio). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

In Republican Rome, the title praetor was given to men serving as magistrates, or as commanders in the army. It is from the bodyguards of the latter that the Praetorian Guard was descended. In imperial times they were the elite corps of the army that protected the emperor, fought beside him in battle, and sometimes performed sensitive intelligence missions.

Over time they went from protecting the emperor to sometimes choosing him as well, starting with the famous occasion where they supposedly found Claudius hiding behind a curtain after the assassination of Caligula. They were the only troops permitted to carry weapons in Rome without special authority, and being known for their arrogant behaviour they were not popular in the city. Emperors needed to keep the Praetorians happy with generous bribes to retain their loyalty, but one of the occasions when they were completely faithful to their duty was their final act, when they fought alongside the emperor Maxentius on the losing side against Constantine at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. This was not, as later propaganda had it, the final triumph of Christianity over pagan persecution, because Maxentius had already promulgated an edict of toleration for Christianity (for which Constantine then took the credit). But it was the victory of one political faction over another, and Constantine took his revenge by disbanding the Praetorians and demolishing their headquarters.

Constantine didn’t demolish the Castel Pretorio completely, as it formed part of the Aurelian Walls of Rome, and I continued along Via Catania with those walls now to my left. The Aurelian Walls were built around 275 AD, after a long period of peace in which Romans did not feel threatened, and the city had spread far outside the original city walls of six centuries earlier. But the Vandal incursions into Italy of the 3^rd Century put an end to that complacency, and the Emperor Aurelian hastily commissioned the walls which bear his name.

In 275 the walls were probably not strong enough to withstand a determined siege. That wasn’t their original purpose, though – it was to deter hit-and-run raids by barbarians, and to allow troops to be deployed rapidly to the site of an attack from one of the many watchtowers. However a few decades later Maxentius raised the height of the walls to make them a serious defence against siege warfare. It is an interesting hypothetical to consider what might have happened if Maxentius had decided to retreat behind the walls instead of engaging Constantine’s army at the Milvian Bridge.

Around 1,800 years later, the walls are still in pretty good condition where they have not been demolished to let roads through. I suspect that there are three reasons for this. Obviously, the first is that the walls were built strongly to start with – brick outer layers may not seem all that resilient but when the space between is filled with concrete and rock the result is very tough. The second is that brick and concrete are not materials that lend themselves to be scavenged for re-use, as happened to so much stone, marble and bronze from ancient buildings.

But probably the most important reason is that on a regular basis the walls continued to be needed for defence, right up until the 1870s, so the city authorities would have tried to keep them well-maintained. Which brings me – both in the narrative and in terms of my actual location – to Porta Pia.

The city gate of Porta Pia, replacing an older gate which was too small, was erected in the 1560s in the reign of Pope Pius IV, from whom it took its name. It was designed by Michelangelo who offered three versions, but Pius did not want to spend a lot of money and chose the cheapest-looking of the three. Even then the external façade was not completed until the 1860s, on a neo-classical design which is supposedly faithful to Michelangelo’s intentions (we do not know because the original drawings have been lost). But the facade on the inside of the walls is authentic Michelangelo.

That’s all very well, but it isn’t the reason why every Italian schoolchild learns about the Porta Pia in history lessons. No, in 1870, the Porta Pia was where the army of the Kingdom of Italy forced its way into Rome. If you are not familiar with the history of the Risorgimento, that might have come as a bit of a surprise – the Italian army, capturing Rome?

When Italy united in 1861, the new Italian parliament, meeting in Turin, declared that Rome was to be the capital. But there was a problem: the Pope was Pius IX, of whom much had been expected by progressives on his accession as a comparatively young man. But he had grown increasingly reactionary as he grew older. He refused to recognise the Kingdom of Italy, denounced it as an abomination and told Italians that it was a serious sin to vote in national elections. He then spent the rest of his life sulking. Papal forces were quickly evicted from almost all the Papal States, but the Italian Army stopped at the walls of Rome. There were a couple of reasons for this. One was that it would not have been a good look to shed Italian blood in a conflict with the forces of the Catholic Church, a prospect which seriously troubled King Victor Emmanuel. But the main reason was that Rome was strongly garrisoned by mercenaries and foreign forces, most of which were provided by the French Emperor Napoleon III.

Over the decade or so following the establishment of the Italian state, various attempts were made to find a negotiated solution, but they almost always ended with Pius throwing a tantrum, leading to the point where, in 1870 and to the general surprise of theologians, he declared himself infallible. Papal infallibility only applied to doctrinal pronouncements, but on the other hand Pius obviously considered the legitimacy of the Italian state a matter of doctrine.

Everything changed with France’s impending defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, which saw the hurried withdrawal of French troops from Rome. Faced with the impossibility of defending the city, Pius still refused any kind of agreement, but privately let it be known that if the Italian forces were able to breach the city’s defences he would yield to force majeure. And those defences were, mostly, the Aurelian Walls.

In the event, the loss of life – although completely unnecessary – was not huge. On the 20^th of September 1870, after a pounding by artillery, a breach was opened just to the west of the Porta Pia, the Bersaglieri light infantry of the Italian army entered Rome, and after brief fighting, the Papal forces laid down their arms. Most, being foreign mercenaries, were repatriated, although the Swiss were allowed to remain in Papal service. At a subsequent plebiscite, the vote by Romans to become part of Italy was overwhelmingly in the majority, so while 19^th-Century plebiscites did not observe modern standards of integrity and transparency, it was probably a fair representation of public opinion.

But this was an armistice, not a formal peace. While the Pope and his administration were given the territory of the Vatican and certain other church properties, and afforded extravagant diplomatic courtesies by the Italian Government, they still did not formally recognise the Italian state, or concede the loss of their former territories in central Italy. Pius declared a mass excommunication of all the Italian forces involved in the military action.

In fact, the problem was not solved until 1929, when the new Italian Prime Minister Mussolini negotiated the “Lateran Treaty”. Meanwhile, many Italian towns renamed their principal streets and piazzas “XX Settembre” in commemoration of the capture of Rome.

Just outside the gate is a monument to the Bersaglieri – and we can actually call this one “fascist” because it was commissioned by Mussolini (whose brief military service in the First World War was in the Bersaglieri). Although the soldier on top is in a uniform from the First World War, he is charging straight at the gate. In case you missed the point, the gatehouse of Porta Pia itself now houses a museum of the Bersaglieri, and once inside the gate, the name of the street changes from Via Nomentana to Via XX Settembre.

Bersaglieri Monument — Bersaglieri monument. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

After the capture of Rome, the Bersaglieri were immediately celebrated as heroes, and, with the Alpini, they remain a much-loved symbol of the Italian Army. I’m not sure what the best translation of the name would be – perhaps “riflemen”, “marksmen” or more generically, “light infantry”. I read somewhere that Piedmont lacked the resources to maintain a standing force of light cavalry, so the requirement for a highly-mobile battlefield force was filled by the Bersaglieri, which is why, rather than marching, they do everything at a run. And very fine they look too with their ostrich-plumed hats.

From Porta Pia I continued south towards the Esquiline Hill, then to the Colosseum, past the Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus, then up the Aventine Hill, ending at the Basilica of Santa Sabina and the Giardini degli Aranci, from which there are excellent views over the Tiber towards Trastevere and the Vatican. That will be the subject of a separate post. Edit: here is that post.

September 3, 2023April 27, 2025

Paleochristian Churches IV – Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede

Welcome to the fourth instalment in this series, in which we look at Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s most famous churches, and two smaller but very interesting ones nearby – Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede.

My interest in this subject is historical and secular rather than religious, but it is not possible to discuss European history in the first millennium without reference to the evolution and controversies of Christian doctrine. I try my best to consider these issues objectively, but hope not to offend the devout.

Esquilino — Map of the Esquiline district of Rome. Santa Maria Maggiore is at the centre-right, Santa Prassede immediately below, and Santa Pudenziana is at the upper left. (*Source: Google*, click to open in Google Maps)

Santa Maria Maggiore

On a spur of Rome’s Esquiline Hill, not far from the Termini railway station, is the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – Saint Mary the Great. These days the word “basilica” means a church that has been granted special privileges by the Pope, but in ancient Rome a basilica was just a large public building, built to a standard pattern on a rectangular plan, with a large central hall and side aisles divided from the central area by rows of columns. Santa Maria Maggiore is a basilica in both senses.

One interesting point about the special status of Santa Maria Maggiore is that when you step into it you are no longer in Italy, in a jurisdictional sense. Under the terms of the Lateran Treaty of 1929, in which the Catholic Church finally recognised the existence of the Italian state, the basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and St John Lateran remained little exclaves of Vatican City, analogous to the way that diplomatic premises are granted special status under international conventions. But my purpose here is to talk about the most ancient aspects of the building.

As is often the case, the exact origins of the building are a bit obscure, but it seems to have been built in the mid-400s on the site of another church which was about a century older. There is a legend about a miraculous summer fall of snow which indicated where the church should be built, but versions vary as to whether that refers to the older or the newer church.

What is known is that the central structure of the present church is that of the 5^th-Century building. The church has been repaired, modified and extended several times over the centuries, with the most dramatic change being the addition of the huge baroque façade in the 1740s. That, added to the late medieval campanile and the domes, has the result that on first sight it really does not look very ancient at all.

Santa Maria Maggiore from Via Carlo Alberto, not looking very ancient at all. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

But you have to look a bit closer. Unlike many of the terribly destructive modernisations of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, this 18^th-Century one left the 12^th-Century mosaics on the original façade intact. So while that’s not paleochristian but medieval, it’s a good start.

Before we examine the insides, let us consider the fact that the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This doesn’t sound particularly unusual to us now, but in the mid-400s, it was. Why is that? The answer begins with the fact that the Council of Ephesus had just concluded.

Some of the – for me anyway – more tiresome aspects of the history of the early Christian era are the endless controversies over Christology – the nature of Christ. Was he human, or divine? Or did he have both human and divine agency? If so, was his divine agency separate from that of God’s? How could his human agency not have been tainted by original sin? And so on, and on, and on, literally for centuries. Attempts to resolve these questions by reasoning led to all sorts of abstruse doctrines with no explicit basis in scripture, including the Trinity, the immaculate conception of Mary and more, all of which just spawned additional disagreements. Well-meaning emperors, popes and patriarchs tried – when they were not active disputants themselves – to resolve the issues by convening councils, but those councils usually ended up with enraged clerics hurling anathemas at each other, and sometimes furniture.

One such council, and an important one, was the Council of Ephesus in 431 which was called by the Emperor Theodosius II. I’ll spare you the details of all the issues in dispute (although if you are interested there is a fairly comprehensive summary on Wikipedia) but one of the outcomes was that Mary was now officially designated Theotokos, or “Mother of God” and that led rapidly to her promotion to the important position she has since occupied in both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the first to be dedicated to the Virgin, was erected to commemorate this decision, which you will agree was a momentous one given the focus of intense veneration which she quickly became.

Now let us step inside. The first impression is of yet another large baroque church. There is an immense 16^th-Century gilded ceiling which is “over the top” figuratively as well as literally. There is a huge baldacchino (canopy) over the altar, and at the rear of the nave over the door is a mock Roman temple façade with columns and tympanum, papal crest and a couple of angels. Above the altar is a dome and arches with every available surface covered with baroque wedding-cake style decoration.

But look at the columns that line the nave – although the capitals are more recent, they are real ancient Roman columns, recycled either from the church that stood on the site before this one, or from an earlier pagan temple (maybe both).

Above the frieze is a series of 5^th-Century mosaic panels telling the story of Moses on the eastern side, and various other Old Testament stories on the western.

The Red Sea — The Egyptians are drowned in the Red Sea, Santa Maria Maggiore. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

I’m assuming this one depicts the Battle of Jericho. Santa Maria Maggiore. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

But the real glories of Santa Maria Maggiore are the 5^th-Century mosaics on the arch separating the nave from the apse, and the 13^th-Century mosaics in the apse itself. And they make a real contrast in Marian iconography.

Let’s do this backwards in time and look at the apse first. It is a magnificent example of a very conventional medieval image – Christ crowning His mother as Queen of Heaven. Christ has long dark hair and a beard. Mary wears her conventional shawl and outer blue cloak. Angels, saints, popes and cardinals are in attendance.

Now let us go back eight hundred years before that and look at what may be the earliest-surviving representations of Mary in western religious art, on the so-called triumphal arch. Remember, this was just after she had been proclaimed Mother of God by the Council of Ephesus. Here is a series of illustrations from the life of the Virgin – the annunciation, the nativity, and so on. But where is Mary? You would be forgiven for not noticing her at first – she’s not dressed in her normal blue cloak, but is the one dressed as an aristocratic lady from the late Roman period – complete with silk dress, necklace and tiara. Nor does she seem to have a halo (although, weirdly, Herod does). Nothing like the later representations of her.

Triumphal arch mosaic — Santa Maria Maggiore, detail of the triumphal arch, with the Annunciation at the top, Adoration of the Magi immediately below. In the Annunciation, Mary is said to be piously weaving a new veil for the temple. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

And look for the three kings who appear in the adoration of the magi on the left side of the arch, and before Herod on the right. With their brightly-coloured tights and their Phrygian caps, we’ve seen those guys before, in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, built about fifty years after Santa Maria Maggiore. I had thought that version of them was unique to Ravenna, but clearly it was a conventional representation at the time. This stuff is really fascinating to late-Roman history nerds like me. (Note: I’ve since discovered a third version of them, on the ancient cypress-wood doors of Santa Sabina).

When we visited the church I was very pleased to see, as is often the case with the grand Roman basilicas, that the nave was empty of pews or chairs. This gives a sense of space and a much better idea of how the original must have felt (churches did not have seating until the late Middle Ages; before that you stayed standing or knelt on the floor).

Note: The original version of this article featured photographs of the arch mosaics taken with a high ISO and a short zoom lens and heavily cropped. The results were unsatisfactory and in October 2023 when I was next in Rome I took new ones with a longer lens with image stabilisation, which have replaced the earlier ones. It was still quite a challenge to process them.

Santa Pudenziana

The next church on our little itinerary is that of Santa Pudenziana, quite close by (see the map above). It is a very different sort of experience to Santa Maria Maggiore. The church is in a location described as the oldest place of Christian worship in Rome (although it is not the oldest surviving church building) and there seem to be reasonable grounds for making the claim. However the fabric of the building itself dates from the mid-4^th Century which still makes it very old indeed.

Pudenziana (Latin Pudentiana) and her sister Prassede (Latin Praxedis or Praxedes) are supposed to have been the daughters of an early Christian convert in Rome called Pudens. Pudens probably existed – St Paul sends a cheerio on his behalf in 2 Timothy 4:21. There is a suggestion from linguistic evidence that Pudentiana might not have been a real person, and that her existence has been wrongly inferred from the phrase domus Pudentiana, which could have meant the “house (or family) of Pudens”. Whether she was real or not, a tradition sprang up that Pudentiana and Praxedis went around collecting the blood of martyrs before being martyred themselves in due course.

The church is on the site of a 1^st-Century Roman house, so it is by no means implausible that the house was the home of a convert to Christianity (whom we may as well call Pudens) which in due course became an unofficial, then an official, place of worship.

Approaching the church of Santa Pudenziana from the street. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It is hard to get a good sense of the building as you approach it – it is surrounded by other buildings including hotels and apartment blocks, and sits some way below the current street level, showing how much higher the ground level is in Rome these days (you can see a video explaining this phenomenon here). When you do get to it you see an architectural mish-mash which visually owes more to medieval and 19^th Century renovations than to anything from the 4^th Century.

Inside it is initially a bit disappointing as well – plaster-covered arches and a baroque altarpiece do not convey any sense of antiquity.

There is a notionally 4^th-Century mosaic in the apse, showing Christ and the apostles and once described as the most beautiful in Rome, but it was heavily restored in the 16^th Century, losing much in the process. The background, featuring an idealised Jerusalem and, in the sky the symbols of the four evangelists, looks original, and some of the faces of the figures on the left may be.

The rest of the decoration in the church is mediocre stuff from the 16^th Century and later. I have to admit that the first time I visited here a few years ago I took a quick look around, sniffed disapprovingly at the redecorations, and quickly left.

But the evidence of the building’s antiquity is there in front of you – not in the decorations, but between them. Stuck unobtrusively between the plaster arches are the original Roman columns that support the nave, and – unusually for a redecorated church – the walls of the nave are the original unrendered Roman brickwork. At the top of the picture below you can see the herringbone pattern that is very characteristic of the era.

So, as it often turns out, it is worth pausing, looking carefully and thinking about what you see. You may then also reflect that during the weekly Sunday services (the church has been adopted by Rome’s Filipino community), the walls that look down on the congregation are the same ones that looked down on congregations over 1600 years ago.

Santa Prassede

The final church we are visiting today is on the other side of Santa Maria Maggiore and is dedicated to Pudenziana’s sister Praxedis/Prassede. I have not come across any explicit doubts about whether Prassede existed, as there are in her sister’s case, but by the same token I have not read of any evidence for her existence, other than tradition,

From the street, Santa Prassede is a bit unprepossessing. The first time we visited was an “are you sure this is the right place?” moment – but go inside, because you will be rewarded.

The church is later than the other two in this article, dating from the 700s, although there was a church on the same spot a couple of centuries earlier, and legend has it that the land was originally owned by the family of Pudens. It was commissioned by Pope Hadrian I to house the supposed bones of Prassede and Pudenziana. Shortly after it was built, around 820, the church was enlarged and redecorated on the instructions of Pope Paschal I, and it is these decorations on the arch and apse that – if you look past the inevitable baroque stuff lower down – make an overwhelming first impression.

Old Paschal wanted to make sure that he got the credit for this – under the both the triumphal arch and the apsidal arch you will see his monogram. And in the apse itself you will see him on the left of the group of figures surrounding Christ, holding a model of the church – since he was alive at the time of the depiction, by convention he is given a square halo. Either side of Christ, two female martyrs, presumably Prassede and Pudenziana, are being presented by Saints Peter and Paul. I don’t know who the saint on the far right is.

It’s a bit difficult to get a decent photograph of the apse mosaic from floor level, thanks to the ornate baroque baldacchino over the altar, so I had to take it in sections.

The church and its decorations are very impressive by 21^st-Century standards, but must have been breathtaking indeed in the 800s. Shortly after it was built it was visited by a couple of pilgrims from a distant northern land – King Æthelwulf of England and his young son, the future Alfred the Great. At a time when most buildings in England would have been made of timber, you can imagine the effect this must have had.

For me one of the highlights of the church is the little chapel of San Zeno, built by Paschal to contain the tomb of his mother Theodora. Inside it is covered in mosaics – not to the same standard as in the main church, but they are charming and intimate. A lady labelled as Theodora is presumably Paschal’s mother, and since she too has a square halo she must still have been alive at the time.

Santa Prassede, Cappella San Zeno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the photographs above the lady on the left is Theodora, Paschal’s mother, followed by probably Santa Prassede. Then comes the Virgin Mary, by now (400 years after Santa Maria Maggiore) conventionally dressed in a blue cloak with her head covered. I don’t know who the saint on the right is – it could be Santa Pudenziana, but if it were one would expect her to be wearing a martyr’s crown like her sister.

Cappella San Zeno, ceiling mosaic. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Also in the church is part of an antique pillar of polished stone – said to be that to which Jesus was tied when scourged in front of Pilate. This was identified in situ by Saint Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine. Helena made a trip to the Holy Land during which, in addition to the pillar, she also managed to identify pieces of wood from the True Cross, parts of Jesus’s crib and various other relics which sparked a lucrative trade in such things for the next millennium or so. She also confidently indicated various sites mentioned in scripture such as Golgotha, the location of the Last Supper, and so on.

Note, April 2025: Santa Maria Maggiore has received a good deal of publicity recently after the burial there of the late Pope Francis. Expect it to be very busy for a while.

August 29, 2023April 26, 2024

The Temple on the Mountain

In Umbria, at the very top of Monte Torre Maggiore, is a site that was sacred for thousands of years. In June 2023 I resolved to make a trip there, as it was something I had had in mind for a while. Monte Torre Maggiore is the southernmost and highest peak in the chain called the Monti Martani which divides the Middle Tiber Valley from the Valle Umbra. Roughly speaking, the Middle Tiber Valley runs from Perugia in the north to Todi in the south, while the Valle Umbra runs from Assisi in the north to Spoleto in the south.

Central Umbria, with the Monti Martani inexpertly indicated. The green area around Bastardo is the Martani Hills, an olive and wine growing area. Source: Google (click to open in Google Maps).

My desire to see the place came from reading a book titled simply Umbria by an English journalist called Patricia Clough, in which she describes heading up the mountain to the very summit, where she found the remains of a temple that dates from pre-Roman times. She makes much of how hard it was to find, and the difficulty of distinguishing it from some medieval remains a bit further down the mountain, but these days it is on Google Maps which solves both problems. “Pagan Sanctuary”, says Google – adding, a bit superfluously, “(ruin)”.

To get there one heads for a town called Cesi which is spectacularly located on a steep mountainside. It is however difficult to find a good spot from which to photograph Cesi, but if I ever get one I will update this post. Once in Cesi I turned off the car’s satnav and relied on Google Maps to find the road – which turned out to be steep, narrow, and in appalling condition even by the standards of Umbrian rural roads. Uncomfortably aware that my leased Peugeot didn’t have a spare tyre, just one of those silly repair kits, I crawled up the mountain in first gear, easing the car into and out of potholes when I couldn’t go round them. It took half an hour or so, and I only passed two cars. One, stationary in a clearing, had a couple of shifty-looking fellows in it who looked at me with suspicion. I decided they must be drug dealers. A bit later I passed a couple of lady carabiniere in one of their little green forestry patrol 4WD Fiat Pandas. The driver mouthed a friendly “buongiorno” to me as we passed, which I took to mean that what I was doing was neither illegal nor extremely foolish. Carabinieri carry military-grade weapons (they are in fact part of the military) so I assumed they would be a match for the drug dealers. In the event I saw nothing in the local online newspaper about a shootout on a lonely mountain road, so maybe I was wrong about them being drug dealers.

Sant’Erasmo

After having passed an astronomical observatory which appeared to be mothballed, about a third of the way up I reached a flat spot with somewhere to park, and got out. The scent of the wildflowers – of which there were many – was very strong. Big black shiny bumblebees, and little black insects with bright red wings, were feeding from them.

From the car park a ridge went out to a flat-topped outcrop, falling almost perpendicularly on three sides to the Terni valley a bit over two thousand feet below. On the flat top of the outcrop there is a church called Sant’Erasmo that dates from the 12th Century. It seemed unused but not abandoned, as there was a large padlock on the door.

Around Sant’Erasmo I saw various large stone blocks which looked ancient – from what I have been able to find out there was a settlement here called Clusiolum in Roman times, and in the early Middle Ages a Benedictine monastery for which Sant’Erasmo was presumably the church. Little remains of the Roman town, and nothing of the monastery as far as I could see, although doubtless much is hidden under the grass. In some places Sant’Erasmo is referred to not as a chiesa (church) but as an eremo (hermitage). There is a rather roughly-built stone extension out of the side of the church which doesn’t really fit any of the conventions of ecclesiastical architecture, so I speculate that might have been the hermit’s cell.

The view was tremendous, with a near-vertical slope down to the industrial outskirts of Terni on the left, and away to the right the town of Narni, sitting beside the gorge where the ancient military road (still called the Via Flaminia) heads down to Rome.

At the end of the ridge there are the remains of a medieval tower which would also have had a tremendous view. Presumably if the garrison saw an invading army they would have lit a fire or something. I didn’t go out to the tower, partly because it looked like a bit of a scramble, and partly because there were signs saying that it was both very dangerous and very illegal to approach within 15 metres.

Sant'Erasmo Watchtower — The medieval watchtower from Sant’Erasmo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Monte Torre Maggiore

Sant’Erasmo was very interesting, but not the object of the trip, so I climbed back in the car and kept going uphill. Shortly beyond Sant’Erasmo the road became unmetalled, and actually a lot smoother, so I made better progress. Eventually I got to where Google thought it would be a good idea to get out and continue on foot, so I found a place in which to park the car out of the hot sun, and did so. It was very steep. At first it was through woodland, then it came out onto a bare hillside with lots of white stones. It was hard going; the sun was quite fierce and the hillside continued to be steep. I was going very slowly and stopping frequently, and my smart watch kept asking if I had finished my workout. Given how hard I was gasping for air I found this rather insulting.

On another hill a couple of kilometres away members of a mountain rescue team were practising being winched up and down from a helicopter, so it wasn’t hugely peaceful. A large raptor circled overhead for a while then, presumably deciding that I wasn’t about to expire, headed away. After a while the helicopter left too, presumably deciding I didn’t need rescuing.

Eventually I got to the summit. The site is surrounded by a metal fence but there was no lock on the gate so I assumed it is just there to keep cattle out, and let myself in. It is on the highest point of the mountain so the view is indeed spectacular – almost 360 degrees from Assisi in the northeast to Todi in the northwest. To the southeast are the high Apennines of Abruzzo, range after range fading into the distance.

To the south, beyond a range of hills, are the plains of northern Lazio that lead down to Rome. Clough’s book says that locals claim that from here one could see the dome of St Peter’s in Rome on a clear day, and nowadays the tower blocks on the outskirts of Rome. That seems a bit plausible, but not in a summer heat haze.

As for the ruins themselves, they are the remains of two rectangular buildings. One has been dated to the 3^rd Century BC, and a larger one from the 3^rd or 4^th Century AD, both erected over buried remains of a much earlier structure. There is also a smaller structure made of more haphazardly-arranged stones. I have no idea if that was part of the original or dates from some later period.

Being a good journalist rather than a cavalier blogger like me, Clough chased down the archaeologist who led the excavation of the site and who explained its pre-Roman origins. The excavations apparently revealed Bronze and Iron Age traces including ritual items in a grotto nearby, but to my untutored eye what remains above ground looks all Roman – large evenly-dressed stone blocks without mortar, fragments of fluted columns and the like.

It seems that as Rome’s dominions expanded to take in Umbria the site was redeveloped in Roman style. It is well-known that the Romans would co-opt local deities into their pantheon, so a shrine on some foggy British riverside or one on a baking Syrian hilltop would be rededicated to , for example, Jupiter plus the British name or Minerva plus the Syrian name. It could be that something similar happened here, or perhaps the original deity was just extinguished. Either way, the name of that original deity is lost now.

Given what we know, assimilation seems more characteristic of Roman practice and therefore more likely. It is seen as a strength of Roman imperialism – helping to encourage the locals into the new dominant culture, and presumably preventing local sacred sites from becoming centres of resistance.

In due course, something analogous happened with Christianity. It was not as explicit as pagan Roman syncretism, because the whole point of the Judeo-Christian god was that you were not allowed any other ones (although with the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, apostles, martyrs and other saints, in practice there was no shortage of additional subjects for veneration). What happened instead was that sacred sites continued to be co-opted, but the object was replacement rather than assimilation. Pagan temples were replaced by Christian churches on the same sites. Temples to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, were frequently (or always? I don’t know) replaced by churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Detail of the façade of the medieval church of Santa Maria in Cammuccia in Todi, Umbria, built on the site of a Roman temple of Minerva, and re-using material from that temple. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

That did not seem to have happened in the case of the temple on Monte Torre Maggiore. I haven’t seen any references to a Christian church on the site, and Clough’s archaeologist source suggests that the temples may have been violently destroyed. Whether that was part of the suppression of paganism, or was the result of war or earthquake, I do not know.

Sources

As I said, the inspiration for my visit to Monte Torre Maggiore, and the source for most of the information on the temple is Umbria by Patricia Clough, Haus Publishing, London, 2009. Although not a long book, it ranges across several aspects of living in Umbria, from history and culture to food and home renovation. I recommend it to anyone interested in the area.

I have found very little else – there is a brief mention of Sant’Erasmo in Cadogan Guides: Umbria (2009 edition), and nothing at all in the usually comprehensive Umbria, a Cultural Guide by Ian Campbell Ross. Online there are cursory mentions on a few tourism and outdoor walking sites, and only the stub of a Wikipedia page. It is an unusual experience for me to think that I might be making a substantial addition to the amount of online material on a subject.

August 20, 2023April 26, 2025

Abruzzo and the Reluctant Pope

Celestine V was history’s most reluctant pope. I visited the harsh and beautiful landscape from which he came, and where he had lived as a hermit.

Abruzzo, for those who have not been there, is the very mountainous region on the eastern side of the Italian peninsula, about halfway down. It is due east of Rome, and can be reached from there quite quickly by a modern road that goes through many long tunnels and over some spectacular tall viaducts. Until the 20th Century though, if you were in Rome and wanted to get there in a hurry, you might have been better off going by sea, thanks to the mountains.

Despite being on the same latitude as Rome, Abruzzo is officially and historically part of il mezzogiorno or the South of Italy. “Officially” in the sense that the Italian Government groups several regions together for statistical and policy purposes, on the grounds that they share similar economic and social problems, and are the subject of various targeted schemes to try and relieve those problems. And “historically” because before Italian unification in the 1860s, those regions were part of what was variously called the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – ruled for its last few hundred years by a branch of the Spanish Bourbon family, one of the most reactionary regimes in Europe. Over a hundred and sixty years later, that history still casts a long shadow.

The Apennines define Abruzzo: high mountains, poor soils, a harsh climate – and earthquakes, lots of them.

Gran Sasso national park in Abruzzo, April 2011. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

For many centuries, the principal economic activity was transhumance – the moving of animals, mostly sheep and goats but cattle too, up into the high country at the end of spring to graze on the mountain pastures, then back down again when the cool weather arrived. Some of the distances travelled were in the order of several hundred kilometres. Transhumance is still happening, but rather than huge herds of animals blocking all the roads, it happens in trucks at night.

These days Abruzzo hosts some of Italy’s wildest national parks, in which are to be found eagles, boars, bears and wolves. I didn’t see any, but there are plenty of road signs warning one to be careful not to hit a bear (I was careful, and didn’t).

We had made a couple of visits to the region in the past; I went there a third time in July 2023 in search of some cooler weather than we were getting in Umbria. I was staying in a place called Caramanico Terme. Italy is full of these spa towns, the glory days of which were mostly in the 1950s and 60s. It seems that back then you could get a doctor to prescribe you a cure at a spa, for your liver or whatever, and the result was a holiday subsidised by the Italian public health system. It was a racket, and eventually the government put a stop to it.

Since then, Caramanico has done better than some; its proximity to Maiella National Park has allowed it to reinvent itself as a centre for outdoor sports, and so instead of elderly people with liver problems shuffling along, the town is full of younger people with extravagant calf muscles striding purposefully along. The spa itself is closed.

Caramanico Terme, with smoke in the distance. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

On the evening after I arrived I went out for a stroll and an aperitivo. As soon as I got outside I smelt smoke in the air; the sky was a bronze colour, a light snow of white ash was falling, and people were gathered in the street looking at the sky, in a way that Australians are familiar with. It didn’t take long to establish that there was a wildfire on Monte Morrone, the large mountain between Caramanico and Sulmona. That put paid to one option for the next day, which was a visit to the principal hermitage of Pope Celestine V.

In fact, a visit to Celestine’s main hermitage on Monte Morrone, even if there had been no fires, would not have been all that satisfying, as it has been significantly enlarged and embellished over the intervening centuries. But all was not lost – not far from Caramanico is another hermitage that he lived in for five years, which is still pretty much in the 13th-Century condition to which Celestine himself restored it. It is called Eremo di San Bartolomeo in Legio.

Pope Celestine V

Who was Celestine V, and why would I want to visit his hermitage? Born Pietro Angelerio and later known as Pietro da Morrone, he was easily the least suitable pope in the history of the papacy (note: I have no opinion on the suitability of any recent popes on doctrinal grounds; this is a history blog, not a religious one).

Back to Pietro. Born to a poor farming family in the 13th Century, he became a monk and lived an extremely ascetic life as a hermit on Monte Morrone and other places in the area, attracting followers and gaining a reputation for piety and simplicity. He came to the attention of papal circles when he made a journey to visit the then pope in person and seek approval for establishment of his order, later known as the Celestines.

Then the pope died, and for various reasons, including plague in Rome and the usual one that several of the cardinals wanted the job themselves, no agreement was reached on a successor for a couple of years. Pietro wrote to the college of cardinals, then meeting in Perugia, telling them that they risked damnation if they didn’t make up their minds. No doubt thinking “job done”, Pietro went back to being a hermit, only to stick his head out of his cell one morning to see a delegation outside informing him that he had been elected the next pope. Actually, two delegations. The King of Naples, of whose territories Abruzzo was part, had also heard the news and could not pass up the opportunity to get involved in the fun.

Dismayed and at first flatly refusing (one story has him dragged out from under the bed by his heels), Pietro was eventually persuaded on dubious theological grounds that he did not have the option to refuse, and very reluctantly agreed to become pope, taking the name Celestine V. It didn’t end well. Poor old Celestine was hopeless at running a theocratic state and was kept a virtual prisoner by the King of Naples and the crafty cardinals. He was illiterate, spoke no Latin, and would say yes to whatever was asked of him, sometimes granting the same benefice to multiple petitioners.

The craftiest of the cardinals, one Benedetto Caetani, undermined Celestine’s confidence even further. He went so far, it was said, to introduce a speaking tube into Celestine’s cell through which, in the small hours of the night, he would pretend to be the voice of God, telling the terrified pope to resign or face damnation. After five miserable months Celestine passed a decree allowing popes to resign and promptly invoked it, hoping to return to his hermitage.

Not everyone accepted his resignation, and in order to prevent him being set up as a rival, his successor as pope (Benedetto Caetani; now there’s a coincidence) who took the name Boniface VIII, made him an actual prisoner in a remote castle – which is not too different from how he had planned to live anyway – and before long he died.

Boniface could not have been more of a contrast to Celestine. He was a typical medieval “bad pope” – not as outright evil or debauched as some, but not particularly interested in spiritual matters, and very interested indeed in extending his temporal power and empowering and enriching his family. He repealed all of Celestine’s decrees except for the one about papal resignations.

After Boniface in turn died, Celestine was canonised. This might seem to have been an apology from the church for the rotten way he had been treated, but in fact even that was political. Given that making him a saint was an implied criticism of Boniface, cardinals from the Caetani family and their allies all voted against canonisation, but were outvoted by their rivals, cardinals from the Colonna family and their allies.

Il Sentiero di Celestino

Before I could start my journey in the footsteps of Celestine, I drove up a narrow, steep and winding road to a village called Decontra, several hundred feet above Caramanico. This was a pretty little place in a spectacular setting, on the shoulder of a hill beneath some much higher mountains.

View of the Apennines from Decontra. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, three images merged in Affinity Photo software (click to enlarge).

A single row of stone cottages lines the road. But what is pretty now would have been a harsh place to live until quite recently. It was the sort of place where the more prosperous people could aspire to build a two-storey house, so the animals and people could live in different rooms.

Decontra. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Having found somewhere to park, as I was loading myself up for the walk I saw someone whom I took to be another hardy trekkista approaching across a field. Then I noticed that he was accompanied by a large herd of sheep – no, goats – no, sheep and goats. And he was an elderly she.

Goatherd near Decontra. Pixel 4A phone camera (click to enlarge).

She had three dogs with her but only one seemed to be making any contribution; the other two were more interested in playing, saying hello to tourists and so forth. So the sheep and goats were heading in all directions and it took the lady quite a bit of running around, yelling and hitting any nearby animal with her stick, to get them all going in the same direction.

Which she eventually did, and off they all went in search, literally, of greener pastures. I felt that I had been given a glimpse of the past, or to be more accurate, a glimpse of something that would shortly become part of the past. I mean, good luck getting anyone under seventy to take that on as a profession.

Sheep and goats near Decontra — Sheep and goats, with Decontra in the background. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Valle Giumentina

To get to the eremo was going to be a couple of hours’ walk through an area called the Valle Giumentina, which is a wide valley sloping down from the high Apennines towards the distant Adriatic. It is shown on Google Maps as a “neolithic archaeological site”, and sure enough it is covered with little piles of stones. At one side of the valley some entrepreneur has recreated a “paleolithic village” of little round stone huts – it wasn’t open during the week, but even from a distance it was rather reminiscent of The Flintstones.

Paleolithic and neolithic things have indeed been found here, and it seems that in prehistoric times the locals used the valley for transhumance, and built little stone huts (called tholoi) in which to store things, and in which to turn the milk from their flocks into cheese. But here’s the problem: so did every subsequent generation until after the Second World War. So was that pile of stones the remains of a hut from 1000 BC, or of one from 1950? I resolved to visit the archaeological museum in Chieti the next day to find out.

The Eremo di San Bartolomeo in Legio

On the edge of the Valle Giumentina the limestone has been eroded into a deep ravine, on the side of which there is a natural stone platform under an overhanging rock, and on that platform is a little chapel and an adjoining cell. According to a plaque at the site, it had already been built and had then fallen into ruin when Celestine, or Pietro as he still was, rebuilt it and moved in.

There are two ways to get to the hermitage, and both seem to be equally arduous. As it turned out I had chosen the better route for photography, as it approached from the other side of the valley, giving much better views. The other route approaches from above, and you would not be able to see the place until you got to it. Even from my side of the ravine it was a bit hard to make out at first – in the photograph below it is at the lower left.

Eremo di San Bartolomeo in Legio. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It was a bit of a scramble down, and a tiring climb back up, but worth it for the photographs.

Poor old Celestine has been remembered though; the walking trail which links several of these barely-accessible hermitages is the Sentiero di Celestino. Of course, the hardy trekkisti with bulging calf muscles, Ray-Ban sunglasses and carbon fibre walking sticks might not look much like the wild-eyed, half-starved hermit who became history’s most reluctant pope, but there you are. In addition I note that there is a “Bar Celestino” in Sulmona, to which no doubt a modern Celestine could come down from the mountain if he felt like an Aperol Spritz.

Chieti

The next day I did indeed drive to Chieti – a handsome town on a hill between the mountains and the sea – and visited the archaeological museum. It did not enlighten me regarding the Valle Giumentina – the attendant I consulted was knowledgeable about the rules on photography in the museum, but had never heard of the Valle Giumentina. I’ve since found some academic papers online which variously date human habitation in the Valle to the Paleolithic and indeed late Pleistocene eras. The visit to the museum was by no means a waste of time, as there was a lot of information about the various pre-Roman clans and tribes in the area, and I did get to see the slightly-famous “Warrior of Capestrano”, a grave statue from the 6th Century BC. With his wide-brimmed helmet and the diagonal shoulder straps holding his breastplate on, he looks a bit Mexican.

The “*Guerriero di Capestrano*, Archaeological Museum of Abruzzo, Chieti. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Cospaia – the Accidental Republic

Not long ago I went for a drive up to the northern tip of Umbria, in the Upper Tiber Valley near the town of Sansepolcro, not far from where Umbria, Tuscany and Marche all meet. Why? Well firstly because it was quite hot, so the prospect of spending much of the day in an air-conditioned car had its attractions. But the main purpose was to visit a place called Cospaia, whose history sounds like something out of a Peter Sellers film.

Pliny the Younger

But before I got to Cospaia I set the GPS for a town called San Giustino, where there is an archaeological site I wanted to see – the villa of Pliny the Younger. The nephew and adopted son of – you guessed it – Pliny the Elder, this Roman historian did the right thing by history. Possibly knowing that attribution of ownership to a building was going to be difficult two thousand years later, Pliny the Younger took the precaution of having his initials moulded into the bricks of which his villa was to be made (not “PTY” but “CPCS”: Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus).

PTY’s main contribution to history is the large number of his letters which survive, in some of which he describes the death of his uncle (PTE) who was killed while trying to organise the rescue of people from Pompei. PTY’s detailed descriptions of the eruption of Vesuvius, which he witnessed from across the bay, are the main source of contemporary information about what happened, and as a result that type of volcanic eruption is still technically known as “Plinian”.

It’s mildly embarrassing to acknowledge that I first encountered PTE not at school or even in a book but in an episode of the classic BBC radio program, The Goon Show. It was called “The Histories of Pliny The Elder”, featuring Caractacus Seagoon, Brutus Moriatus et al. Spike Milligan obviously paid attention in history lessons.

I wasn’t expecting much of the villa, having looked at online descriptions, and indeed this is a site that was excavated several years ago, and has been fenced off and locked ever since.

Colle Plinio — What remains of Pliny the Younger’s Villa. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Supposedly many of the finds from the excavation are now on display in a museum in a nearby town, but I couldn’t find it. Still, it was nice to look around at the countryside, and imagine PTY sitting there looking at something like the same view after a hard day’s letter-writing. Actually, he was also a lawyer and a magistrate in Rome, so he only spent his holidays here.

Pliny the Elder, on the other hand, was a polymath who, in addition to several military histories that have not survived, wrote an enormous work of natural history, really the first of its kind. Last year I was overjoyed to find that in his Naturalis Historia he mentioned the grape variety known as “Grechetto”, and described it as “peculiaris est tudernis”, or “typical of Todi”. You can still buy a bottle of Grechetto in the supermarkets of Todi.

Cospaia

Checking out PTY’s villa didn’t take long, so from there I headed off to Cospaia, a small village which had about 250 inhabitants in the 15th Century, and I’d guess a bit fewer now. And Cospaia, despite its modesty, became an independent republic. By mistake. And stayed that way for almost four hundred years because no-one could be bothered fixing it.

Back in the 1400s the Pope of the day (Eugenius IV) was running short of cash. The neighbouring Republic of Florence (later Grand Duchy of Tuscany), run for all practical purposes by the very wealthy Cosimo de’ Medici, had cash to spare. So in 1440 an agreement was reached whereby the town of Sansepolcro and its territory would be sold to Tuscany, and officials on both sides were set to work to establish where the new border should run, and draw up the treaty which would formalise it.

Rivers make obvious and unambiguous boundaries, provided there is no confusion about which river is intended. But in central Italy, any little dry creek bed tends to be called Rio. And in Cospaia there are two, about 500 metres apart, either side of the village. You can see where this is going, can’t you? The Papal cartographers selected the one nearest to them, and the Florentine cartographers assumed their instructions referred to the one nearest to them. The result was that Cospaia ended up neither in the Papal States, nor in Tuscany.

It is at this point that one thinks of the 1959 Peter Sellers film The Mouse That Roared, about the fictional independent duchy of Grand Fenwick that declares war on the United States. In the film about Cospaia I can see Alistair Sim as Eugenius IV, and maybe Alec Guinness as Cosimo de’ Medici. And of course Peter Sellers as the Mayor of Cospaia. Or maybe Peter Sellers could have played several of the main parts, as he did in The Mouse that Roared, and Dr Strangelove.

One can see him wandering over to the newly-built Papal border post. “Are we in your territory?” “No”. Then over the hill to the Tuscan border post. “Are we in your territory?” “No”. So like Asterix and his indomitable Gauls they declared the independent Republic of Cospaia.

Cospaia from below, with a perfectly legal field of barley. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Anyway, the mistake was soon noticed, but the negotiations had been difficult and no-one felt like re-opening them just yet, for the sake of possession of a little place that no-one much cared about.

But less than a hundred years later, along with syphilis and a lot of silver and gold, the Spanish started importing tobacco from the New World. The Pope, finding scriptural reasons, banned tobacco altogether in his territories and made its import a crime punishable by excommunication. The Tuscans, like most other European jurisdictions, simply levied a massive excise on it. Cospaia, faced with neither eternal damnation nor a large tax, saw its opportunity, and the few acres between its ambiguously-named streams became a lucrative tobacco monoculture, with the crop smuggled into both its neighbours through the fields and woodlands.

People say that Italian bureaucracy is slow to act, but eventually all the smuggling became too irritating, and act it did. After a mere 386 years it swung into action and renegotiated the treaty, placing Cospaia in the Papal States for another forty years or so, until Italian unification divested the Vatican of its secular dominions. But the Papal Government had by then decided that smoking was not a grave sin after all, and allowed Cospaia to continue cultivating tobacco in return for a cut of the proceeds.

These days Cospaia is a pretty, sleepy little place, dreaming of past glories. But reminders of those past glories are everywhere. The main street is the Via Della Repubblica, there is a Tobacco Road, and signs to a “smugglers’ trail”. Above the door of the village church there is a dedication not to some patron saint, but to “perpetual and established liberty”.

I wandered through Cospaia and took a few photos. After that I drove up the Apennine slopes and through the pass of Bocca Trabaria into Marche. As I ascended via many a hairpin bend, passing panting cyclists and daredevil motorcyclists on the wrong side of the road, the temperature dropped about five degrees which was most welcome. The views were not great – after a couple of still days the central Italian valleys quickly fill with heat haze.

But it was quite heavily wooded – these bits of the Apennines are not high enough to be above the treeline as they are in Abruzzo. Apparently in ancient times the forests were a source of timber for Roman shipbuilding, with the logs floated down the infant Tiber towards Rome. It seems this would have been a major source of income for Pliny the Younger’s villa, down in the valley below.

Note: this post is intended to make a pair with another about the border area, describing when the Florentines and Perugians built a pair of border forts, and gave them rude names.

Sources

A good recent book about the two Plinys is In the Shadow of Vesuvius, A Life of Pliny by Daisy Dunn. The title is doubly misleading, as it is only partly about the eruption, and it is in fact a biography of both Plinys, PTE and PTY. I can only assume that it was the publisher’s marketing department that made the decisions, but I can recommend it anyway.

References to Cospaia and its accidental independence can be found in Umbria, A Cultural Guide, by Ian Campbell Ross, in Umbria by Patricia Clough, and most entertainingly in Philip’s Travel Guides – Umbria by Jonathan Keates, with photographs by Joe Cornish.

July 21, 2023January 24, 2025

Paleochristian Churches III – Three Umbrian Gems

Welcome to the third episode in my series on paleochristian churches (from, as always, a purely secular perspective). The preceding two are about Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese in Rome and several in Ravenna. This time I propose to show you three paleochristian churches in Umbria, two of which, despite not being in Rome, have been described as among the oldest examples to survive in Italy.

Sant’Angelo, Perugia

This church (also referred to, more correctly, as San Michele Arcangelo) lies a few hundred metres northwest of the Etruscan/Roman walls of Perugia. It sits just inside the medieval walls, but since the church dates from the fifth or sixth century, it predates those walls and would originally have been outside the town.

It is an easy walk up a gentle slope from the Porta Etrusca to the church, past the Università per Stranieri (university for foreigners) and passing a few Chinese restaurants on the way.

The church sits in a little park, the main users of which, the last time I was there, were sunbathing locals and their dogs. The only other visitors to the actual church were a young tourist couple, who obviously had similarly nerdy interests to mine, as we later encountered each other in the otherwise deserted archaeological museum, and exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

Depending on when in the fifth or sixth centuries it was built, the church would have seen its first use before the fall of the empire, or later during the period of Ostrogothic rule, or later still during the ruinous Gothic Wars in which the Eastern Empire sought to re-establish its rule over Italy but ended up fatally weakening that rule. Or it possibly even dates from the period of the Lombard conquest of Italy. Yes, it was a pretty busy time. If you want to read more about this tumultuous period, I recommend my posts on Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire, A Return to Ravenna, and The Lombard Invasion and the Byzantine Corridor.

The church itself, being circular, is more typical of the late Roman period than of medieval times when the cross-shaped plan became ubiquitous. In fact, with its ambulatory vault it is reminiscent of the 4^th-Century Basilica of Santa Costanza in Rome, on which I wrote in the first post of this series.

The central dome is supported on a ring of sixteen columns – one source I have says that these were scavenged from multiple Roman sites, another says they were all from the same pagan temple, possibly on the same site. While I am not an expert, it seems to me that there are too many differences in style and execution for them to have come from the same original building. But whatever their provenance they are clearly of higher-quality craftsmanship than the rest of the church.

Sante'Angelo, Perugia — Sant’Angelo, Perugia. Interior showing column capitals. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

There are traces of 14^th-Century frescoes on the walls – 700 years ago may seem pretty old to you and me, but when they were put there the church was already eight or nine hundred years old.

Apparently in the 15^th Century, the church was converted into a small fort. I don’t know whether that would have required deconsecration, but it is certainly back in use as a church today. This may date from a restoration that occurred in the late 1940s.

San Salvatore, Spoleto

If you have read some of the related posts on this site you will know that after the Gothic Wars, the Langobards (Lombards), a displaced Germanic people, entered a weakened Italy from the north-east and quickly overran the peninsula, with the exception of Rome, Ravenna and the “Byzantine Corridor” which linked them. One of the main centres of Lombard power was the Duchy of Spoleto.

Just outside the old town of Spoleto, you will find the church of San Salvatore. At the time of writing (2023) it is unfortunately closed to allow the building to be strengthened against earthquakes. The authorities have however placed a sheet of toughened glass in the main doorway so you can peer into the interior. We previously visited there in 2015 and I took some pictures on my phone – some of those are reproduced here, and in due course I will return and take some better ones.

San Salvatore, Spoleto. Nexus 6P phone camera (click to enlarge).

According to Professor Ian Campbell Ross in his Umbria: A Cultural Guide (Oxford, 2013), the Lombards built little in stone themselves, having only a few years before been footloose wanderers through Europe with their cattle and wagons. This makes any survivals from their period all the more precious. Also according to Ross, the date of the original church on this site (and how much of that original remains) is the subject of scholarly dispute, but it may have been as early as the 4^th Century, well before the fall of the Empire and the arrival of the Lombards.

What is not disputed is that the Lombards rebuilt or renovated the church in the 8^th Century, and also that the internal structure makes use of columns and architraves that were originally part of Roman temples. Whether these were incorporated in the original building, or during the renovations, is I believe unknown. My dilettante observation is that at least some of the columns appear to be load-bearing, in which case they are integral to the building’s structure. So if they were incorporated in the 8^th Century, then it must have been a complete rebuild. If it was only a renovation, then they may date from earlier and have been part of the original building.

Roman remnants are also incorporated in the façade – since this is not integral to the main structure they could definitely have been added at the time of the Lombard renovation in the 700s.

These days San Salvatore is the chapel of the municipal cemetery; by definition a quiet and reflective place. It seems that over the course of the 20th Century a series of restorations removed various internal baroque accretions and restored the dignity and austerity of the original, for which we must be grateful.

The Little Temple of Clitumnus

Let us finish with what is probably the oldest of these three examples. The Tempietto sul Clitunno is truly a remarkable survival, located near the Springs of Clitumnus (Fonti di Clitunno). That name would ring a bell to classically-minded readers, and also to others perhaps, as it crops up in later literature.

These days Clitunno is the name given to a little river that runs south through the Valle Umbra, one of several which, since the medieval draining of the valley, run in largely artificial channels. In ancient times though, Clitumnus was a river god whose shrine was located where a series of springs burst forth from the base of the hills. It was apparently a very sacred and beautiful place, where the cold, clear and pure waters were used to purify the white oxen being prepared for sacrifice. The poets Propertius and Virgil celebrated it in verse, and Pliny the Younger wrote an extensive description in one of his many letters. Later, Byron devoted several lines of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to it, in which – not untypically – he manages to work in a reference to a naked nymph.

The Fonti del Clitunno. The springs issue from the rocks in the centre of the photograph. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Nowadays the fame of the springs, at least among Italians, is due to their having been the subject of a 19^th-Century poem by the nationalist poet Giosuè Carducci in which he hails “green Umbria”, (although he never called it the “green heart of Italy”, as the poem is universally misquoted in tourism material).

Carducci memorial — Fonti del Clitunno, early 20th-Century memorial to Giosuè Carducci. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

And it must be said that it is hard to feel any echoes of ancient sanctity as the place now has the feel of a pleasant urban park, accentuated by the main road running past and the mothers with young children who know that the cold spring waters cool the air and make it an excellent place to come and stroll on a hot day. The poplar trees described by Pliny have been replaced by willows. Perhaps early on a misty autumn morning the atmosphere might be more evocative.

A few hundred metres up the road is a small building built on classical lines, the tempietto or little temple. For a long time it was misidentified as one of the ancient temples and shrines mentioned by Pliny, but it is quite far away from the springs, and in any case even a superficial examination reveals it to be a coarsely-built late Roman structure incorporating parts scavenged from earlier Roman temples. I have seen suggestions that those parts came from the original precinct of Clitumnus, and it seems plausible – why carry such things any further than you need to?

Tempietto sul Clitunno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

So it was probably never a pagan temple, having been built as a Christian church. But to me this pretty little building is almost as interesting as an actual pagan temple, not least because it is not really all that much newer than a pagan temple would be. The central part, a barrel-vaulted chapel, dates from the late 4^th Century, which makes it seriously old, a hundred years or so before the traditional date of the fall of the western Empire.

A couple of hundred years later, a façade assembled from the scavenged Roman material was added, giving it the appearance it retains today. This was during the period of Lombard rule, leading to the tempietto having been declared part of a series of UNESCO sites in Italy associated with the Lombards (San Salvatore in Spoleto, above, is another).

According to the information displayed at the site, the outer pairs of columns are from the Imperial era (2^nd Century AD) while the inner pair and the tympanum – the triangular bit – are from the Augustan era (1^st Century AD).

In the picture below you can see how the finer work of the re-used earlier Roman elements contrasts with the rougher work of the late-imperial building, particularly where the decoration under the eaves continues around from the front to the side.

Inside, in the apse behind the altar, there are frescoes of Christ and Saints Peter and Paul that have been dated to the 8^th Century, so they are pretty damn old really, despite being four hundred years younger than the building itself.

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As I said in the first in this series of articles, one of the attractions of these buildings is the sheer implausibility of their survival – from wars, earthquakes, misguided redecorations or simply falling apart through old age. All three of these Umbrian churches are miraculous in that way; and all three snooze away in their respective settings – Sant’Angelo on the edge of Perugia, in its park with the sunbathers and dog walkers, San Salvatore in Spoleto’s municipal cemetery, and the tempietto nestled inconspicuously beside the main road from Spoleto to Assisi. Go there and lay your hands on the stones – and touch history.

July 16, 2023January 27, 2024

Renaissance Exuberance in Perugia

A visit to two different, but memorably-decorated churches in Perugia – the Oratory of St Bernardino, and the Basilica of San Pietro.

There are many excellent things to see in Perugia, and other reasons to visit too: good restaurants, not too crowded, parking fees that are not extortionate by Italian standards, and free escalators and lifts from car parks up to the historic centre. The Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria has fine examples of Umbrian Art, and the Museum of Archaeology (to be the subject of a future post) has fascinating Etruscan artefacts.

But for most historically-minded visitors to Perugia, one of the main impressions they take away with them is of the group of magnificent gothic public buildings[1] which together form the Palazzo dei Priori, at the end of the Corso Vannucci, near the duomo (cathedral) and the Fontana Maggiore. As I discussed in my post on The Buried Streets of Perugia, one reason this part of town is so well-preserved is because of the Papal conquest in the early 16^th Century, and the subsequent expropriation of most revenue to Rome. The architecture stayed as it was because there was no money to change it – the money went to Rome where many fine old buildings were “modernised” in the baroque style. In architectural history, the hard times of earlier ages can sometimes be posterity’s gain.

All that being so, today I would like to talk about a couple of – in my view under-appreciated – buildings which are covered in exuberant Renaissance decoration, one on the outside, and one all over the inside. Both are in easy walking distance from the historic centre, but because the centre has so much to offer, many visitors never get to them and you can admire them in peace.

The Oratory of St Bernardino of Siena

Let us start with the one that is decorated on the outside. It is the Oratorio di San Bernardino, part of a complex which includes the larger church of San Francesco al Prato, nowadays associated with Perugia University.

Although he came from Siena, Bernardino preached all over central Italy, and was particularly active in Perugia, where you can see a special pulpit they built for him on the side of the duomo. I don’t know if non-Catholics are supposed to have favourite Catholic saints, but if I were allowed to, Bernardino would definitely not be one of mine. He preached fiery sermons against Jews, homosexuals and gypsies, sometimes leading to violence against them, and his views on women seem to have been regressive even by the standards of the early 15^th Century. He is associated with the start of a period of witch-burnings that was a stain on European history for over two hundred years.

In iconography, he is always rather appropriately represented as having a pinched, disapproving face, and since this seems to be based on contemporary portraits, that must indeed be what he looked like. Anyway, I don’t want to give offence, so let us move on to the charming little oratory that the Perugians started building in his honour in 1452, only eight years after his death and two years after his canonisation.

It seems that Bernardino is credited with having pacified the warring factions in Perugia (see my post on Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia) and it is for this reason that he was popular there.

To complete the building, the Perugians commissioned a Florentine sculptor called Agostino di Duccio to create a façade in polychrome, showing The Glory of St Bernardino.

Oratorio di San Bernardino, Perugia — The Oratory of St Bernardino, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

And glorious it is, with cream and pink marble, and blue lapis lazuli creating a most agreeable pastel effect. Apparently there was gold there too once, but whether this was deliberately removed or just flaked off I don’t know. It must have been magnificent when new.

At the top there is a Virgin and Child, below which you can see the words AUGUSTA PERUSIA, the title given to the city in antiquity by the Emperor Augustus (see my post on The Ancient Gates of Perugia) and the date 1461, when the façade was completed.

In the centre, we see the saint surrounded by angels, below which is a frieze commemorating the attested miracles that would have been needed for his canonisation. That is also where the sculptor signed his name – OPUS AUGUSTINI FLORENTINI LAPICIDAE.

My favourite parts are the panels either side of the two doors, where there are several angel musicians. Most of the musicians are showing the expected decorum, but one seems to be auditioning for the role of lead guitarist in a thrash metal rock band.

Inside the church is a complete contrast; very simple and austere. I don’t know if it has always been thus, or whether, as in so many cases, a modern restoration has removed baroque accretions to bring back the dignity of the original. But if baroque excess is your thing, there is a chapel behind the altar you should visit.

The altar itself is a Christian sarcophagus of the late Roman period. It was re-used to house the remains of Giles of Assisi, one of the companions of St Francis.

On the wall you can see hanging a gonfalone or banner, commemorating the deliverance of Perugia from an outbreak of plague in 1464. The Madonna is shown protecting the city from divine wrath in the form of two armed angels and a particularly angry-looking Christ. At the bottom, another armed angel (I think it is the Archangel Michael) is driving away the figure of death with a spear. The interceding saints are on either side of the Madonna, with St Bernardino at the lower left. You can see what I mean about his pinched face.

Gonfalone, Oratorio di San Bernardino, Perugia — *Gonfalone* (banner) of St Francis, Oratory of St Bernardino, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The Abbey Church of San Pietro

This basilica, to the south-east of the historic centre of Perugia, is most definitely not a Renaissance building. Parts of it date from the 10^th Century, replacing a 4^th-Century church which was in turn erected on an Etrusco-Roman religious site. It was the church of a wealthy and powerful monastery (now the department of agriculture and environmental science at the university).

Monastery cloister, San Pietro, Perugia, now part of the university. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

It has a distinctive tower on a 12-sided base, dating from the 13^th Century, long a Perugian landmark. In fact in the National Gallery of Umbria there is a series of 15^th-Century paintings by Benedetto Bonfigli showing incidents in the life of the Patron Saint of Perugia, St Herculanus, ending with the transfer of his remains to San Pietro. Despite Herculanus having been an historical figure from the 6^th Century, Bonfigli charmingly paints it all as having occurred in the Perugia of his own day, in which the tower of San Pietro is easily identified.

Bonfigli Sant'Ercolano — Transfer of the body of St Herculanus, by Benedetto Bonfigli (ca 1420-1496) showing the tower of San Pietro. Galleria Nazionale Dell’Umbria, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

It seems that like many powerful monastic establishments, the Abbey took sides in secular conflicts, which sometimes saw it being attacked, damaged and restored. In the 16^th Century a period of reconstruction and decoration of the basilica began which continued into the 18^th, and in the course of this every single available surface was covered in frescoes, oil paintings and wood carvings. Although the quality of the art is variable, the overall effect is overwhelming.

Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Behind the altar, the choir stalls are of intricately carved and inlaid wood, with many grotesque – and distinctly non-religious – subjects.

Choir stalls, Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The church also holds a collection of manuscript volumes of Gregorian Chant, some beautifully illuminated.

Music book, Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia — Music book, showing the *Agnus Dei* from the end of one mass, and the *Kyrie eleison* from the start of another. The reason they were so big is that the singers didn’t have their own copies, so had to be able to read them from a distance. Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

In 2022 we attended a performance here of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 by a group from Monteverdi’s home town of Cremona. It was beautifully performed, and in a most evocative setting.

[1] Note: in architectural terms, “gothic” refers to the style of the late Middle Ages, characterised by pointy window arches and other decorative features. It has nothing to do with the Goths, confusingly.

June 30, 2023September 9, 2024

Paleochristian Churches II – A Return to Ravenna

More photography of the UNESCO sites in Ravenna, and an introduction to an intriguing lady – Galla Placidia.

Back in 2020 I posted this article on Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire and illustrated it with photographs I had taken in 2008. I won’t repeat too much of that content here, so I do recommend you have a look at that article if you are interested in the history of Ravenna, and how it came to contain so much extraordinary late-Roman art.

But for those who don’t want to, here is a very short version: Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire shortly before it fell. It was ruled by the Goths for a while, then retaken by the Eastern Empire, under the Emperor Justinian and his general Belisarius.

There are some new historical subjects covered in this post, so feel free to scroll past the photographic stuff.

Photography Stuff (feel free to skip)

Those 2008 photographs were taken with a Hasselblad 501C/M camera with a 120 rollfilm back, on slow ISO 50 Fujichrome Velvia film. When I got back to Australia I scanned the 6x6cm positives on a Nikon Coolscan 9000 film scanner. All of that presented some challenges, due mainly to the slow film in dark indoor settings. I needed to use exposures that were on the long side for hand-held photography (tripods are of course not permitted in the Ravenna UNESCO sites), which limited me to places where I could brace the camera, for example against a column. It also tended to produce colour casts, as Velvia is a film that was developed for outdoor light conditions.

Recently (June 2023) we revisited Ravenna, and this was an opportunity to re-take some of those photographs, and to take new ones in places where photography had been impossible last time due to the slow film and poor light. This time I took my Fujifilm GFX 50R medium-format digital camera, which gave me some advantages. One is that, unlike with a roll of film, one can change the ISO with every image, thus being able to shoot in low light. And while high ISO will produce electrical noise (a bit like grain in film, but in this case variation between adjacent pixels), the large sensor reduces the effect of that, simply by having smaller and more numerous pixels relative to the image size. I also used software called Topaz DeNoise AI to reduce the amount of noise further. In post-processing I was also better able to manage the colour balance.

All that being said, there are some very interesting historical things to talk about in this post, so let’s get started.

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

On your way into the Basilica of San Vitale, you pass a small rather nondescript building which might have passed for a public lavatory or electricity substation, had they had such things in the 420s. It is the “Mausoleum” of Galla Placidia, although her body never lay here.

Mausoleo di Galla Placidia — The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In my earlier post on Ravenna I made a comment that a lot of the late emperors were gormless nonentities. That was a bit of a generalisation, but quite a few of them were. One of the stronger characters of this era, though, was not an emperor but the daughter of one, the half-sister of two others, the wife of a fourth and the mother of a fifth, in whose name she ruled the Western Empire as regent during his childhood. Her name was Galla Placidia.

Placidia’s father was the emperor Theodosius I, who was not gormless, He was the last to rule both the western and eastern halves of the empire, and did a creditable job militarily despite having been given a very challenging strategic environment to work in.

Born in Constantinople, as a young teenager Placidia was summoned to her father’s court in Mediolanum (Milan), shortly before his death.

On Theodosius’s death, the empire was divided in two and he was succeeded in the west by his son Honorius, who was definitely one of the gormless ones. Faced with a military situation as bad as that faced by his father, Honorius managed to make it worse by falling out with and then executing his most competent general, Stilicho. That left Alaric, king of the Goths, as the main military force in the West. Alaric could have ended up as Rome’s greatest ally and its saviour – all he wanted was land for his people and to command Rome’s armies, which on the evidence he would have done very well. But Honorius managed the relationship so badly that Alaric ended up as Rome’s implacable enemy.

Alaric invaded Italy and laid siege to Rome, where the eighteen-year-old Placidia was then living. Somehow – perhaps while trying to escape – she was captured by the Goths and kept as a hostage in their camp. Alaric then besieged Ravenna, where, during a truce for negotiations, Honorius treacherously ordered an attack. Alaric, clearly deciding that he had had enough, returned to Rome, where he captured and sacked the city. Then, loaded with booty and even more hostages – but still including Placidia – the Goths continued south, hoping to settle in Sicily.

That would have had momentous consequences for Italian history, but instead Alaric soon fell ill and died, and was replaced by his brother-in-law Athaulf (or Ataulf). Athaulf decided instead to leave Italy and led his army, hostages and all, into what is now France and Spain where in one of the more surprising developments in an age of surprises, Placidia married him.

Why? Was it a forced marriage? It does not appear so. Was she a headstrong young woman following her heart? Was it a negotiated arrangement between Athaulf and Honorius to create a dynastic link? It seems unlikely. Was she, as an emperor’s daughter, placing herself in a position of power? History is frustratingly silent, which of course has allowed some modern writers to project their own preferences onto that partly-blank canvas.

Placidia and Athaulf had a son, who died in infancy – another fascinating what-if, for what might have become of a child with Roman imperial and Gothic royal blood? Before long Athaulf himself was murdered, and after a period of turmoil she was lucky to survive, his widow was returned to Honorius under the terms of a treaty. Honorius forced her into a marriage with his general Constantius, who shortly after was raised to the status of co-emperor. Placidia bore him two children, a girl and a boy, but was soon widowed again.

In due course her son Valentinian was declared Emperor of the West, and Galla Placidia became regent until he came of age, ruling skilfully. Indeed she has been described as the last competent ruler of the Western Empire (Valentinian having inherited the gormless gene). Her daughter Honoria became notorious in her own right for opening a correspondence with Attila the Hun (and even possibly contemplating marriage with him).

In her later years Placidia was known for commissioning churches, and one of those, of course, was the little chapel in Ravenna, now known incorrectly as her mausoleum.

What is beyond doubt is that inside the modest exterior is a little jewel box. The ceiling is covered in stars with the symbols of the four evangelists in the corners, there is a youthful beardless Christ (typical of the 5^th Century) as a shepherd, and an image of St Lawrence, to whom the chapel was probably dedicated, with his gridiron.

St Lawrence, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It is not known who was buried there, but it certainly wasn’t her – she died and was buried in Rome. Nonetheless the medieval tradition that she was buried there was very strong. Someone even invented a story to explain the lack of her body in any of the sarcophagi – supposedly some children accidentally set fire to it! But the chapel definitely has a connection with her, and so we can think about her as we contemplate it.

Mausoluem of Galla Placidia — Christ as Shepherd, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

There is no artificial light, and very little light enters – the tiny windows are covered in sheets of translucent stone – alabaster, I read somewhere. It takes a while for your eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, and even pushing the GFX50R to ISO 12800 produced some very marginal images that required a lot of post-processing. But at least I got some photographs – it was far too dark for my ISO 50 Velvia film back in 2008.

Apparently there is archaeological evidence that the little chapel was once part of a larger complex of religious buildings associated with the imperial palace.

The Basilica of San Vitale

Emerging blinking into the sunlight, I had a brief conversation with the attendant who, it turned out, was a camera enthusiast and another Fuji user. From there it was a very short walk to San Vitale – built more than a hundred years after Galla Placidia’s Mausoleum.

I don’t propose to repeat everything I said in the original article but the very short version is that the building of the basilica was funded by a wealthy Ravennate starting in 526, by which time the Western Roman Empire had gone, never to be restored. It contains many extraordinary mosaics, but the two most important historically are one of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his retinue, and on the opposite wall one of the Empress Theodora, and hers.

San Vitale Justinian — San Vitale; Emperor Justinan and his retinue. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, colour balance and perspective corrected in Capture One software (click to enlarge).

We know that the bald chap is Bishop (later Saint) Maximianus, because it says so. It is also believed that the bearded fellow with the mod haircut to Justinian’s left is the great general Belisarius, hero of the first Gothic War. I have seen a few illustrations of Belisarius, doubtless all based on this mosaic, and they always manage to make him look a bit like Pete Townshend from The Who. According to the Wikipedia article, the wealthy Ravennate who funded the building of San Vitale – one Julius Argentarius – may appear as one of the courtiers in the Justinian mosaic. If that is true, then my bet, based on no research whatsoever, is that he is the thickset fellow with a five-o’-clock shadow between Justinian and Maximianus. I have also seen this described as a portrait of Justinian’s other general Narses, but find that a bit implausible, because Narses was a eunuch and unlikely to have a moustache.

San Vitale Theodora — San Vitale; Empress Theodora and her retinue. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, colour balance and perspective corrected in Capture One software (click to enlarge).

I can’t remember seeing anything that suggests identifications for Theodora’s attendants, but looking at them it seems likely that the two men and two women on either side of her are intended to be actual people, given the individuality of their portraits, while the ladies off to the right are all a bit generic.

Congratulations to Lou for noticing that on the hem of Theodora’s cloak you can see a version of the Three Kings from the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (see below). I had not noticed that before.

One thing that I hadn’t really thought through before was the chronology of the building of San Vitale relative to that of the Gothic Wars. When the building was commissioned, Ravenna (and indeed most of Italy) was ruled by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, albeit notionally as a fief of the Eastern Empire. By the time that the mosaics of Justinian and Theodora were created, the first Gothic War was over and direct imperial rule had been established in the form of the Exarchate of Ravenna. Justinian was now the actual rather than the nominal ruler, and it was all thanks to Belisarius, so it is no surprise to see them both commemorated in this way. Nor is it a surprise to see Theodora there as well, as she added quite a bit of steel to Justinian’s already fairly hardline regime.

Alas, the Goths revived under the leadership of Totila, and as I have described elsewhere, the Second Gothic War, along with a couple of natural disasters, saw the complete devastation and impoverishment of Italy.

Compared to my 2008 pictures, these show the advantages of having been shot with higher ISO, and better colour balancing.

Sant’Apollinare Nuovo

From San Vitale we walked to the great church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Again, I won’t repeat the full description in the earlier article but this large church, like San Vitale, was started under Ostrogothic rule and was probably attached to the palace of Theodoric. As such it contained various portraits of Theodoric and churchmen who, like the rest of the Goths, adhered to the Arian version of Christianity which was later suppressed as heretical by the Catholic Church (the argument was over just how human or divine Christ actually was). At that time the “heretical” portraits in Sant’Apollinare were covered over, although they missed a few bits.

The glory of Sant’Apollinare is the two long mosaics down either side of the nave. On one side a procession of female martyrs leads to an adoration of the magi, but this is nothing like the Three Kings we are used to from later ages. They are in extraordinary exotic garments, and by some accounts are actually dressed like contemporary Gothic nobles.

I had thought that this picture of the Three Kings with their fancy tights and their Phrygian caps was unique, but I was wrong, as I discovered on visits to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome.

On the other side is a procession of male martyrs, leading to an enthroned Christ. Leading the procession is St Martin of Tours, a vociferous opponent of Arianism, to whom the church was rededicated after the suppression of Arianism under Justinian. St Martin’s portrait must therefore have been added as part of the other redecorations, which explains his different costume. Of course we do not know the identity of the saint whose image was destroyed to make way for St Martin.

Sant'Apillinare Nuovo — Male Martyrs, St Martin of Tours, enthroned Christ. Sant’Apollinare Nuvo, Ravenna. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, perspective corrected in Capture One software (click to enlarge).

One can only speculate how glorious the apse decoration behind the altar must have been, given that this was where they usually put the best bits. Apparently though this too was subject to redecoration under Justinian. But in any case the area was later disastrously redecorated in a 17^th-Century wedding-cake style, so we will never know.

The Neonian (Orthodox) Baptistery

This is one place we didn’t get to in 2008. There are two ancient baptisteries in Ravenna. One, featured in my earlier article, is the “Arian Baptistery” which was built by Theodoric for the use of his fellow Arians. The other, known as the Neonian (after a bishop Neon) or “Orthodox” Baptistery is about fifty years older, from the end of the 300s or beginning of the 400s. This makes it older even than Galla Placidia’s mausoleum, predating the fall of the Western Empire by seventy years or so.

Battistero Neoniano — Neonian Baptistery, Ravenna. It is the small hexagonal building to the right of the centre. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Inside, in the centre of the dome, is Christ being baptised. The River Jordan is represented as a sort of pagan river-god, and Christ himself is shown as youthful and blond, although bearded, unlike the clean-shaven Christ of the Arian Baptistery.

Around the dome are the twelve apostles, and beneath them are what look like classical buildings, with seats and tables, which in the case of the evangelists are bearing their gospels.

The quality of these depictions of the apostles is extraordinary, better even than the near-contemporary mosaics in the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome. It is dangerous to generalise about an era from the work of (presumably) a single artist, but based on what has survived, stuff as good as this would not be seen again for many hundreds of years.

The Chapel of Sant’Andrea

Our final visit was to the little chapel of Sant’Andrea, part of a complex of ancient buildings which is now the archiepiscopal museum. There is not as much information available as for the other Ravenna UNESCO sites, but I have found that it dates from the time of Ostrogothic rule in Ravenna. It was not however Arian. As I observed in my earlier post on Ravenna, the Goths were a tolerant lot and were happy to allow the orthodox Catholics to worship unmolested – a tolerance that Justinian’s regime obviously did not reciprocate when he took over again.

Like the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, it is very dark inside, so one has to push the ISO a bit, and do some corrective work in post-processing.

Cappello di Sant'Andrea — Chapel of Sant’Andrea, Ravenna. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The association with Saint Andrew is due to the fact that the saint’s alleged remains were relocated to Ravenna from Constantinople in the 6^th Century. Possession of such remains by a city was both prestigious and lucrative, so people went to a lot of trouble to acquire them, and if that failed, then a convenient miracle often occurred to reveal a substitute set.

Two things are memorable about this chapel. One is that Christ is represented dressed in late-Roman military costume (indeed at first I assumed the picture was of the Archangel Michael). The other is a ceiling covered in cheerful-looking birds. Birds are a feature of early Christian art, but these ones seem to have more character than most.

Cappella di Sant'Andrea — Chapel of Sant’Andrea, Ravenna, with Christ in military costume. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

June 6, 2023May 19, 2024

Lake Maggiore and the Borromean Islands

Lake Maggiore is the largest of the north Italian lakes, sitting between between Lombardy, Piedmont and Switzerland. The area has some famous attractions, such as the Borromean Islands, and some less famous but very worthy ones.

This post describes a visit we made there a few years ago (pre-COVID). We flew from Australia, and thanks to a delayed flight from Melbourne we missed a connection in Dubai, arriving at Milan six or seven hours late. We then drove into the mountains above Lake Maggiore, arriving very late in the evening where our kindly hosts were still waiting to let us into the property.

The property was located in the strip of cleared land that lies under the cable car connecting the town of Stresa on the lake shore with the top of Mount Mottarone. That gave us some wonderful views, and since the cable car was not then in operation, it was very quiet.

Note: this is the cable car that was involved in a terrible accident in 2021. Investigators found that a safety mechanism had been deliberately disengaged.

Lake Maggiore, from the slopes above Stresa, looking north to the town of Verbania and beyond to Switzerland. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

The day after we arrived saw storms and cold weather. The day after that was clear and sunny, and thanks to the bad weather the day before, there had been an unseasonable (it was May) dump of snow on the mountains, making excellent conditions for photography.

Geology

The great lakes of Northern Italy – Maggiore, Como and Garda, were all formed by glacial action in the Ice Age, and thus run roughly from north to south, from the Alps down towards the Po Valley. The Alps, formed by the collision of tectonic plates, run more or less east-west here. This is particularly clear in the case of Lake Maggiore, and makes for some spectacular scenery, particularly from the top of Mottarone, looking northwards to where the Lake enters Switzerland.

Lake Maggiore from Mottarone — Lake Maggiore looking north-east from the top of Mottarone. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Stresa

Stresa, while apparently of medieval origin, is today largely a 19^th-Century resort town with some large hotels, and villas which are a bit architecturally reminiscent of Victorian-era post offices and fire stations in parts of provincial Australia. It therefore has a slightly faded death-in-Venice atmosphere and one can easily imagine chaps in top hats strolling along the lake front and helping ladies down from carriages. Still, as resort towns go it is an excellent example of the breed, and the scenery obviously keeps the tourists coming in the 21^st Century.

Lago d’Orta

We were struck by how comparatively few medieval buildings there were around, compared with further south in Italy. I suppose that, it being a wealthy area, people could afford to knock their old places down and rebuild.

In any case, if it is medieval that you want, a visit to the Lago d’Orta not far away will satisfy you. Lake Orta, just west of Lake Maggiore, is much smaller but formed by the same glacial system. The main town on the lake is Orta San Giulio, named after a Saint Julius who died on the little island nearby and was commemorated by a small oratory there from the 5^th Century (completely obliterated by later buildings). The island appears to be some sort of pilgrimage centre these days, but whether this is due to a surviving cult of St Julius or for some other reason I was unable to establish.

The Island of Isola San Giulio, from the town of Orta San Giulio. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Isola San Giulio from the shores of Lake Orta. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

There is a splendid medieval town hall in the middle of the town. This presented a slight photographic challenge, which I will discuss later.

The Borromean Islands

For us, as for many other visitors, the main attraction of the region was a visit to the Borromean Islands. What are they? Well, in Lake Maggiore, just off the shore from Stresa, are three large islands – Isola Bella, Isola dei Pescatori, Isola Madre plus a couple of little ones – and they are owned by the Borromeo Family. This family started out in Milan around 1300 and is still going today – I believe the heir to the family title is a countess who is married to the head of the FIAT empire.

On the way to today they got very rich, produced several cardinals (but no popes) and one saint. The saint (San Carlo Borromeo) was archbishop of Milan during the 16th Century and was canonised not for extraordinary acts of piety but for playing a major part in the purification of the Catholic Church from corruption and the overhaul of doctrine that we call the Counter-Reformation. A bit like getting an Order of Australia for conspicuous service in public administration.

Isola Bella

The Borromeo Counts started acquiring the islands in the 16^th Century, and in the 17^th Century Count Carlo III renamed one of them Isola Bella after his wife, as a present. It means “Beautiful Island”, but it was also a pun on her name, which was Isabella. He then built a palace at one end and started an extraordinary baroque garden at the other, also as a present.

Actually, the count didn’t manage to buy all of Isola Bella. A few indomitable fishermen refused to sell, doubtless with an eye to the profits of the tourist trade in four hundred years’ time, so there is now a small disorderly village running along a part of the lake front, all now converted into souvenir shops and the like.

The garden was completed by his next few successors, who had large quantities of soil ferried across to build up a series of monumental terraces. These were exuberantly decorated with statues, including several unicorns, a reference to the Borromeo coat of arms.

We turned up in Stresa nice and early, early enough to get a free car park opposite the extraordinary Regina Palace Hotel (picture below). Then we walked to the ferry terminal and bought what was basically an all-day ticket for the central section of the Lake Maggiore public ferry system – doubtless for a good deal less than it would have cost to get a ticket to the islands with one of the private tour companies.

Having started early we therefore ended up on the first public ferry service to Isola Bella for the day. A couple of large French tour groups on private boats had beaten us there. To get to the gardens you have to buy a ticket to the palace, and go all the way through the palace. We took a tactical decision to do a speed tour of the palace and get to the gardens as quickly as possible. This was complicated by the tour groups who would spread out to block access to whichever room they were in but once it became clear that they were not going to move aside for us voluntarily, we did a bit of “scusi… scusi… scusi…” harassment and eventually penetrated their cordon sanitaire and made it into the gardens first. We had the gardens on Isola Bella all to ourselves, in beautiful weather, for probably fifteen minutes before the next few intrepid types broke through the French blockade.

Isola dei Pescatori

The “Island of the Fishermen” is the next largest of the islands, and the only one to have a permanent population, albeit a small one. Having finished in the gardens at Isola Bella we made our way to the ferry jetty where one was just arriving and we hopped on to get to Isola dei Pescatori. There we found a little waterfront place called Trattoria Toscanini where we had a drink and watched the motor boats buzzing back and forth. The famous conductor wasn’t a local boy, but was apparently a regular visitor.

Isola dei Pescatore. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Then we walked around the island – it doesn’t take long – and poked around a few shops before having lunch. After having checked out several restaurants we decided that the Trattoria Toscanini seemed as nice as any and went back there. I had perch from the lake and Louise had a fritto misto of various lake fish. While we were eating, the restaurant cat turned up to check that all was in order. Being the resident cat at a fish restaurant on an island called “Island of the Fishermen” seems like a fairly cushy gig, and the cat did seem to consider that all in all the universe was ordered fairly sensibly. Below is a picture of the cat with the palace end of Isola Bella in the background.

Santa Caterina del Sasso

Another ferry trip we did from Stresa was to visit the convent of Santa Caterina del Sasso (Saint Catherine of the Rock). It was originally a hermitage that is built into a sheer rock and which until recently could only have been reached from the water.

The story of the site is that in the 12^th Century a merchant, in gratitude for having survived a storm at sea, became a hermit on this solitary rock, which in the usual way acquired a reputation for sanctity, a chapel and a religious community. The religious community was suppressed by the Austrians in the 19th Century, and the site was re-occupied and restored by the Dominicans in the 1980s.

It is now possible to reach the site on foot from above, but approaching it from the water is not only consistent with tradition, but gives by far the best views.

A Note on the Photography

The challenge in photographing the town hall in Orta San Giulio was that it looked onto a busy square, full of tourists, but if you look back at the photograph above, the square looks deserted.

I don’t mind including the odd human figure in such shots, providing they are of the right kind – an old lady on a bicycle, say, or someone walking a dog, or maybe a shopkeeper. But in this case the tourists were too numerous, and too brightly dressed, to allow me to capture the atmosphere of the place. I waited a while in the hope that they would move off, but in a phenomenon well-known to photographers, as each group left, a new one arrived. So I decided to try a creative method of making them go away (shouting “fire!” would not have worked).

You can of course “paint out” a figure in Photoshop or similar software, but the more figures there are, and the more complex the background, the harder it is. That wasn’t going to be an option here.

I had a nice sturdy Manfrotto tripod with me, so I set it up in a corner of the square where it would not obstruct anyone, and mounted the Hasselblad on top, attaching a shutter release cable so I could take multiple identical pictures from exactly the same place.

The aim was that each part of the square should be free of people in at least one picture. So as the tourists ambled about, I took the several shots I thought I needed. In the event five was enough – all identical, you will recall, except for the moving people.

I then combined them into several “layers” in Photoshop, erasing each figure to reveal the empty space in the next layer down. The result is as you see in the photograph above. If you look hard you can see three figures I didn’t bother about – someone with a shopping bag under the arches of the building, a gentleman approaching down the street to the right, and a lady in a pink dress bending over and looking at the wares in a shop on the right. All three are in shadow and don’t really disturb the composition.

These days you can achieve the same effect with a lot less effort, with clever software which merges the layers and deletes anything that is only present in one layer. I tried it just now using Affinity Photo 2 software (which is what I use these days instead of Photoshop) and it was almost instantaneous, even on a rather old laptop. It even aligns the photos if you haven’t taken them with the camera on a tripod.

May 7, 2023October 21, 2024

Perugino Comes Home

An exhibition in Perugia, marking the 500^th anniversary of the death of Perugino, Umbria’s most famous Renaissance artist, brings together paintings from all over the world.

Perugino self-portrait — Perugino, self-portrait, or at least that is how it was described in this exhibition. In the Pitti Palace in Florence, where it normally lives, it is described as a possible self-portrait, or a portrait of possibly Perugino, possibly by Raphael. It certainly looks like other pictures of Perugino. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

We met the painter Perugino in my post on Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia. In that article I made the observation that he deserves to be more famous, and blamed the Tuscan chauvinism of the art historian Giorgio Vasari. Contemporary accounts certainly show him to have been held in very high regard, and no less a person than Isabella d’Este of Mantua, that most demanding of art patrons, worked very hard to get him to accept a commission, of which more later.

Of course the Umbrians are just as parochial as the Tuscans, and are very loyal to their boy – especially the Perugians. “Perugino” means “the guy from Perugia”, which isn’t quite true but he was from a town not far away and certainly spent a lot of time working in Perugia.

Perugino died in 1523, and to mark the occasion the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia has assembled an exhibition, not just from their own collection, but with works on loan from many other Italian galleries, as well as galleries in France, Britain and America.

The exhibition also features artists who were influenced by Perugino and developed the “Umbrian Style” further, such as Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Pinturicchio and Signorelli. And of course the most famous of Perugino’s pupils, Raphael.

For me, the exhibition gave a somewhat different appreciation of Perugino’s work. This is because most Perugino works that one sees in Umbria are frescoes – paintings on fresh plaster just after it has been applied to a wall. But in this exhibition the loaned works are mostly oil paintings, or egg tempera. Painting in oils was a technique which Perugino was instrumental in introducing to Italy after its development in Flanders.

And therein lie a few insights (for me at least; I’m obviously not an art historian). Apart from the different materials, there are fundamental differences between fresco and oil. Firstly, the audience. Something that is fixed to the wall of a church is very much a public piece; obviously intended to generate reverence. Hence the beauty of Perugino’s frescoes, the clear pastel colours, the idyllic landscapes and the characters in stereotypical poses.

Perugino Adoration, Montefalco — A very conventional Perugino fresco – *Adoration of the Shepherds* in the Museo di San Francesco, Montefalco, Umbria. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

An oil painting, depending on the circumstances in which it is commissioned and displayed, can be less formulaic, more individualistic, more cerebral.

Perugino Portrait of a Young Man — Perugino, *Portrait of a Young Man*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Even when using oils to paint devotional paintings, there is a difference. When painting frescoes, you have to work fast, before the plaster dries. An oil painting can be done more slowly with more consideration, and even altered halfway through if the painter changes his mind. To me, all this explains the fact that the oils in the exhibition show greater individuality, and better demonstrate just how good Perugino really was.

Perugino Altarpiece — Perugino *Altarpiece with Saints Jerome, Francis, John the Baptist, Mary Magdelene and the Blessed Giovanni Columbini*. *Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens* (click to enlarge).

Furthermore – and rather prosaically – by definition an oil painting on canvas or wood is more portable than something painted directly onto a wall. This explains why an exhibition such as this is an unusual opportunity to appreciate the breadth of Perugino’s talent. Many of the finer works have been dispersed over the last five hundred years – either sold to wealthy collectors and then re-sold or donated to foreign galleries, or in the case of Napoleon, simply looted.

Perugino Galitzin Triptych — Perugino, “Galitzin” Triptych. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

I love the background detail in many of Perugino’s paintings. The landscape in the Galitzin Triptych above is beautiful, as is the one in the Prayer in the Garden, below. There is also a lot of other business going on – on the left, Judas approaches with soldiers and priests, while more reinforcements arrive from the right. I’ve seen Perugino’s idea of Roman soldiers elsewhere, notably in a Martyrdom of St Sebastian in the town of Panicale above Lake Trasimeno. They are rather strange, but in a way the feathers and curly bits do actually remind me of some ancient Roman decorative illustrations.

Perugino Prayer in the Garden — Perugino, *Prayer in the Garden*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

One thing I learned is that Perugino’s later and uniformly beautiful Madonnas are supposedly all portraits of his own wife. If that is true he was a lucky fellow, but he would not have been the only Renaissance artist to marry one of his models. At least, unlike the wife of Filippo Lippi, Perugino’s wife wasn’t an absconded nun, as far as I know.

Perugino Madonna della Consolazione — Perugino, *Madonna della Consolazione*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Perugino Marriage of the Virgin — Perugino, *Marriage of the Virgin*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

I mentioned Isabella d’Este earlier. She apparently pestered Perugino for ages for a painting. Eventually he agreed to a commission, then tried to explain missed deadlines with various poor excuses. Finally he produced something which is easily the weakest piece in the exhibition. The Lotta tra Amore e Castità (struggle between love and chastity) is a group of separate illustrations of stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses – just figures in a landscape with no visual unity. It was also painted in tempera (egg-based paint) rather than oils, so it lacks punch. Isabella was not pleased.

Perugino Lotta tra Amore e Castità — Perugino, *Lotta tra Amore e Castità*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

A note on the photography

As in many exhibitions, this one had very subdued lighting to protect the artworks. The appropriate way to photograph them would therefore be to set up a tripod and take long exposures; obviously that was not going to be permitted.

So I needed to use a hand-held camera and high ISO settings, which introduces digital noise. I was also using my small Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, which while nice and light was a less suitable camera for the task than my medium-format Fujifilm GFX 50R would have been. Since noise in digital photography at high ISOs is partly random variations between one pixel and the next, a larger sensor equals smaller pixels relative to the size of the image, so noise is less obvious.

There were some workarounds available. I underexposed each shot by a few stops then applied exposure compensation later in Capture One software – I’m not sure how successful that was (edit: actually it was a bad idea). During post-processing I also used an external program called Topaz DeNoise AI which tries to smooth out the parts that should be smooth while retaining sharpness where sharpness is intended. Below is a screenshot showing a before and after comparison from that software.

Topaz DeNoise AI screengrab — Screenshot from Topaz DeNoise AI showing before and after treatment (click to enlarge).

Here is a link to the National Gallery of Umbria’s web page on the exhibition. I don’t know how long it will stay up after the exhibition closes though.

April 30, 2023November 19, 2023

Viterbo – Wet Bishops in the Papal Palace

Viterbo is a substantial town about eighty kilometres northwest of Rome, with some interesting history and historical sites. In the 13^th Century it was the scene of a rather farcical stand-off involving the election of a Pope and the removal of a roof.

The more recent history is not inspiring. After the German army abandoned Rome in 1944 they set up their headquarters in Viterbo, which led to it being heavily bombed. Many ancient buildings were destroyed or damaged – in fact in the duomo or cathedral most of the columns have chunks of stone missing as the result of bomb explosions. When the rest of the building was repaired they decided to leave the columns as they were, as a reminder.

Viterbo duomo, interior showing 1940s bomb damage to the columns. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

These days Viterbo is a provincial capital in northern Lazio (the region that includes Rome). The growth associated with that, and the post-war reconstruction, has led to a lot of unappealing urban development around the historic centre. But the medieval stuff that was preserved, or has been restored, is worth the trip. The centro storico has a pleasant, relaxed air.

Viterbo Piazza del Gesù — Viterbo, Piazza del Gesù in the historic centre. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Entering the centro storico from the north, the first substantial buildings you get to are the Palazzo del Podestà and the Palazzo dei Priori, built as the seat of municipal government in the Middle Ages, and as in so many other Italian towns, still serving that function, although the medieval architecture of the originals was modernised during the Renaissance.

Viterbo, Palazzo dei Priori exterior. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

You see lots of lions in one form or another on these buildings, as the lion is the symbol of Viterbo and is featured on the town’s coat of arms.

Viterbo Palazzo del Podestà — Viterbo, Palazzo del Podestà. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

A few minutes’ walk from the Palazzo dei Priori brings you to Piazza San Lorenzo, where you will find the duomo and the Palazzo dei Papi (Palace of the Popes). Here, apart from the baroque facade of the duomo, everything is more starkly medieval.

Viterbo Piazza San Lorenzo — Viterbo, Piazza San Lorenzo and the duomo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the 13th Century the situation in Rome became a bit unstable due to fighting between powerful families, so the papal court decamped to the comparative security of Viterbo, where a palace was built to house the Pope and his administration.

Viterbo Palazzo dei Papi — Viterbo, Palazzo dei Papi. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Palazzo dei Papi is a forbidding-looking building. The uniform greyness of the local stone doesn’t help, but nonetheless one comes away with the impression that the 1260s were not a time of conspicuous gaiety. At one end of the building there is an interesting loggia, alas partly covered by scaffolding at the time we visited.

Not all the building works in the papal palace were successful. One of the Viterbese popes, John XXI, died from injuries sustained when a new roof collapsed on him while he was asleep in bed.

In 1269-71 the palace was the scene of a rather infamous papal election, which remained deadlocked for two years due to intrigues, bribery and power politics. As I recall reading, the French bishops were under orders from the King of France not to vote for anyone but a Frenchman, and the others wanted anyone but a Frenchman.

The elector bishops looked like staying deadlocked, until the governors of Viterbo started to get tired of it all (the electors and their substantial entourages were after all being lodged at public expense). First the town authorities locked the delegates into the great hall of the palace. When the bishops did not take the hint, the governors then ordered that the roof of the hall be removed, whereupon the bishops pitched tents in the hall in order to shelter from the rain (the holes for the tent pegs can still be seen in the flagstones).

On display in the hall you can find a letter to the governors from the bishops, asking that one elderly bishop be allowed to leave on account of his age and infirmity, and on condition of his having renounced his right to vote.

Finally the food supplies were reduced to minimum rations, at which point the bishops gave up and chose Gregory X (not French). Gregory is mostly now remembered for changing the procedures for papal elections to something pretty much like those used today, in order to avoid similar impasses.

A succession of Popes ruled from Viterbo for a while before returning to Rome. However in 1309 Pope Clement V (a Frenchman) moved the Papacy even further away to Avignon, so the French won in the end.

After poking around the Papal Palace, the Duomo and the municipal museum, we found lunch in a trattoria in a nearby square. Despite not being far from Umbria, we have noticed before that when you cross the Tiber valley into Lazio, the cuisine changes a bit – in particular there is a lot more seafood on the menu.

For us, another attraction of Viterbo is the picturesque medieval quarter, along the Via San Pellegrino. It is understandably in regular demand as a film set.

Viterbo Via San Pellegrino — Viterbo, Via San Pellegrino. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

We spent a pleasant afternoon wandering along Via San Pellegrino and the side streets that run off it. It all looked very nice in bright sunshine, although on a rainy night one might think back to those bishops and cardinals sulking in their tents in the roofless hall of the Palace of the Popes.

April 3, 2023April 13, 2025

Palazzo Te – Romantic Trysts and Doomed Giants, but No Tea

Just outside Mantua is the Palazzo Te, built by the first Duke of Mantua as a pavilion for leisure, and love.

When I first heard of the Palazzo Te (I think it might have been on TV) I came away with the impression that the name actually meant “Palace of Tea”, implying its use as a retreat for graceful pursuits. Only later did it occur to me that there were two problems with this interpretation. One is that the Italian for tea is not te but tè (with the accent). A more substantial objection is that the palace predates the introduction of tea into Europe by several decades at least.

A more plausible etymology is that the land on which it was built was an island in the swampy land around the River Mincio. The island was called Tejeto, shortened to Te. I gather that even this explanation lacks corroboration, but I think we can all agree that it has nothing to do with tea.

After our visit to the Ducal Palace, we made a separate trip into Mantua to see the Palazzo Te, as it is a fair way south of the centre of the city. As it transpired the day of our visit was very hot and we were glad of the opportunity to park close by. The map below shows the location of Palazzo Te.

Map of Mantua showing the location of Palazzo Te relative to the Ducal Palace, and also the location of the house supposed to have belonged to the painter Mantegna (source: Google)

We met the ruling family of Mantua, the Gonzagas, in my post “Mantua – Grumpy Old Artist, Charming Painting” which was mostly about the famous paintings by Mantegna on the walls and ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace.

Federico Gonzaga

The head of the Gonzaga Family at the time they employed Mantegna was Ludovico III, the second Marquis. His great-grandson was Federico II, the fifth Marquis and, from 1530, the first Duke of Mantua, and it was Federico that built Palazzo Te. Federico’s mother was the formidable Isabella d’Este of Ferrara, who was a noted art collector and who was no doubt responsible for that part of his education.

Although what comes later in this article might suggest that Federico was no more than a dissolute lover of pleasure, he was a soldier and an active military player in the campaigns of Popes and Emperors.

Federico Gonzaga — Federico II Gonzaga, 1st Duke of Mantua, by Titian (public domain; click to enlarge).

Although Federico came three generations after Ludovico, he assumed the title only 22 years after Ludovico’s death; it seems that most of the male Gonzagas were not long-lived. That may have had something to do with the malarial environment of Mantua, but in fact both Federico and his father Francesco died of syphilis, only recently introduced from America but already spreading rapidly.

Perhaps not unrelated to the syphilis, the male Gonzagas were highly philoprogenitive, indeed priapic. Ludovico had had ten legitimate surviving children, his son and grandson six each, and Federico had five. And that was just with their wives.

Federico had several mistresses in his youth, but the one to whom he became attached for most of his life was a lady called Isabella Boschetti, known as “La Bella Boschetta”. At a time when rulers’ wives were chosen for dynastic and diplomatic reasons, it was quite common for them to take mistresses as well; not just casual affairs but long-term attachments which, as in Federico’s case, might pre-date their marriages. Frequently the children of such relationships were raised in the father’s household alongside their legitimate children, which was fairly sporting of the real wives, to whom custom did not extend the same latitude.

Federico had two children by Isabella, a boy who went on to become a state councillor in Mantua, and a girl who married a distant relative of Federico’s.

The picture below, referred to boringly by art historians as Portrait of a Lady with a Mirror, is also by Titian and is thought to be of Isabella Boschetti.

Portrait, possibly of Isabella Boschetti, by Titian (public domain; click to enlarge)

The New Palace

Some time around 1524 Federico decided to build a new palace, which would be both a separate household for him and Isabella, and a pleasant retreat outside the city. The site was still surrounded by water, and the suburban buildings which now surround the Palazzo Te and its grounds all look to have been built in the last century or so, which suggests that the area around was reclaimed relatively recently.

The artist and architect that Federico commissioned to design, and decorate the Palazzo Te was Giulio Romano (born Giulio Pippi in Rome, so when he left there he was called “Giulio the Roman” in that imaginative way they had in those days). In his youth in Rome he was apprenticed to Raphael and worked with him both in the Vatican and the Villa Farnesina, and took over those projects after Raphael’s early death.

Giulio’s fame thus grew, and in due course Federico persuaded him to come to Mantua as court artist. In those days there was considerable overlap between artists and architects, so it was not unusual for Giulio to be awarded the brief for the Palazzo Te. His work lacks the finesse of his predecessor Mantegna and his master Raphael, but there is no doubt that when it came to a big project like the Palazzo Te, he was up for it.

The Palazzo is in what is known as the late-Renaissance “mannerist” architectural style – where the earlier attempts to replicate classical styles had become a bit more like “riffing on a classical theme”. As you can see in the photograph below, the various columns, friezes and architraves perform no load-bearing function – they are just decorations.

The Palazzo Te isn’t quite as over-the-top as the Cavallerizza in the Ducal Palace from a generation later, which looks a bit as if the architect was taking mind-altering substances. A photograph of the Cavallerizza is in my earlier post on Mantua.

The Interior

Inside is where the Palazzo Te starts to get really memorable. There are a couple of very large frescoes which illustrate the sort of purposes that Federico had in mind for the place. HONEST IDLENESS AFTER LABOUR reads one inscription, and since such honest idleness seems to involve Bacchus, wine, naked women and priapic satyrs, one gets the general idea.

In my earlier post on Mantua I mentioned that the place was famous for breeding warhorses – a lucrative state business of which Henry VIII of England was one of many customers. No surprise then to see several of them celebrated in the frescoes in the Sala dei Cavalli.

Palazzo Te Sala dei Cavalli — Palazzo Te, Sala dei Cavalli. Warhorses, plus Hercules and two of his labours. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Many of the other frescoes are of classical and biblical themes, which despite their supposed propriety nonetheless manage to maintain the general air of lubriciousness. There is a room devoted to the story of Cupid and Psyche, and their illicit love, possibly a reference to Federico and Isabella.

In another room dedicated to Ovid’s Metamorphoses there is a giant picture of Polyphemus the Cyclops. To his left there is what I take to be Zeus seducing Persephone in the form of a dragon, and to his right, Daedalus helping Queen Pasiphae of Crete to disguise herself as a cow in order to have sex with a bull (of which union came the Minotaur). I assume that the two figures at the lower right might be Acis and Galatea.

Palazzo Te, Cyclops — Palazzo Te: gosh, what a big club you’ve got there. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

And of course what could possibly be improper about a scene from scripture such as David and Bathsheba?

Palazzo Te, Susannah and the Elders — Palazzo Te: David and Bathsheba. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

A typical feature of Renaissance palaces is the glorification of the owner. Sometimes this is explicit, such as in the slightly nauseating “Room of the Farnese Deeds” in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. In general though these things tend to be done a bit more subtly, with famous scenes depicting classical virtues. The strong implication is that such virtues just happen to be exemplified by the boss, who is therefore a Decent Chap.

One such picture in the Palazzo Te depicts the occasion when Caesar was presented with letters and papers stolen from his rival Pompey. Despite the fact that they would have revealed the names of Pompey’s co-conspirators, Caesar refused to look at them because he did not wish to profit from underhand tactics, and instead angrily directed that they be burned unread.

Palazzo Te: Caesar directs that Pompey’s papers be burned unread. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

This became an exemplary story about honour in warfare, with which of course Federico as a condottiere would wish to be associated. (I read somewhere that Caesar’s successors in antiquity would emulate him by ceremonially burning the papers of vanquished rivals – although not before making private copies for future reference!)

The Sala dei Giganti

The most memorable part of the interior decorations of the Palazzo Te is the Sala dei Giganti – the “Room of the Giants”. Giulio Romano’s fresco, which covers the entire surface of the walls and ceiling, illustrates the story of the giants who had attempted to build a tower reaching to Olympus, and who were destroyed by Zeus with thunderbolts.

While you couldn’t really describe the painting as refined, what Giulio lacked in elegance he certainly made up for in energy and scale. The grotesque and ugly giants are being crushed by the collapsing masonry, while the Olympian gods and demigods are looking down on them. In all the excitement some of the goddesses have managed to have wardrobe malfunctions.

The gods react in various ways to the giants, some in alarm, some in anger. Hera is standing beside Zeus, handing him more ammo in the form of thunderbolts.

I saw somewhere a suggestion that the cupola and circular balustrade at the very top of the picture is supposed to represent the Christian heaven, above the pagan one. This is a nice idea but there does not seem to be any obvious Christian iconography and no other sources mention it, so it can probably be disregarded.

Leaving the building, you find a small artificial grotto in a courtyard. Inside it is pleasant enough, but my principal memory of it is the motion sensor alarm which was too sensitive and went off before one got anywhere near the frescoes it was there to protect.

Magnificent as Federico’s reign might have appeared, his death in 1530 marked the start of the decline of Mantua. As I mentioned in my post on the life of Claudio Monteverdi, by the beginning of the 17th Century the Gonzagas were no longer a significant military force, were living well beyond their means, and were drifting into strategic and political irrelevance.

But the reigns of Ludovico and Federico bookended a glorious period in Italian history. While the Mantua that Federico ruled may have lacked the intellectual energy of Florence, the culture of Urbino or the sheer wealth of Venice, he certainly knew how to have a good time.

Note: I had originally thought of titling this piece “Crumpet, But no Tea”, but decided it would be both obscure to non-British English speakers, and also a bit juvenile for a respectable blog like this.

February 17, 2023November 19, 2023

Procida

In August 2022 we visited Naples, and took a day trip to the almost absurdly beautiful island of Procida. I took a couple of hundred photographs – here are a few of them.

Procida is one of the islands in the Bay of Naples, of which the largest is Ischia and the most famous is Capri.

Map of the Bay of Naples — The Bay of Naples (source: Google)

A Brief History

Like pretty much every other geographical feature around Naples, Procida is the product of volcanic activity. Apparently it is made up of four volcanoes, all now dormant. Human settlement on the island is very ancient, with some Mycenaean Greek artefacts (ie from around 1500 BC) having been found there, and Hellenic Greek settlements from the period of colonisation a few hundred years later. The Greeks of Magna Graecia were famously bellicose and the steep-sided hill at the eastern end of the island would have made an attractive defensive position.

The ancient Romans, like us, could afford to think about enjoying themselves rather than worrying about being invaded. And so just like us they had a good eye for real estate locations, and in classical times Procida was a popular place for wealthy people to build luxurious villas.

Good defences became important again in the Middle Ages, with Saracen raids, then a succession of wars as various dynasties fought over Naples. At some point the natural defences were augmented by artificial ones, and the area within those walls became known as the Terra Murata (“walled land”). The current structure on the site dates from the early 16^th Century and is known as the Castle (or Palace) of d’Avalos, after the Spanish cardinal who had it built. In Bourbon times it became a prison, and continued to be used as such until the 1980s, housing a few notorious mafiosi.

Procida Terra Murata — The “Terra Murata”and Port of Procida from the ferry. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Procida Now

These days Procida is a bustling place, especially around the port, but was hardly overrun when we visited in late August. This may partly be because non-residents may not bring cars to the island for most of the year, but I believe that it is also Procida’s good fortune that a majority of tourists opt to stay on the ferry and keep going to Ischia. And it was only the first post-COVID tourist season.

Map of Procida — Satellite view of Procida (source: Google)

The main town of Procida covers the eastern end of the island, and the distinguishing feature of the place is that the houses are rendered in plaster and then painted in pastel colours. The streets around the port are lined with tall narrow houses which give the impression of being densely-populated, but behind the houses there are many open spaces with what appear to be fruit and vegetable gardens.

Not surprisingly Procida has been used as a location for quite a few films including The Talented Mr Ripley, but to Italians and italophiles the most famous is Il Postino (“The Postman”).

Getting There

There are ferry and hydrofoil services to Procida and Ischia from a couple of locations. We were staying in downtown Naples, so decided to catch a ferry from the main terminal. I tried to google information on tickets and schedules, but as is the way with Google these days, I just got pages of sponsored advertisements, so we decided just to turn up to the terminal. Taxis are cheap and plentiful in Naples, and the best way to get around, so we caught one.

Naples-Procida Ferry — The Ferry from Naples to Procida and Ischia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once at the terminal we established that there was a ferry departing shortly, and that the queue to buy tickets was short and moving quickly. It also appeared that even if we had managed to book online, we would still have had to queue to get a paper ticket. A couple ahead of us when boarding the ferry found this out the hard way as despite having evidence of the purchase on their phones, they were sent back to the ticket office to get a proper paper ticket. Italy still doesn’t entirely “get” the internet.

We caught the ferry there and the hydrofoil back. The hydrofoil is not all that much more expensive than the ferry, but takes about half the time. However one has to sit downstairs with very little outside visibility, while on the ferry you can wander around on deck. So we would definitely recommend taking the ferry in at least one direction, for the views.

Naples from the Ferry to Procida — Naples from the ferry. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Of views, there are many – Naples as you leave, then along the northern edge of the Bay of Naples. Our fellow passengers seemed to be mainly locals – either Neapolitans out for a day trip or Procidans and Ischians returning from a shopping trip. There were a few foreign tourists, but perhaps not as many as there would have been before the pandemic.

On Procida

We got off the ferry in the port of Procida which is on the northern side of the island. There are plenty of mini-taxis and bike rentals which can help you get further afield, but we chose to stay on foot and climb up to the Terra Murata, then descend to the little fishing port of Corricella on the southern side, now a marina.

Procida taxi — “Micro-taxi”on Procida. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The main road up the hill towards the Terra Murata is called “Via Principe Umberto” after the son of King Vittorio Emmanuele. After the 1946 referendum which abolished the monarchy, parts of central and northern Italy renamed at least some of the streets and piazzas which had commemorated members of the House of Savoy. That this happened less in the south reminds us that in these parts the vote was actually in favour of retaining the monarchy. I can’t imagine that this was out of great affection – the Piemontese royal house was alien to the South and had ruled united Italy for less than a century. I have not seen this discussed much in Italy, but I would speculate that it was more from deep conservatism and scepticism that the Republic would actually improve conditions in the south. Did it? Who can say?

The view down towards Corricella from just outside the fortress is well worth the climb, and features in many a calendar and postcard.

Once down at sea level again, there is a very pleasant walk along the waterfront of Corricella, where the only challenge is choosing a seafood restaurant in which you might have lunch.

After gorging on the photographic opportunities in Corricella, the way back is via a steep narrow road called the Discesa Graziella, which continues to offer lots of good photographs.

January 18, 2023September 6, 2024

Paleochristian Churches (part one) – Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese

The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza and the Church of Sant’Agnese are two remarkable buildings in Rome, giving visitors insights into the late imperial and early post-imperial eras. This post is the first of a series I have in mind, concentrating on some of the oldest surviving Christian buildings. (Note: you can click on the “Paleochristian” tag at the bottom of the article to see others in this series.)

Although I write about these things from a firmly secular-historical point of view, I find the subject matter causes some algorithms to group my posts with genuinely religious articles, and this series will only make that more likely. So if you have come across this by that route then I apologise, but hope you like the pictures anyway.

I enjoy visiting so-called “paleochristian” churches, for all sorts of reasons. The term, meaning simply “old Christian” is a bit elastic, but it obviously includes anything built in the late imperial period, and ends – well, sometime after that, but certainly well before the end of the first millennium AD. So the magnificent 5^th and 6^th-Century buildings in Ravenna like San Vitale and the Arian Baptistry which I talked about in my post on Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire can probably be included.

What’s the attraction? Well firstly, if you are interested in the late Roman and early medieval periods, then any survival from those times is going to be worth a look, because frankly there isn’t all that much still around, and what there is will almost always be religious.

I suppose one of the main attractions is the sheer implausibility of the survival of these buildings. After all, the immediate post-Roman period saw some intensely destructive wars. However even without warfare, the general impoverishment of Italy and the decline of government administration meant that routine maintenance of public buildings almost certainly ceased. Even without earthquakes, some would just have fallen to bits.

Others were wantonly destroyed. As ancient Roman engineering knowledge faded away, old buildings tended to be seen as a source of materials for scavenging, rather than something to be preserved. Being a consecrated church was some protection against such a fate, albeit not a perfect one.

Even if the main structure survived, subsequent generations sometimes destroyed the original interiors and exteriors. They may have censored artwork that was no longer considered theologically correct, as in the case of some of the Arian mosaics in Ravenna. More often it was simply that they felt like redecorating. This, alas, was the case for a great many churches in Rome in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. So, for example, tourists visiting the mighty basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (to be the subject of a later post) will be greeted by the huge Baroque façade, and will need to look past a great deal of later stuff to see the magnificent 5^th-Century mosaics on the triumphal arch.

In architecture as in bird-watching, comparative rarity definitely adds to the thrill of discovery.

The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza

We will start, appropriately, in Rome, and with a building whose claims to antiquity are beyond argument. This is because it is a mausoleum probably built to house the tomb of one of the daughters of Constantine, the Emperor who took the credit for ceasing the persecution of Christianity and setting it on the way to becoming the established religion (it may actually have been his predecessor and rival Maxentius, but either way, Constantine made sure he got the credit). That dates it to the 350s or thereabouts.

Constantine may or may not have formally converted to Christianity, but his formidable mother Helena and his two daughters definitely did. Constantine’s daughters – Constantina and another Helena – were both buried in this building, in magnificent porphyry sarcophagi that are now in the Vatican museum. There is a very plausible theory that the mausoleum was actually built for the younger sister Helena, who was married to the emperor Julian the Apostate, but tradition gives it to her sister Constantina, subsequently Italianised as Costanza.

It’s not clear that this particular Costanza was ever a canonised saint. Indeed contemporary accounts talk of a rather violent, vindictive and highly political person, whose second marriage was to the eastern sub-Emperor Gallus – not really saint material. It seems likely to me that at some stage she was conflated with another Costanza who was a 1^st-Century martyr. The saintly virgin martyr and the tough-cookie empress were merged and a completely ahistorical life story was confected to suit this new hybrid character. If you do an online search for “Saint Constance” you will find modern documents referring to a pious unmarried virgin who was the daughter of the emperor and was cured of leprosy by a miracle. Obviously not true.

Be all that as it may, the building is well worth a visit. It is in the inner northern suburb called Nomentano, not far outside the Aurelian Walls of Rome, so in the 4^th Century probably a settled area of villas and market gardens but with enough open land available to build this sort of thing. Roman law banned burials inside the walls, so it is in places like this that one sees classical tombs like those which line the Via Appia, and where Christian catacombs may be found, as we shall see later.

The Mausoleum is a fairly short walk from the Sant’Agnese/Annibaliano metro station. You can just walk in off the Via Nomentana, and suddenly you have left the roar and bustle of modern Rome and entered a quiet place that has been sleeping for 1700-odd years. If you have enough coins in your pocket and the meter is actually working, you can turn on lights to illuminate the interior. We have been there several times over the years, and each time we were struck by how few other visitors there were.

Location of Santa Costanza — Location of the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza (source: Google Maps)

Like many of the most ancient Christian buildings it is circular, rather than having the cross-shaped plan adopted in the Middle Ages. Its construction is concrete faced with brick, and in turn the bricks were apparently once covered with coloured stone, now lost. So it was probably quite imposing. The central area has a high dome, once covered in mosaics but unfortunately now decorated with a mediocre fresco from what looks like the 17^th or 18^th Century.

The real highlights are the mosaics covering the ceiling of the circular ambulatory vault which surrounds the central area. These are quite secular in their themes, suggesting that the mausoleum was not originally intended as a church, even though it was later consecrated. Indeed, several have a bucolic theme, with birds, flowers and fruit, amphorae of oil or wine, and a slightly bacchanalian one with grape vines, and cherubs gathering and pressing the grapes.

The panel shown below is interesting in that it contains pagan imagery, albeit by that stage perhaps considered decorative motifs rather than religious ones. The style is apparently characteristic of decorations in imperial palaces of the day, so quite appropriate for the daughter of one emperor and the wife of another. Nevertheless it shows that the later institutionalised hostility to pagan symbols (I guess we would call it “cancelling” today) was still some way off.

There are some Christian images: the lost mosaic inside the dome was apparently of biblical scenes, and around the ambulatory there are a couple of apses, with mosaics in a different style and perhaps of poorer quality than the secular ones. One shows “Christos Pantokrator”, or “Christ the ruler of all”. The other, below, shows a youthful, blond Christ giving a scroll representing divine law to Saints Peter and Paul.

It’s fascinating to see how some of the Christian iconography with which we are familiar from the Middle Ages and Renaissance had not yet become entrenched. Early representations of Christ often show him young, blond and sometimes clean-shaven. On the other hand the traditional representations of St Peter as white-haired and bearded, and St Paul as dark-haired and balding, as here, are very ancient.

Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura

If you leave the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza and look to your left, you will see what looks like a park with some old walls sticking up out of the earth. The old walls are in fact the remains of a large basilica dedicated to Saint Agnes (Sant’Agnese), which predated the Mausoleum. Agnes is a saint whose martyrdom (with various miraculous embellishments) was said to have occurred during the Diocletian persecutions at the end of the 3^rd Century. There was a catacomb here where Agnes was buried, and her cult quickly led to the building of the basilica, to which her supposed remains were transferred. In those early days “basilica” didn’t have its later meaning of a dedicated religious building, but was simply a large public building.

Basilica of Sant'Agnese — The ruined Basilica of Sant’Agnese, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

As I said earlier, in the post-imperial period sometimes buildings just fell to bits through neglect, and it seems that this is what happened to the original basilica of Sant’Agnese. So in the 7^th Century Pope Honorius decided to replace the old basilica with a new church a short distance away. It is that which now stands beside the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, and which holds the supposed bones of the Saint. The church is called Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), which serves to distinguish it from the famous church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, the large (now very much baroque-style) church on the western side of the Piazza Navona in central Rome, built over the traditional site of the saint’s martyrdom.

The approach to the church is through a pretty little garden, then down a long set of stairs, showing how the ground level has risen over the centuries. Lining the stairs is a display of fragments of funerary inscriptions from the site of the old basilica and the catacombs.

Sant'Agnese — Funerary inscriptions, Church of Sant’Agnese, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once inside the church the layout is fairly conventional, with a nave, transepts and apse, suggesting that by the 600s the basic plan for churches had settled down. And as you will see in the photographs below, there is a good deal of decoration that is much more recent than the 7^th Century, including the ceiling, the mosaic above the apse, and the canopy over the altar (ciborium, or baldacchino).

In fact the only major feature still in original 7^th Century condition is the apse mosaic behind the altar, which shows Saint Agnes flanked by Pope Honorius (holding a model of the church) and another pope whose identity I have not been able to find. Since it dates from his time, we may suppose that the picture of Honorius is a likeness. Honorius is mostly known now for his unsuccessful attempts to resolve the long-running controversies about the nature of Christ, and whether Christ had separate divine and human energies. His efforts earned him little gratitude.

Agnes was a particularly popular saint, whose portfolios included being the patron of young girls. One of the traditions associated with her is that a young girl who prayed to St Agnes on the eve of her feast day would dream of her future husband. This is the subject of one of Keats’s finest poems, The Eve of St Agnes.

Due to her association with innocence and virginity – and also, one suspects, to a coincidental Latin pun on her name (agnus meaning “lamb”) – Sant’Agnese is often shown accompanied by lambs. One tradition still celebrated at the church is that on her feast day, two lambs are brought there to be blessed by the Pope. When the lambs are later shorn, the wool is used to weave the pallia, white bands worn around the neck, which are presented to newly-appointed bishops.

The area which includes the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, the church of Sant’Agnese, the archaeological remains of the basilica and – incongruously – the Sant’Agnese Tennis Club covers a large urban block, and you can still visit the catacombs underneath, although we have yet to do so.

The last couple of times we have visited, it was noisy, chaotic and very hot outside. Inside both buildings it was cool and quiet, and the cherubs and saints looked down benignly on the few visitors that had found their way into the shadows, just as they would have done for over fourteen hundred years.

December 24, 2022February 13, 2025

Iris Origo, La Foce and Val d’Orcia

Iris Origo (1902–1988) should be much more famous than she is. Not just as a writer, historian and biographer but as a philanthropist, agricultural reformer and a war heroine.

I first encountered Iris Origo about fifteen years ago when I bought her book The Merchant of Prato. The Merchant of the title was Francesco di Marco Datini (1335-1410), a resident of the city of Prato near Florence. Datini was a successful businessman with interests across Europe, especially Papal Avignon, although he also imported Cotswolds wool for the Florentine textile industry.

Datini kept meticulous records of his numerous letters and commercial documents, and in his will he directed that they be kept and stored in his house. Over time “storage” seems to have been rather broadly interpreted, as they were discovered in 1870, stuffed into sacks under the staircase – but still in his house, so the terms of the will had arguably been observed. While doubtless a few learned monographs were produced, the material had to wait until 1957 to be introduced to a wider audience in the form of Iris Origo’s book.

I really enjoyed the book and have re-read it a few times. It could have been rather boring, but her writing style is engaging. She manages to synthesise a compelling narrative from an enormous amount of source material, and combines painstaking scholarship with a deep understanding of the historical and cultural context in which Datini lived. In particular Origo manages to show real empathy for her distant subjects while not ascribing feelings to them beyond those supported by the historical evidence.

We actually have a couple of representations of Datini’s likeness. Like many wealthy merchants with a nervous eye on the church’s ban on lending at interest, Datini donated to good causes including paying for religious art, and in a painting by Filippo Lippi he is shown imploring the intercession of the Virgin Mary on behalf of a group of fellow-citizens.

Lippi Madonna del Ceppo — The “Madonna del Ceppo” by Filippo Lippi, showing Francesco di Marco Datini in red.

If I can produce enough relevant photographs of Prato, I might do a separate post one day on Datini, but now I have a more compelling story to tell.

Who was Iris Origo?

So who was this writer, so obviously of extensive learning and considerable intellect? The back cover of The Merchant of Prato called her a Marchesa or Marchioness, which is to say above a countess in the order of Italian nobility, but below a duchess. It also turned out that she had never really been to school, let alone university.

She was born in Birdlip, Gloucestershire in 1902 to Bayard Cutting, a very wealthy American diplomat from New York, and Lady Sybil Cutting, daughter of the 5^th Earl of Desart, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. Alas, Bayard contracted tuberculosis and despite traipsing around the world to various health resorts in search of relief, he died in 1910 leaving his wife and young daughter alone but independently wealthy.

Bayard had developed strong internationalist ideas and before his death had asked Sybil not to bring Iris up either in America or England, but in an environment where she would not develop a strong sense of nationality. It is hard to say how successful this was, as Iris clearly always thought of herself as English, spending a lot of time in England (and some in America) in the 20s and 30s and being presented at court as a debutante. Moreover, she was to live in times when men with guns were liable to demand to see one’s passport, which rather forces the decision on one. But as we shall see she would spend more time in Italy than anywhere else.

An unusual childhood

Sibyl therefore decided to settle in Florence, arriving there in 1911 with the nine-year-old Iris in tow. Since the days of the 18^th Century Grand Tour, and right up until the Second World War, there was a substantial British (and American) colony in Florence. Given the city’s artistic heritage, the English-speaking colony was rather self-consciously intellectual – like other expat groups though, it tended to factions and feuds.

Sibyl Cutting would have made a bit of a splash on arrival, as she rented the Villa Medici in Fiesole, one of the grandest Florentine addresses in terms of location, luxury and history. Fiesole is a town on a hill which overlooks Florence from the north, and in the mid-1450s Cosimo de’ Medici had built a villa there with magnificent views over the city. With Sibyl and Iris in residence, the villa quickly became one of the main social centres of the English colony, and Sibyl was to buy it outright in 1923.

The photograph of Fiesole below was taken from the viewing platform at the top of the Brunelleschi dome on Florence’s duomo. The Villa Medici is the square white building in the middle of the picture.

The free-thinking Bayard had not wanted Iris to attend a normal school, and she mostly did not, although when she was briefly enrolled in a school in London at the age of 12 she was assessed to be three years ahead of other girls of the same age. Instead she was schooled partly by a succession of governesses, partly self-educated by being given free run of the library at home, and partly by her mother’s intellectual friends, including the American art historian and fellow Florentine resident Bernard Berenson.

The Villa Medici in Fiesole, where Iris grew up. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

And it was on Berenson’s recommendation that Iris was sent for personal lessons with Professor Solone Monti on three afternoons a week. Monti taught her Greek and Latin and western literature, rather in the way that a Renaissance humanist scholar might have tutored the child of a prince. She learned Latin and Greek grammar by completing exercises while travelling to and from Monti’s home on the tram.

One of the many English people who drifted into the Cutting’s circle was an architect called Cecil Pinsent. A rather diffident young man, he set up a business with another Englishman restoring and redecorating the old buildings owned or rented by the expatriate colony, and increasingly designing their gardens. Apparently they were not very good at the practical side to start with, but learned on the job. It was not long before Sybil Cutting asked Pinsent to work on the gardens and interior decoration of the Villa Medici.

Florence from Fiesole — Florence as seen from the Villa Medici in Fiesole. Hasselblad 501 C/M Camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back, two images stitched together (click to enlarge).

Sybil sounds like a difficult character – an increasingly self-obsessed and neurotic hypochondriac. As Iris grew older she was probably happy to spend more time in England away from her mother, where despite an understandable lack of self-confidence, she moved in some fairly exalted literary circles, meeting and talking with the likes of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot.

Marriage and La Foce

It might have come as a surprise therefore when this quiet, brainy young woman on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group married a young Italian aristocrat: the Marchese Antonio Origo. It might have been even more of a surprise when the newlyweds announced that they were sinking their combined capital into the purchase of a large but very run-down estate in a distant corner of southern Tuscany – the Val d’Orcia.

Nowadays the Val d’Orcia is one of the top tourist destinations in Italy, with some of the country’s most iconic views. I have photographed it many times, including on two visits this year. As indeed have hundreds of thousands of tourists. And as I’ve said elsewhere, modern visitors understandably think of the region as a land of milk and honey, or at any rate a land of pecorino cheese, salami and wine. But a century ago it was impoverished. Education rates were low, while disease rates, especially of those diseases associated with poor nutrition in children, were high.

There were a few reasons for this. One was soil degradation – the Val d’Orcia, heavily wooded in antiquity, had been deforested by the Etruscans and the Romans. What soil there was, already rather thin, was in many places eroded away to the underlying clay, and poor farming practices only made the erosion problem worse. Lack of education, conservatism and suspicion of outsiders hindered the introduction of more scientific farming techniques.

All of these ills occurred within, and were compounded by, the system of sharecropping known as mezzadria. As the name suggests, tenant farmers handed over half their crop (il mezzo) to the landowner. Traditionally, mezzadria was supposed to be a two-way street, with landowners having reciprocal responsibilities for various aspects of their tenants’ welfare. However by the early 20^th Century, the great majority of landowners were absentees living in towns, handing over the management of their properties to factors (farm managers) whose job it was to maximise profits.

Into this sailed Antonio and Iris, two idealistic amateurs determined to be the old-fashioned, caring type of proprietors. In Antonio’s case this meant studying and introducing the latest scientific farming methods, while in Iris’s case it meant medical care and education for the children.

La Foce lies near the southern edge of the old Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in sight of the fortress of Radicofani that guarded the border with the Papal States. It was near the old pilgrim road called the Via Francigena of which I have written elsewhere. Along the old pilgrim routes, various charitable institutions would build hospices for pilgrims and other travellers, and the main building of La Foce was such a one, dating from the late 1400s.

In the 1920s the old building was much neglected, without water or electricity, and the grounds were described as being like a lunar landscape. Iris’s choice of an architect to restore and extend the buildings, and lay out the gardens, was obviously going to be Cecil Pinsent.

Pinsent extended the building with a new wing at the rear, and in doing so realigned it. While the original wing faced the west and the old road, the new wing had a panoramic view south across the valley towards Monte Amiata.

As a birthday present for Iris, her American grandmother paid for water to be piped from a distant spring, and with a secure water supply now available, Pinsent could start laying out the garden. Photographs from the 1930s show that the modern garden is largely unchanged from Pinsent’s original design.

In 1925 Iris and Antonio had a son, Gianni, to whom Iris was utterly devoted. Alas, he was to die of meningitis shortly before his eighth birthday. Pinsent designed a small chapel in the grounds in which Gianni was buried (as later were his parents). Much later they had two daughters, one of whom, I believe, still lives at La Foce.

Antonio’s efforts to rehabilitate the estate and improve the productivity of the farms were starting to show results, as were Iris’s initiatives with the children of the estate, including starting a school and a clinic. These projects happened to be consistent with the rural modernisation programs of the Fascist government, and La Foce became something of a propaganda showpiece for the regional Fascists. Not unnaturally this caused the Origos to be viewed with suspicion by some people after the war.

But in fact Iris’s Anglophone circle was strongly anti-fascist, and Antonio was a conservative aristocrat, a reserve army officer and an Italian patriot rather than a Fascist. Like many of his class he would have thought the Fascists a better choice than the Communists at first, changing his views as the harm Fascism was doing to Italy became apparent. After the fall of Fascism, when Germany became the enemy, it would be clear which side he was on. But in the 1930s, politics was a subject that was avoided at the Origo dinner table.

War comes to La Foce

As war approached, Iris recorded in her diaries the increasing hostility towards Britain and the expatriate community. These diaries were published posthumously in 2017 under the title A Chill in the Air. Once war broke out, she was viewed with suspicion by the authorities, but protected by her marriage to an Italian and by the fact that she had an American as well as a British passport (America was to stay out of the war for two more years). Iris tried unsuccessfully for a while to get some sort of volunteer work and eventually managed a job with the Red Cross in Rome, helping families on both sides of the conflict to get news of sons who had been taken prisoner.

Later, Iris made representations to the Italian authorities to be allowed to take in at La Foce children evacuated from northern cities like Milan and Turin, by now under heavy bombing. Eventually this was agreed to and small groups of traumatised and in some cases orphaned children began to arrive, to be housed in the farm buildings closest to the main house.

After the Italian surrender in 1943, many thousands of allied prisoners of war were released or escaped and the Germans – after some frightful atrocities – left Rome and began retreating up through central Italy. Word spread among the POWs, partisans and Italian army deserters that La Foce was a place in which they might find aid and advice. There are some quite surreal accounts of escaped POWs creeping through the woods above La Foce and suddenly finding themselves addressed by a tall woman dressed in tweeds who would hand them a bit of food and a map, and in upper-class English tones would briskly advise them where to go to hide, or where the allied lines were believed to be, and how to avoid German patrols. On at least one occasion, Iris was out at the back of the house on just such an errand while Antonio was out at the front casually engaging a German patrol in conversation. I’m surprised no-one has made a film of it.

Some of the POWs made the dangerous journey south to rejoin the advancing allies; others preferred to hole up until the allies got to them. The wooded country around the base of Monte Amiata was a major partisan stronghold, and some POWs went and joined them there. A good many POWs and Italian deserters were sleeping rough in La Foce’s own woods.

Monte Amiata. The woods on its slopes sheltered many escaped POWs and partisans. Hasselblad 501 C/M Camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

If the word had got around in partisan circles that the Origos could be relied upon for help, then it would not have been long before the Fascists found out too, and the Origos were denounced in local Fascist news sheets. To have been caught helping the resistance by the Germans would have risked arrest, deportation to a concentration camp or summary execution, so to survive must have required a good deal of both agility and luck.

Escape with the children

Inevitably the allies – Americans, British, Indians and New Zealanders – arrived in the Val d’Orcia, with aerial bombing and artillery fire from both sides. One day the Germans came and informed the Origos that La Foce was to be requisitioned as a command post, so the time had come to get the remaining families and the refugee children to safety. Iris and Antonio gathered them all together and led them on foot to Montepulciano, about ten kilometres away.

The photograph below shows Montepulciano from the little town of Montefollonico. La Foce is beyond the hills at the distant right of the picture, so it would have been over these hills that Iris and Antonio led the refugees.

The roads were mined, and subject to artillery fire. The group walked past the bodies of dead soldiers, and hid in the cornfields when they heard shellfire. Eventually, exhausted and desperately thirsty, with the adults carrying the smaller children, they arrived outside the walls of Montepulciano. The Germans had left, and the refugees were taken in by friends in the town. Again, I don’t know why someone did not make a film of this – I can see Vivien Leigh as Iris and Dirk Bogarde as Antonio.

There was one peripheral element of this story that did end up on film, in a small way. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers, Cecil Pinsent returned to Italy in 1944 as part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Commission – one of the “Monuments Men” who tried to recover art works lost and stolen during the fighting, which inspired the film of that name.

Iris the writer

Iris started writing seriously after the death of her son. It is therefore a bit poignant that her first published book was Allegra, a biography of the poet Byron’s short-lived illegitimate daughter, published in 1935. She brought out a couple more biographies before the war interrupted her writing career. You can find a complete list of Iris’s books in the Wikipedia article – I don’t propose to list them all here.

Her first really popular book was published in 1947. War in the Val d’Orcia was based on her wartime diaries and did a great deal in England and America to create more positive feelings towards Italy after the years of hostility.

In the late 1940s word got around in publishing circles that there existed in Italy a trove of letters from Lord Byron to his last mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, but that the current owner, an elderly descendant of the Countess, was reluctant to allow access to them. Iris was asked by her London publishers to visit the owner and seek access to the letters, which she did without much expectation of success. Whether it was her manner, the fact that she had already published on Byron, or that she too was an Italian aristocrat of sorts, the old gentleman agreed. Thus was born her next book: The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Countess Guiccioli. I’ve got it – I have to say that although Iris is scrupulously objective, neither Byron nor Teresa comes across as particularly likeable.

In 1967 Iris was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1976 she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Antonio died in 1976 and Iris died in 1988.

La Foce Today

After the war the mezzadria system started to break down. The system as a whole was irrevocably tarnished by the injustices suffered by so many, and the Origo’s efforts to have been good proprietors did not really help them. The new republican government of Italy was keen to see the end of mezzadria , and applied its own inducements and penalties. Probably the most inexorable force was economic: the large-scale movement of the rural workforce to work in the industrial cities of Northern Italy, which brought fundamental changes to Italian society over the course of the 1950s and 60s. The estate was now worked by hired labour and a few remaining mezzadri who, on the Origos’ own initiative, received 70% of what they produced rather than the old 50%. After Iris’s death her daughters sold off about two-thirds of the estate.

A visit to the gardens is very rewarding and we would thoroughly recommend it. They are open a couple of times a week for guided tours in English and Italian, and you need to book on their website (see below). Comparing the gardens as they are today with photographs from the 1930s it is clear that they are more or less exactly as they were after Pinsent established them. At the end of the tour you end up in a small shop where some of Iris’s books are on sale.

I do not have figures to hand, but it seems that by the 1970s many of the La Foce farmhouses which the Origos had modernised in the 1930s would have been vacant and derelict. Then along came the agriturismo movement. These days the houses are mostly agriturismi at the end of cypress-lined roads where foreign visitors and Italians escaping the cities enjoy the idyllic Tuscan scenery. Few visitors would be aware how much the beauty of the modern landscape owes to Iris and Antonio.

Postscript

I mentioned earlier my impression that Iris’s wartime experiences would have made a great film, and while checking something in Caroline Moorehead’s biography I found that in the 1980s a film based on War in the Val d’Orcia had been contemplated – something I had forgotten. Apparently Iris’s opinion was that she should have been played by Meryl Streep. That would have worked.

September 27, 2022September 9, 2024

The Cloister of Santa Chiara in Naples

Right in the chaotic centre of Naples there is a beautiful and peaceful convent garden – the Cloister of Santa Chiara.

In August 2022 we fulfilled a long-delayed ambition to return to Naples. Our first visit over ten years earlier was only a short day trip by train from Sorrento, so this time we wanted to do it properly. That meant staying in downtown Naples for a few nights. Which meant driving into central Naples – in terms of risk something akin to skydiving in many people’s view, including that of northern Italians.

The traffic on a Naples city street, if it is wide enough, resembles a sort of slow-motion version of F1 cars weaving about for advantage as they leave the starting grid. There was a fair bit of hooting and gesticulation but I just kept going and we reached our destination without incident. The receptionist at the hotel said something to the effect that in Naples traffic, “they all do what they want and you let it happen around you”. That was good advice. In any case taxis are cheap in Naples and we were able to leave the car in the hotel garage until it was time to go home.

There are many stereotypes about Naples in addition to the traffic, and most are in some degree true. It is louder there, and more chaotic. The colours are brighter. The architecture – from later eras – is exuberant. There’s a big volcano across the bay. People genuinely seem more cheerful and demonstrative than they are further north – we noticed this in a few different situations. It is undeniably dirty, with the corruption in local government evident in rubbish collection contracts let to criminal groups that just dump stuff in random locations, or don’t bother collecting it at all. And as I said, the traffic is a bit crazy, although in our experience it is scarier in Palermo.

We read somewhere that if visitors to Italy find Rome dirty and disorganised, they should not go to Naples, because they will find those things worse there. If on the other hand they enjoy the energy and spectacle of Rome then they should keep going south because they will love Naples. We are in that latter category.

We were there in late August, and along the Lungomare and in the water the locals were soaking up the late summer sun.

Naples Castel dell'Ovo — Naples, Castel dell’Ovo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Naples Lungomare — Naples *Lungomare* with Vesuvius in the background. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

We took a most enjoyable day trip to the island of Procida – although that is not the subject of today’s post. I will also do a separate post one day celebrating street life in Naples (edit: here it is). But now I will get to the point of this one.

Santa Chiara

One morning we woke to steady rain – welcome in a way after a particularly long, hot, dry summer, but not the best for sightseeing. Nonetheless we stuck to the plan, and after a breakfast of coffee and pastries at a bar we caught a taxi to our destination: the church, convent and cloisters of Santa Chiara, bang in the middle of the old city. As we zoomed up and down hills, ducked through narrow alleys, and negotiated one hairpin bend so tight that our little Fiat taxi had to do a three-point turn to get round, Lou observed that if there is a Naples equivalent of “The Knowledge” that London taxi drivers need to demonstrate, it would be challenging indeed. Needless to say the driver dropped us right at the front gate of our destination, and charged us very little.

In the photograph of central Naples below, taken from Castel Sant’Elmo, the church of Santa Chiara is the large green-roofed building on the right.

Santa Chiara is described on the maps as a “monumental complex” and since it includes a church, a convent, an archaeological site and a museum, that describes it fairly well.

Like many convents, there is a square cloister, decorated with religious frescoes, surrounding a central open area.

Chiostro di Santa Chiara — Cloister of Santa Chiara. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The large Gothic church, commenced in 1313, dominated the view of Naples for centuries. At the time Naples was ruled by the French Angevins, who had succeeded the Hohenstaufens of Frederick II. The picture below, painted 150 years later by which time the ruling dynasty was Aragonese, shows just how it dominated.

Aragonese fleet — Detail from “The Aragonese Fleet returns to Naples after the Battle of Ischia, 6 July 1465” (public domain)

Meanwhile, back in the 1300s, the Angevin King Robert and his wife Sancha of Majorca were extremely devout followers of the Franciscans, the movement started by St Francis only about a hundred years earlier. The female version of the Franciscan order was started by St Clare (Santa Chiara) and in Italy they are called Clarissans after her. In England they were called the “Poor Clares” due to their vow of poverty. Queen Sancha took a particular interest in the Clarissans, joining the order after her husband’s death, so it is not surprising that the church and convent she and Robert established was dedicated to Santa Chiara.

Death of Santa CHiara — Death of Santa Chiara, fresco from the cloisters. Not sure what role the little devils at the foot of the bed are playing. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Fast forward to the 18th Century and another queen of Naples (by now it was ruled by the Spanish branch of the Bourbons) started taking an interest. The central area of the convent, surrounded by cloisters, was being used by the nuns as a vegetable garden. The queen, Maria Amalia of Saxony, thought it would be a good idea to smarten it up and decorate it with scenes which allowed the nuns to contemplate the life outside which they had renounced. She therefore commissioned an architect to convert the space into a formal garden crossed at right angles by two arcades of benches and columns, all decorated with maiolica tiles. I don’t know what the nuns thought of the idea but the result would certainly have been a very pleasant place for them to sit.

Catastrophe arrived in August 1943 when a raid by American B-17 Flying Fortresses started a fire which destroyed the inside of the church and its roof, although the adjacent cloister seems to have mostly survived.

Photographs from the historical gallery of the Campania Fire Brigade, showing the church of Santa Chiara immediately after the bombardment, and seventy years later. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

While many types of stone can survive a fierce fire, marble often doesn’t, and the photo below shows the remains of a marble frieze from the church, now displayed in the museum above a pre-war photograph of the original. Looking carefully at the remains of the original, it seems that there was an attempt to repair the frieze before they gave up.

However soon after the end of the war, and despite all their other problems, the Neapolitans set about rebuilding their beloved church, completing the job in 1953. To modern eyes there is some small compensation for this. The interior had been redecorated in the 17th Century with some of the worst excesses of the baroque period, and without significant architectural merit. Pre-war illustrations of the interior show something like a wedding cake as imagined by Walt Disney. On acid.

The architects responsible for reconstruction took the courageous decision to revert the church to its original austere Gothic nobility. One gets the impression that this was a bit controversial; not surprisingly many Neapolitans would have been wanting their old church back exactly as it was. But the Gothic restoration would certainly have been closer to Robert and Sancha’s Franciscan vision, and if it is over-the-top baroque that you want, you need only go to the church of Gesù Nuovo just down the road, which escaped damage in the air raids.

The Cloister

It was still raining quite hard when we got to the cloister, which was disappointing in a way, but it did at least mean that we could take pictures of the arcades without people in them.

And then later the sun started to come out again so we got the best of both worlds.

The maiolica pictures on the backs of the benches are charming. There are a few with mythological or literary themes, but most show an idealised version of real life – country scenes with peasants dancing, people working in the fields or unloading ships.

Several of the characters wear carnival-style masks and are doubtless supposed to be specific characters such as Pulcinella from the Commedia dell’Arte, especially in the scenes of rustic celebration. As I said, I don’t know how the nuns felt about it, but to me it does seem a bit mean to suggest that the life they had forsworn was one of continuous revelry.

Unlike the frescoes in the surrounding cloister, the pictures that line the arcades are not religious at all, unless you count one of Santa Chiara herself, feeding cats. A lady we know in Umbria likes to feed the stray cats round about so in the museum shop we bought a bookmark showing Santa Chiara feeding the cats and presented it to her on our return. We were a bit nervous that she might think it frivolous, but she roared with laughter.

There was a restaurant near Santa Chiara, part of the Slow Food Movement, that we had selected for lunch, but Google was a bit optimistic about its opening time so we found we had an hour to kill. We therefore headed to a nearby bar for a pre-lunch aperitivo. That proved to be a rather Neapolitan experience. The Bar Settebello was small, full of cheerful people, and very noisy. But while in most Italian bars the noise would be coming from a TV playing pop videos or a football match, here the TV was tuned to RAI 5 (a bit like Channel 4 in the UK, alas no equivalent in Australia) and it was pumping out a performance of Rossini’s opera La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie).

Bar Settebelli — Bar Settebello, Naples (phone camera).

Update: I have now posted the promised articles on Procida and street life in Naples.

August 17, 2022November 19, 2023

A Little Place in the Country – The Villa Farnese at Caprarola

Intended as a fortress, then converted into a palace, the Villa Farnese in Caprarola is above all a monument to one of the most powerful families in Renaissance Italy.

The Farnese family accumulated a fair bit of real estate. If you have been to central Rome there is a good chance that you will have seen the massive Palazzo Farnese (now the French Embassy), or the beautiful Villa Farnesina across the Tiber, with Raphael’s famous frescoes. If you have visited Parma you might have seen the elegant “Palazzo del Giardino”, also a Farnese palace. This post is about one of the most remarkable, in the town of Caprarola north of Rome.

The Palazzo Farnese in Rome, August 2022, somewhat disfigured by scaffolding and hoardings. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Parma Ducal Palace — The “Palazzo del Giardino” (Ducal Palace) in Parma. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Farnese Family

We met the Farnese family when they were the villains of the story, violently subduing the city of Perugia. This time they get to be the heroes – which is not really surprising since they are telling this story themselves.

Although claiming ancient origins, the Farnese family first came to the notice of history in the 12^th Century, with a power base north of Rome. In the interminable Guelph versus Ghibelline wars of the Middle Ages, they generally turned up on the Guelph side, ie the side of the Papacy. It seems they knew where the family’s future fortunes lay.

And stupendous fortunes they were, built on acquisition of noble titles and huge estates, mercenary soldiering on behalf of the popes, and shameless simony and nepotism. “Simony” refers to the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices and anticipated rewards in the afterlife, like Papal indulgences. “Nepotism” comes from the Latin word for “nephew” and was coined to refer to the practice of Popes granting lucrative high offices – ecclesiastical or secular – to their (ahem) “nephews”.

There were other ways to power. Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, owed his Cardinal’s hat to his sister Giulia. She was the mistress of Pope Alexander VI, and persuaded him to make her brother a cardinal.

Caprarola

In 1504 Cardinal Alessandro Farnese splashed out on the purchase of the estate of Caprarola in northern Lazio, in the heart of his family’s historical power base. He then commissioned his favourite architect Antonio Sangallo to design and build a large fortress on the site.

We have already met both Alessandro and Sangallo, later in their careers. Forty or so years later, Alessandro was by then Pope Paul III, and, having ordered the subjugation of Perugia by his ~~nephew~~ son Pierluigi, he commissioned Sangallo to build a huge fortress at the south of the town, to keep it that way. All this is described in my earlier post on The Buried Streets of Perugia. But for now the Papacy lay in the future for Alessandro Farnese.

Alessandro’s brief to Sangallo for Caprarola, it seems, was for a military structure, similar to that which he would one day build in Perugia. It was to be a pentagonal fortress in a good defensive position, with bastions that could provide raking fire on attackers. That a prince of the Church thought it prudent to design such a building tells you a bit about 16^th-Century Italian politics. When things in the city got a bit awkward, it was time to head to the country estate and pull up the drawbridge.

In any case the fortress was never completed as planned. In 1556 Pope Paul’s grandson, another Alessandro Farnese and another cardinal, had the half-built fortress converted into a lavish country villa by an architect named Giacomo Vignola. It seems that the mood was a bit less bellicose half a century later, but the bastions are still visible at the lower level, and the finished villa retains the pentagonal shape of Sangallo’s original project. And the villa was still used as somewhere to retreat to whenever the Farnese found themselves on the losing side of papal politics.

The Villa

The villa is in the late Renaissance, or “Mannerist” style, and sits on a slope, with formal Renaissance gardens up the hill behind. The front of the building faces south-east, in the direction of Rome. This aspect of the building was doubtless dictated by the topology of the site. It is nonetheless rather appropriate that while the Farnese were enjoying breakfast on their balcony, they were looking towards the city that would always be at the front of their minds – the source of their power, and of threats from rival families. Immediately in front of the building is a massive piazza.

Villa Farnese from the piazza. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Walking up to the front entrance across the piazza, we were not accompanied by a ceremonial guard, so we felt pretty small. Actually, you would probably feel fairly small even with a medium-sized ceremonial guard, which was presumably the intention.

Looking south-east from the Villa Farnese, in the direction of Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once inside you realise that the pentagonal shape is hollow, and that each floor has a gallery around the edge of the central space.

Ground floor gallery, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Inside, the rooms are lavishly decorated, with every square metre of wall and ceiling put to use. As is frequently the case in Renaissance palaces, each room has a theme. Sometimes the theme is obvious and sometimes it would need fairly recondite knowledge to spot all the references. Fortunately for those who are not Renaissance humanists, these days there are plenty of explanatory panels.

Villa Farnese Winter Apartment — Winter Apartment, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Room of Jupiter — Room of Jupiter, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Spring Room — Spring Room, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Royal Staircase

You access the upper floors by means of the “Royal Staircase”. In this period staircases were an opportunity for architects to show off their skill. The mathematical complexities of their design, the combination of strength and delicacy, and the visual attractiveness of curves and spirals, could come together to show both technical and aesthetic mastery. Vignola seems to have hit all the marks on this occasion.

Villa Farnese Royal Staircase — Royal Staircase, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

And of course the walls and ceiling of the stairwell provide more real estate for decoration.

Deeds and Maps

Upstairs the decoration gets even more impressive, and when you enter “The Room of the Farnese Deeds” you realise you are in a Farnese family theme park. Enormous frescoes show great world events in which the family took part. Here the Farnese Pope Paul III and the Emperor Charles V wage war on the Lutherans, accompanied by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and his brother Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza.

Villa Farnese Room of Farnese Deeds — Room of Farnese Deeds, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Here the French King Francis rides out from Paris to meet Charles V on the way to chastise the Belgians (or something), accompanied naturally by Cardinal Farnese, the “ambassador of great affairs”.

Room of Farnese Deeds, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It would be a bit nauseating were it not for the sheer pomposity of it all which renders it a bit ridiculous to modern eyes. Freud would no doubt have said that Alessandro was compensating for something. Here is the ceiling, in which almost every panel is a Farnese doing deeds, or angels cheering them on.

The Room of the Maps contains maps of the whole world as it was known in the 16^th Century. So no Australia and New Zealand, obviously. It apparently so impressed one of the Popes that he commissioned a similar thing for the Vatican.

Villa Farnese Room of the Maps — Map of the World in The Room of the Maps, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Vatican Gallery of Maps — The “Gallery of Maps” in the Vatican. The Farnese thought of it first. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The Gardens

As you complete the tour of the villa, you find yourself in the lower of the two gardens – a formal and symmetrical Renaissance garden which is presumably similar to the 16^th-Century original. You can imagine the younger Alessandro strolling here, in quiet conversation with some confidential envoy bringing news of developments in the Vatican.

Villa Farnese Lower Gardens — The Lower Gardens, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

From the lower garden you wander uphill through a chestnut wood. I don’t know what was planted here 450 years ago but the absence of buildings or landscaping suggests that it was intended to simulate a wild landscape. Then you get to the something called the “Secret Garden”, presumably because it was invisible from the main villa. The Secret Garden is approached through a corridor of some pretty exuberant Mannerist waterworks and statuary, starting with a catena d’acqua or “chain of water” which leads up to a pair of colossal statues of river gods.

Villa Farnese Secreet Garden — The “Catena d’Acqua” leading up to the Secret Garden, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Secret Garden — The Secret Garden, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Beyond the statues are another pair of gardens and a charming building called the “casino”. By most standards this would be considered a substantial dwelling but in the context of the Villa Farnese it is obviously just a little summer house.

After the Farnese

Unusually for a Farnese cardinal, the younger Alessandro left no direct heirs. The villa passed to his relatives, the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza. In the 18^th Century the Farnese line died out and their property passed through marriage to the Bourbon kings of Naples.

After the unification of Italy in the 19^th Century the villa became the property of the Italian state. For a while the villa was used as a residence for the heir to the Italian throne, but under the Republic it is now a museum.

The “casino” in the upper garden is used as a residence for the President of the Italian Republic. I don’t know if President Mattarella gets to use it very much, but I hope he does. It would be a nice place to get away from the complexities of political life in Rome for a while, just as it was five centuries ago.

August 5, 2022February 22, 2025

The Palazzo Trinci in Foligno II – More Jewels of the High Middle Ages

In addition to its secular artistic gems, the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno contains some wonderful religious art and a “Gothic Staircase”.

In my first post on the Palazzo Trinci I gave some of the history of this remarkable building and its contents, particularly the allegorical frescoes in what is known as the “Hall of the Liberal Arts”.

When contemplating works like these, dating from the late 1300s and early 1400s it is obvious that, whatever the simple stories they once taught schoolchildren, Lorenzo de’ Medici didn’t wake up one day in Florence in the 1470s and decide to start the Renaissance. That intellectual awakening had been under way for at least a century, and it wasn’t just in Florence, or even in Italy. As with most things in history it was a gradual process, and the glories of Leonardo and Erasmus didn’t appear out of the blue. Real historians have always known that, but things tend to get simplified for the rest of us.

For now, let us just admire the art. And if the Hall of the Liberal Arts were the only thing to see in the Palazzo Trinci it would be well worth the visit. But it isn’t the only thing to see.

The “Gothic Staircase”

Let us start with the extraordinary internal gothic staircase. I’m not sure if the famous 20th Century Dutch artist M.C. Escher ever visited Foligno, but I’m sure that we are not the only visitors who thought that this looked like something in one of his prints.

Palazzo Trinci Gothic Staircase — The “Gothic Staircase” in the Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Palazzo Trinco "Gothic Staircase" — The “Gothic Staircase” in the Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

As I said in the earlier article, the Palazzo was not designed as a single building, but had its origins as a number of smaller separate dwellings that were consolidated into a greater one. One effect of this was to leave a large internal space that would once have been an external courtyard. Ugolini III Trinci decided to fill the space with the staircase. The decorations – under the Gothic arches and the trompe l’oeil decorations on the walls – make it clear that this is not merely a prosaic means to access the higher floors, but the focal point of the Palazzo.

The Private Corridor

Like many important families in Italy, the Trinci arranged private access to the duomo (Cathedral) – in their case in the form of an elevated corridor. You can see it in the photograph below.

Trinci Private Corridor — External view of the private corridor linking the Palazzo Trinci (L) with the Duomo (R), Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Inside, the decorations are a little confusing. This is because there was originally a fresco depicting The Ages of Man – a common theme. This was later covered by a new fresco depicting The Nine Heroes (or The Nine Worthies) – another common 14th Century theme, but the former Ages of Man fresco was recreated on the opposite wall. Then at some point part of the Nine Heroes fresco has fallen away, exposing part of the original Ages of Man.

The Nine Heroes theme comes from a French text from 1312 – the first three are from the Bible, being Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus. The next three are from the Greek and Roman world – Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. The final three are called the “Heroes of Christendom” and are King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey de Bouillon.

I must admit that I had to look up who Godfrey was, but he was one of the leading knights in the First Crusade, who became King of Jerusalem at the conclusion of the crusade. I can’t show you a photograph of his likeness in the Palazzo Trinci because it has been completely destroyed. Instead here is one in which I think the first is Caesar, the second may be Hector, and the third is definitely King Arthur. Identification is hindered by the fact that they were all portrayed in contemporary 14th Century armour, and one is expected to recognise them from the heraldic devices on their shields.

The Chapel

I’ll finish with the best bit; the chapel in the Palazzo Trinci is a little jewel box. It has been fortunate to avoid as much earthquake damage as was suffered elsewhere in the building, and being a consecrated place probably helped it avoid some of the vandalism perpetrated by papal authorities on some of the secular decorations.

Palazzo Trinci Chapel — The chapel, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and every inch of walls and vaulted gothic ceiling is covered with frescoed scenes from the Virgin’s life (with Saint Francis getting a brief appearance as well).

As with much art of this period, a constant pleasure is the way everyone is in wildly anachronistic but gorgeous contemporary costume.

July 26, 2022June 21, 2024

The Ponte Fonnaia on the Via Flaminia

Tucked away in an Umbrian wood is a two thousand year old bridge – the Ponte Fonnaia – that bore the legions northwards from Rome on the Via Flaminia.

This is intended as a brief postscript to Carsulae – On the Legions’ Road to Rimini. In that original post we visited the ruins of the Roman town of Carsulae, and I indulged in some flights of fancy inspired by Rudyard Kipling. We ended the post with an imagined legion marching away through the north gate of the town, and disappearing into the woods along the Via Flaminia, the great military road that linked Rome with north-east Italy.

Then more recently a friend told me about an intact Roman bridge a few miles north of Carsulae, so I decided to go and find it.

Finding it turned out to be very easy – it is close to an exit from the E45 motorway near the town of Massa Martana. Although at first when I got to the spot I couldn’t see any bridge. It turned out that the area in which you park your car is almost on top of it.

Unlike the Roman Bridge at Pesciano, which is showing the effect of recent restoration, the Ponte Fonnaia looks agreeably old and atmospheric.

The bridge takes the road across a small river – a torrente – called the Naja or Naia which flows down into the Tiber near Todi. It is dry in summer, so you can actually walk under the bridge.

According to the signage at the site, and a web page published by the local municipality, the original bridge was built at the same time as the Via Flaminia, that is around 220 BC. However the structure that is there now dates from a campaign of repairs and upgrades to the road that occurred in 27 AD in the reign of Augustus.

If you do walk under the bridge and look carefully you will see that the stones are inscribed with letters, some of which are Roman numerals (in many cases they are hard to make out due to age).

I have read that this is because Roman military engineers took a very organised and standardised approach. When the stones were quarried, they were cut to size at the quarry, and inscribed to show their intended location in the finished bridge.

The stones were then shipped to the building site where they could be quickly assembled like an IKEA bookcase, and the construction team could move on to the next job. I do not know whether this is a hypothesis or historically attested fact, but it seems very plausible – we know that Roman military engineers were strong on standardisation.

To the north of here, the Via Flaminia is mostly hidden under modern roads. But to the south, in the direction of Carsulae, it remains a quiet unmade country road, as in the photographs below. It isn’t hard to imagine our imagined Roman legion appearing around the bend, swinging along on the march.

July 1, 2022January 30, 2025

Foligno: The Palazzo Trinci and the Hall of the Liberal Arts

The Palazzo Trinci in Foligno has a chequered history but preserves some of the greatest examples of late Medieval humanist art.

If you are in Umbria visiting towns like Perugia, Assisi or Spoleto, you might not consider adding Foligno to your itinerary. It doesn’t sit prettily on top of a hill, to start with, and with its valley-floor location it is surrounded by industrial areas. So for us at first Foligno was somewhere we went when we needed shops. This turned out to be a mistake – the historic centre has some wonderful medieval buildings, and as I posted here it hosts one of the more impressive historical re-enactment festivals. It also features a remarkable building and museum in the Palazzo Trinci, of which more later.

Being flat gives Foligno a different character to that of its Umbrian neighbours. The locals get around the historic centre on bicycles, and this makes it feel a bit like a northern Italian town – say Cremona or Treviso. Its being flat might also give your calf muscles some relief after a series of visits to Umbrian hill towns.

Foligno duomo — Foligno Duomo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

A brief History of Foligno

Like many other towns in Umbria, Foligno – ancient Fulginium, or Fulginiae – was founded by the Umbri in prehistory and absorbed into the Roman state in the Third Century BC. It was the point where the eastern and western branches of the Via Flamina reunited after passing either side of the Martani hills, and would also have been where the road from Perugia joined the Flaminia, so it would have been at an important crossroads.

Foligno Palazzo Trinci — Part of a mosaic floor from the Roman town of *Forum Flaminiae*, on display in the Palazzo Trinci museum, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

After suffering the usual despoliation at the hands of invaders in the Dark Ages, Foligno recovered and for a while became an independent player in the Guelph vs. Ghibelline power politics of Central Italy. In due course it was absorbed into the Papal States like every other town in the region.

The Trinci Family

From the 12^th to the 15^th Centuries, political evolution in central and northern Italy often took the same sort of path. Towns and cities developed the institutions of self-government – administration, courts, a militia or army. In many places one or more families would become wealthy and powerful, but would exercise that power through domination of those institutions and patronage rather than assuming power formally.

Families would seek advantage over rival families, and cities over rival cities, by allying themselves with one of the two “superpower” factions – the Papacy (the Guelphs) or the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines).

Events in Foligno followed that conventional course. In the early 1300s the Trinci family were rivals with the Anastasi family for control of Foligno. Originally Ghibellines, the Trinci switched sides to the Guelphs in order to gain the assistance of Perugia and Spoleto to run the Anastasi out of town. For the next century and a half the Trinci ran Foligno until they fell out with the Papacy, at which point a papal army took the town, the last of the Trinci line was imprisoned and murdered, and a papal governor took over.

The Palazzo Trinci

Like other de facto Italian rulers at the time such as the Medici, the Trinci built an imposing palace in town, right next to the “official” city government buildings.

Or rather they didn’t exactly build it. They acquired an existing palace which had been created by merging several existing residential buildings, and then they renovated it. And what renovations they were. A grand gothic façade (unfortunately replaced by a neoclassical façade after earthquake damage in 1832), an absolute jewel box of a chapel, a private covered passage linking the palace to the Duomo (cathedral) next door, and a magnificent Gothic style internal staircase linking three floors of the building. All of those I will deal with in another post, because today I propose to talk about the so-called “Hall of the Liberal Arts”.

A Miraculous Survival

But first I should observe how miraculous it is that the Palazzo Trinci and its artworks should have survived at all, after the damage it received from war, the violence of nature and the malice and ignorance of humanity.

Major earthquakes damaged the building in 1477, 1703 and 1832. The roof fell in during a storm in 1899. And in 1944 bombs fell on the buildings at the rear of the complex, and on the town hall just in front.

More damage came through deliberate actions. After Foligno was brought under direct papal rule the Palazzo Trinci became the seat of the papal governors, and many of the frescoes associated with the Trinci were defaced. In the 1470s Pope Sixtus IV moved his residence to the palace during an outbreak of plague in Rome – and ordered that all surviving references to the Trinci be removed and replaced with references to him. Not only that but in one inscription he even claimed that the splendour of the palace was his own doing!

Worse was to come. In the late 18^th Century the papal governor – a man of obvious taste and discrimination – decided that the place was looking a bit old-fashioned and had all the frescoes whitewashed over. Part of the building was converted to a jail, with inadequate sewage. Items from the archaeological collection were sold to wealthy foreigners. Even after Italian reunification and the end of Papal rule the building was to suffer further insult, being allowed to deteriorate further while housing shops, a theatre, the police headquarters and the Guardia di Finanza.

Rehabilitation of the building started towards the end of the 19^th Century and the frescoes were uncovered and partly restored in the 1930s and 1950s. However in the 1980s the roof fell in again and it was only after the 1990s that a decade-long restoration brought the building to its current state in which it became the municipal museum.

The Hall of the Liberal Arts

The high point of the Trinci fortunes came at the end of the 1300s and the beginning of the 1400s when the head of the family was Ugolini III Trinci. After conducting successful campaigns in central Umbria on behalf of the Papacy he received many honours and rewards, and life in the Palazzo Trinci started to look a bit more like that of a court.

Men of letters and artists were attracted there – people who think the Renaissance started later and in Florence might say it was a bit early to call them “humanists”, but the whole thing has a Renaissance feel to it. Two particularly noteworthy associates were the poet Federico Frezzi and the artist Gentile da Fabriano.

Frezzi wrote a laudatory poem called Quadriregio which praised Ugolino and made references to the Trinci’s claims, made by all great families at the time, to origins in mythological antiquity. In particular the Trinci traced their line back to Romulus, and the story of Romulus was illustrated by Gentile da Fabriano in one of the halls, including the story of the Trojan woman and Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia who was made pregnant by the god Mars and bore the twins Romulus and Remus (and was then executed for betraying her Vestal vow of chastity).

Execution of Rhea Silvia — The execution of Rhea Silvia, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the photograph above, the ochre drawings visible where the plaster has fallen away (known as “sinopia”) have not been added by modern restorers. They are the drawings by the original artist before the wet plaster was applied, over which they would then quickly paint, having committed the underlying drawing to memory. The sinopia only become visible if the plaster is damaged and falls away.

The traditional execution method for an unchaste vestal was suffocation by being buried alive, hence the pit to which she is being dragged. It seems an odd way to celebrate a woman one is claiming as one’s ancestress, by having a large picture of her execution in the house, but tastes change. In any case the artist’s depiction of everyone in contemporary late 14th-Century dress makes it very interesting.

Gentile da Fabriano was a leading exponent of the late-Medieval style known as “International Gothic”. He was employed to decorate a large hall in the Palazzo – then the library, it is now known as the “Hall of the Liberal Arts” after his frescoes. Although Frezzi’s Quadriregio is lost, it is thought that much of Gentile’s work is derived from the poem.

The main feature of the hall is seven portraits – personifications of the seven liberal arts. These were divided into two groups. The early arts (known as the Trivium, or three paths) were Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. The later arts (the Quadrivium, or four paths) were Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy.

Palazzo Trinci Rhetoric and Mathematics — Palazzo Trinci, Rhetoric (L) and Arithmetic (R). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

By the way, when the Quadrivium was introduced, there was some resistance from older scholars. Younger scholars responded by suggesting that the Trivium was superficial and lightweight in comparison. “Trivial“ therefore became a term of intellectual abuse. The Palazzo Trinci frescoes do not weigh in to the debate other than to put the Quadrivium closer to the centre of the composition, implying that they are further up in the hierarchy.

But in the centre of the composition, and therefore queen of all the disciplines, was Philosophy. This, alas, was damaged beyond repair at some point. We are fortunate that in the 1770s a scholar called Ludovico Coltellini sketched various parts of the frescoes, including the head of Philosophy – a beautiful crowned woman – and his notebook survived.

Palazzo Trinci Filosofia — Sketch of Philosophy by Ludovico Coltellini, 1770s. Phone camera (click to enlarge)

The fact that Philosophy was still intact in the 1770s suggests that the damage probably occurred in the earthquake of 1832.

Palazzo Trinci Astronomy — Palazzo Trinci, Astronomy (detail). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Each liberal art is represented by a female figure, sometimes attended by another figure, either a student or practitioner.

Palazzo Trinci Geometry — Palazzo Trinci, Geometry (detail). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Below are Music and Logic. Music is playing a portative organ and a chime of bells, and she is clearly getting into it, or as a former conductor of ours used to say, “giving it some welly”. Logic is an older woman holding snakes. Not sure why, although Cristina Galassi (see “further reading”, below) suggests that this suggests the sophisticated deception of words. Maybe using logic to defeat deception is like wrestling with snakes.

Palazzo Trinci Music — Palazzo Trinci, Music. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Palazzo Trinci Logic — Palazzo Trinci, Logic. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Grammar is a teacher instructing a child, holding the book for him as he traces the words on the page.

Palazzo Trinci Grammar — Palazzo Trinci, Grammar. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Lombard Invasion and the Byzantine Corridor

The late Sixth Century saw some extraordinary developments in Italy. Almost the entire country was overrun by the Lombards, except for a narrow strip of territory – the “Byzantine Corridor” between Rome and Ravenna. You can still see where, in the modern landscape, the “Corridor” ran.

In my post about Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire I wrote of the invasion of Italy by the Goths, the partial reconquest by Byzantine forces, and briefly mentioned the subsequent invasion by the Lombards. This post picks up the story, and looks at how it played out in central Italy.

The Byzantine forces under Belisarius and Narses had successfully regained much of Italy from the Goths for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Obviously the conflict is not entirely forgotten in Umbria, going by this wine label I found:

Belisarius Grechetto — A bottle of Grechetto wine named after the Byzantine General Belisarius. The wine was very nice. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge).

But the period of the Gothic War of 535-554 was absolutely ruinous for Italy – not just due to military action. In 536 the Earth suffered the worst climate event in recorded history when a volcanic eruption (the location is uncertain) caused two years of severe global cooling followed by drought. That was on top of existing climate change as, due to changes in the solar cycle, the world left the “Roman Warm Period” and entered the “Medieval Cool Period”. Crops failed and famine was widespread. Then came the so-called “Justinian Plague” in 540-541 (probably bubonic plague). All that was on top of the spread of malaria from the south.

Deliberate debasement of the currency (these days they call it “quantitative easing”) which had been going on for many years, reduced people’s purchasing power. Depopulation, impoverishment and a general breakdown in administration were inevitable. The population shrank, education almost ceased, technologies were forgotten, the great cities emptied, productive agricultural land reverted to swamp or woodland, health and life expectancy declined, and things were generally horrible. Revisionist modern historians avoid using the term “Dark Ages” to refer to the centuries after the fall of the empire (presumably to avoid offending people who identify as Visigoths and Vandals) but the Dark Ages sound pretty dark to me.

And while the war left the “Roman” Byzantines nominally in charge, it was a pyrrhic victory. The attenuated power of the local representatives of distant Byzantium – the Exarchs of Ravenna – was not up to the task of resisting the next threat.

The Lombards

And the next threat was the Lombards, or in their own language, Langobards or Longobards. If you agree with me that it sounds a little bit like the English words “long beards”, you are absolutely right. The Langobards came to the notice of history in what is now southern Sweden, Denmark and northern Germany, where they were speaking a language closely related to Anglo-Saxon. And it seems that they did indeed have long beards, or at least the men did, so that is what they called themselves.

After a few hundred years of drifting southwards, and under pressure from other aggressive populations to the east, the Lombards (as I will now refer to them with their Italianised name), found themselves in what is now Austria and Slovakia around 568 AD. They entered devastated and depopulated Italy across the Julian Alps (in modern Slovenia) and were virtually unopposed. A modern town close to where they entered Italy is Cividale del Friuli in the far northeast, which has some Lombard archaeological remains and an excellent museum of Lombard culture which I highly recommend.

The “Ponte del Diavolo” in Cividale del Friuli, with the Julian Alps (in Slovenia) visible in the distance. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens (click to enlarge).

Lombard Jewellery in the National Archaeological Museum, Cividale del Friuli. Nexus 6P phone camera (click to enlarge).

As we saw earlier, thanks to the devastation caused by the Gothic Wars, the Lombards were pretty much pushing at an open door. But nevertheless the speed of their expansion through Italy was extraordinary. Only two or three years later almost all of northern Italy was under their control (a much larger region than the modern “Lombardy”) and Lombard duchies had been established further south in Tuscany, Spoleto and Benevento.

Here is a map of Italy after these duchies were established.

Byzantine and Lombard Italy (Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge).

You will see that the nominally Byzantine control of Rome continued, that the Exarchate of Ravenna was threatened, and that they were connected by a narrow strip of territory. Italian historians call this the Corridoio Bizantino or “Byzantine Corridor”.

Conflict and Truce

In Umbria, as the Lombards extended their territory westwards from Spoleto, they captured the Via Flaminia, cutting the Byzantines off from the historic military route between Ravenna and Rome. But somewhere in the Martani Hills the Lombards stopped, and the Via Amerina, not far to the west in the Tiber Valley, remained under Byzantine control. It was this road, originally a series of pre-Roman provincial roads between towns, that became the narrow thread linking Ravenna and Rome through hostile country: the Byzantine Corridor.

At first the corridor was created and defended by force of arms. Later, a truce between Lombard and Byzantine/Papal authorities regularised the borders, but there were probably a few skirmishes from time to time.

So how narrow was the corridor? In places very narrow indeed, it would seem.

Linguistic Evidence

Working out where the edges of the Byzantine Corridor lay is difficult; they didn’t put up signs beside the roads. But as with Anglo-Saxon and Celtic place-names in Britain, one form of evidence for boundaries, and hence the extent of Lombard dominion in Italy, is linguistic.

A few years ago it occurred to me to wonder about the origin of the word borgo, common in Italy and meaning a small town, or an area on the edge of a larger town. This is clearly not of Latin origin, but the same Germanic word that you find in Hamburg, Gothenburg, Peterborough, Canterbury and Edinburgh. And lots of other burgs, borgs, boroughs and burys. What was such an obviously Germanic word doing in Italian?

It turns out that borgo and several other Italian words associated with locations are indeed Germanic. Some might have been derived from Gothic or Frankish, but most are probably Lombard.

Another such word is gualdo. The letters “gu” in Italian were used in Italian to render the initial “w” sound in Germanic languages, such as “Gualtiero” for “Walter”. So if you see an Italian word beginning in “gu” followed by a vowel, it probably has a Germanic origin. Gualdo comes from the same origin as the German wald meaning wood or forest, as in Schwartzwald for “Black Forest”.

There are a number of places in Italy either called Gualdo, or with names containing that word. They all seem to be in areas that were once part of Lombard dominions. While such places were presumably named for being in or near woodland, the term is also associated with military outposts, suggesting that they would have been on the borders of Lombard territory.

In the Martani Hills in Umbria is a pretty little town called Gualdo Cattaneo. From the linguistic evidence just discussed, this may well have been an outpost in wooded country on the edge of Lombard territory, in this case the Duchy of Spoleto. I understand that the earliest surviving records are from after the period of the Byzantine Corridor, but the name tells you that the area was certainly Lombard, so the idea that this was originally a border outpost is appealing. The photograph below, taken from the south, shows that it was on elevated ground facing west into Byzantine territory – exactly what you would expect of such an outpost.

Distant view of Gualdo Cattaneo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

The picture below, taken from a bit closer, shows the defensive situation of the town, even if the current fortifications are clearly from the 14th Century or later (rounded fortifications generally post-date the introduction of cannon to warfare; cannon balls are more likely to bounce off them).

Gualdo Cattaneo from closer up. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6×6 cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The Byzantine Corridor Today

The photograph below shows the Middle Tiber Valley, looking north from Todi towards Perugia (I recommend you click on it to open a larger version in a new window). It is up this valley that the Via Amerina ran, and so you are looking at the actual Byzantine Corridor. Today’s pretty agricultural landscape must look very different from the semi-wilderness of the 6th Century though. The Via Amerina more or less followed the route now taken by the E45 motorway, clearly visible on the eastern side of the river, but back then it would have threaded between swamps and woodland, and passed through the ruins of Roman-era towns by then abandoned.

This photograph really helps one envisage just how narrow the “Byzantine Corridor” was, here in central Umbria. Gualdo Cattaneo, on the edge of the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, is in the hills at the right of the photograph, about 12 kilometres from the motorway. To the left of the Via Amerina is the Tiber (marked by a double line of trees), and beyond it steep hilly country. Further west still was the Lombard Duchy of Tuscia, or Tuscany.

Here is the same area on a map. The E45 motorway runs down the middle, following approximately the same route as the ancient Via Amerina. Gualdo Cattaneo is on the right. The town of Deruta through which the road passed had been completely destroyed in the Gothic Wars and Lombard invasion – indeed its very name derives from Latin words implying ruin.

That puts it all in perspective. Up and down this valley would have come Byzantine troops, and Imperial and church officials, trying to maintain contact between Ravenna and Rome. They would have hurried from the protection of one fortified town to the next, keeping an eye on the nearby woodlands for signs of an ambush by Lombard troops, or maybe a party of leftover Goths.

South of Todi there seems to be some uncertainty over exactly where the Corridor ran. I’ve done a bit of poking about in the hills there, and I’ll make that the subject of a separate post in due course.

June 7, 2022October 8, 2024

The Buried Streets of Perugia

The Rocca Paolina, or “Fortress of (Pope) Paul” was a symbol of oppression in Perugia for centuries. But its builder inadvertently saved a medieval streetscape for future generations.

One of the articles on this site that gets the highest number of views is Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia. Google moves in mysterious ways so I can’t really explain its popularity, but where I ended that article is where I propose to start this one.

To recap briefly, in the 15^th and early 16^th centuries the famously bellicose Perugians were ruled by a famously violent family, the Baglioni. When they were not slaughtering each other they managed to commission some fine works of art by artists like Perugino and Pinturicchio.

As I said at the end of that article, eventually the Baglioni fought each other to exhaustion. The Pope of the day (Paul III, formerly Cardinal Alessandro Farnese) saw his opportunity and took the town by force, beginning three hundred years of direct papal rule marked by economic, intellectual and artistic impoverishment.

Steep economic decline isn’t much fun for those experiencing it. But it does have the perverse benefit for more fortunate later generations of freezing a town or a landscape at the moment anyone stopped spending money on it. One reason the Cotswolds region in England is such a perfect jewel today is because the decline of the wool trade preserved it as it was. And so it was with Perugia, Todi, Spoleto and other scenic towns in Umbria – once all the revenues of the area were expropriated by Rome, things mostly just stopped.

Rubbing Salt into the Wound

Even a Pope like Paul III needed to manufacture some sort of excuse to attack a city, and the casus belli he used was Perugia’s refusal to pay an extortionate salt tax. These days we think of salt as a seasoning that is bad for our blood pressure, but for most of European history access to salt was the difference between survival and starvation. It was what you used to preserve the remaining food (often a slaughtered pig) in winter to give yourself a meagre source of protein through the hungry months until spring. You also need it to make cheese, and to preserve vegetables in brine. Salt was one of the first goods to be traded in prehistory, and control of salt production brought power. In the Papal States the production of salt was a government monopoly, so when Paul III banned the importation of competing cheap good-quality salt from Tuscany, then jacked up the tax, and jacked it up again, he knew exactly what he was doing, and the effect it would have. These days we would call it economic warfare.

Arezzo Pieve di Santa Maria — Killing the pig in December, Pieve di Santa Maria, Arezzo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

A brief aside on unsalted bread

By the way, it is very common to read that the reason modern Umbrians make such insipid-tasting unsalted bread is because it started as a protest against the tax. Umbrians are taught this in school and will repeat it to you earnestly. With all respect to my Umbrian friends, I find this implausible. Firstly because the amount of salt necessary to season a loaf of bread is considerably less than that needed to turn a pig into salami and ham or to preserve things in brine, so it would not have added all that much to the cost of the loaf, and would not have saved them much money. Secondly, they make equally horrible unsalted bread next door in Tuscany, which was not part of the Papal domains. Thirdly, there is some evidence that unsalted bread was a feature of the region long before Paul III came along – in a 12th-Century poem, the exiled Florentine Dante complains “how salty is another man’s bread”.

Another argument, that salted bread isn’t needed because Umbrian food is already salty enough, doesn’t stand up to analysis either. Food is salty everywhere in Italy. I think it is just that they make lousy bread in these parts, and being parochial Italians, have convinced themselves that their way of doing it is the right way. I live part of the time among the Umbrians and love them, but in this they are wrong. You can find an article by someone who is similarly sceptical here. (NB: In a tacit admission, most Umbrian bakers now sell salted bread. Just be sure to ask for “pane salato“. I may be imagining the slightly reproachful air with which they hand it over.)

The Conquest of Perugia

Anyway, the commander Paul III chose to subdue Perugia was Pierluigi Farnese, who just happened to be Paul’s illegitimate son (plenty of cardinals had mistresses in those days). Paul legitimised Pierluigi to allow him to become the head of the Farnese family, but apparently Pierluigi still had a chip on his shoulder from being mocked about his origins, creating an attitude problem which he tended to take out on defeated populations.

Once Perugia had submitted in 1540, Paul ordered the architect Antonio Sangallo to build a huge fortress at the southern end of the town. There were various factors at work here, both symbolic and practical. Firstly, the new Rocca would dominate the approaches to the town and the road from Rome. Secondly, it decisively moved the centre of power away from the northern end of town, where the lovely Gothic buildings that symbolised the city’s historic independence may still be seen. Illustrations show that the Rocca was huge, and did indeed make everything else in Perugia look insignificant.

The *Rocca Paolina* in the 19th Century by Giuseppe Rossi (public domain)

Thirdly and probably most important to Paul (who seems to have been the sort to hold a grudge), building it there required the destruction of the quarter of the city where the Baglioni lived, and which had been their power base. It seems that Paul took a personal interest in the construction of the fortress, visiting Perugia several times during its construction to check on progress.

Sangallo was under pressure to proceed quickly, and fortunately for us he took an inspired short cut. Instead of demolishing the Baglioni quarter, and using the rubble and other landfill to create the foundations for the Rocca, he decided to use the intact stone buildings themselves as the foundations – using brick vaulting to fill in all the spaces between them. And so it was that streets, buildings and towers were preserved but hidden, the open sky was replaced by echoing brick vaults, and everything disappeared into darkness and silence for three hundred years.

The following two photographs are of plans displayed in the Baglioni quarter today. The first shows the Baglioni quarter of Perugia as it was in 1540, with the polygonal outline of the Rocca Paolina superimposed over the streets. The second, from 1820, shows the completed Rocca, with the Baglioni quarter invisible beneath it.

Rocca Paolina 1 — Plan of the Baglioni quarter of Perugia in 1540, with the polygonal outline of the Rocca superimposed. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Rocca Paolina 2 — Plan of the Baglioni quarter of Perugia in 1820, with the Rocca completely covering it. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Later Years

The Perugini were not particularly fond of their Rocca, not least since Paul placed an inscription on it explaining that the Rocca was put there to chastise them for their insubordination. Over time the government of the Papal States became more and more oppressive, and the Rocca was used as a political prison. It is therefore not surprising that it was partially destroyed by the Perugians during the Europe-wide uprisings of 1848, nor that it was subsequently rebuilt on the orders of Pope Pius IX as he swung from his initial reformist inclinations into the most obdurate reactionism.

Eventually in 1860 the Papal troops were expelled and Perugia became part of united Italy. I have read a story that afterwards the Perugians turned out with their hammers and chisels and demolished the Rocca Paolina by hand, stone by stone. I also read that as they did so, an old man would come along every day, and sit in silence watching them. When someone approached him and asked why, he said that he had spent much of his life in there as a political prisoner.

When the citizens had finished the demolition job, the reverse symbolism was completed when some fine Renaissance-style palazzi were erected on the site, to house the city, provincial and regional governments (Perugia became the capital of the newly-created region of Umbria). So the locals had in a sense taken back control. They rubbed it in further by erecting an equestrian statue of King Victor Emmanuel II. The statue is as bombastic and overstated as its equivalents everywhere else in Italy, but in in this case the inscription “King Liberator” might have been genuinely felt.

Statue of King Victor Emmanuel II, on the site of the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Surrounding the seats of local government there are now some pleasant gardens, a statue of the artist Perugino, and a few bars, hotels and gelaterie. Just up the road is the outlet shop for the Perugina chocolate manufacturer. The casual visitor might be forgiven for missing the darker side of the site’s history altogether.

Prefettura di Perugia, on the site of the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Meanwhile, beneath the ground, the old Baglioni quarter slept on, until excavations started in the 1930s which were completed in the 1960s. Thousands of people a day pass along those medieval streets, entering them from the escalators that take people up from the public car park in Piazza Partigiani. It is a very satisfying way to enter Perugia.

Under the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

This story is continued in my post on The Ancient Gates of Perugia.

June 5, 2022September 3, 2024

The Sacred Wood of Bomarzo

Hidden away in the countryside to the north of Rome, outside a town called Bomarzo, is a mysterious place referred to as the Sacro Bosco or “Sacred Wood” or the “Park of Monsters”. It is mysterious because its creator intended it to be.

The hilly area of northern Lazio, not far from Rome, has much to interest the historically-minded traveller and photographer. In pre-Roman times it was of course part of the Etruscan heartland and significant necropoli still exist in places like Tarquinia. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance some of the most wealthy and powerful Roman families like the Farnese and Orsini acquired large estates here, and noble titles to go with them. Medieval castles and grand Renaissance villas and palaces seem to appear on every skyline.

One such palace dominates the town of Bomarzo, the Dukedom of which was held by the Orsini – a family which, rather impressively, produced 34 cardinals and five popes over a period of almost a thousand years from the 8th Century. Yes, really.

Palazzo Orsini at Bomarzo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

These days Bomarzo seems to be a quiet sort of a place, principally inhabited by old people whose job is to sit on benches and stare at passing strangers. In the mid-16th Century it was a bit more important, as the palace was owned by Prince Pier Francesco Orsini, known as Vicino Orsini.

The male members of these families generally went for either a military or a clerical life (sometimes both). The females made advantageous marriages or chose a religious life (seldom both). Vicino Orsini’s choice was to be a condottiere or mercenary captain. By the 16th Century such people were no longer the cutthroat freebooters of earlier ages, but those who provided and led the armies of the Papacy, France and the Holy Roman Empire in their dynastic and religious wars. They were also expected to be highly cultured patrons of the arts, following the tradition started by “Renaissance men” like Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino and Vicino’s contemporary Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este.

Vicino was married to Giulia Farnese. A marriage between such great families would probably have been an arranged one, but it must also have been happy, given the grief which afflicted Vicino on Giulia’s death. By the 1550s, in addition to channelling their grief into conventional religious contemplation, it was acceptable for humanists to seek the consolations of philosophy.

And so it was that in 1552 Vicino commissioned the Neapolitan architect Pirro Ligorio to create a curious garden full of strange monsters and arcane allusions to divert the melancholy mind.

Bomarzo — “Orco” in the Sacro Bosco. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

And what a strange place it was. This was the architectural period – just as Renaissance style was about to become Baroque – known as “Mannerist”, which produced some extraordinary effusions like the Cavalerizza in Mantua. So the garden of Bomarzo has nothing like the formality and symmetry of gardens like those of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola (the subject of a forthcoming post).

Instead the garden is dotted with seemingly randomly-placed statues and structures – gods, mythical creatures, monsters, a Carthaginian elephant trampling a Roman soldier, and a house that seems to be falling over (but which you can enter). There are also a few bears, which feature a lot in Orsini imagery, as it is a pun on their name (orso means bear).

An Orsini Bear. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

A sleeping (or dead?) woman is attended by an alert little dog.

In isolation and together the statues are all interesting, even amusing, to look at. But as with a poem by T.S. Eliot, the educated “reader” of the garden would be expected to recognise the deeper allusions.

Similarly, dotted around the place are cryptic phrases like “ogni pensiero vola” (every thought flies) which appear to have some obvious meaning, but are also quotations from poets of the day, alluding to the subjects of those poems. In recent times the custodians of the garden have picked out some of the inscriptions in red paint – I don’t know what evidence there might be that this was the original intent. Indeed you might imagine that Vicino and Ligorio might have rather enjoyed the idea that the already-cryptic inscriptions might fade away altogether.

All that being said, there does not seem to be scholarly agreement on whether there is a “key” to the garden that unlocks its story. One theory is that the statues are intended to illustrate the story of a book called Hypnertomachia Poliphili, published in 1499 – one would think that would be fairly obvious if true.

At the top of the garden is a little idealised classical temple, dedicated to Giulia Farnese.

In the 19th Century, and for much of the 20th, the garden was forgotten and became overgrown. It came back into public awareness in the 1970s – championed by no less a connoisseur of the bizarre than Salvador Dalí – and a program of clearing and replanting began. It was deemed best for the local bishop to exorcise the place before being reopened to the public in 1980. But in its years of being forgotten, one wonders whether the grandmothers of Bomarzo would frighten naughty children with stories of the monsters hidden away in the woods below the town.

Sources

I originally wrote this article based on online material and the printed matter that you get when you buy your ticket for admission. But more recently a friend gave us a book called Monty Don’s Italian Gardens (Quadrille Publishing, 2011). In the article on Bomarzo Mr Don is scathing about the choice of trees used in the replanting.

May 27, 2022October 31, 2024

The Via Amerina in Umbria

The Via Amerina was originally formed out of pre-Roman provincial roads, then it became an important local artery. For years it lay forgotten in the central Italian countryside, before being reinvented as a route for modern “pilgrims”.

This is the first of two or three articles I have in mind about the Via Amerina, a road which in antiquity led north from Rome to the town of Amelia in Umbria (ancient Ameria, from which the road took its name). From there it continued northward to Todi and Perugia, then ran westward to Chiusi.

What was the Via Amerina?

I’ve written a few times about the mighty military road called the Via Flaminia where it passes through Umbria. The Via Amerina is of a lesser order, and I ought to explain the difference.

The great consular roads like the Via Flaminia, the Via Appia, the Via Cassia and the Via Emilia were a means to deliver military force anywhere in the empire or on its boundaries. A capability a bit like – sort of – a modern aircraft carrier task group. They were planned, built and maintained with power projection in mind, and they famously ran as straight as topography would allow. They are called “consular” roads because they were named after the consul in whose administration each was started. The consuls were the chairmen of the Senate and also army commanders, so they could be expected to think and plan strategically.

A road like the Via Amerina, by contrast, would not have been centrally planned. Instead it grew out of existing roads between towns, which would already have been old when Rome rose to power. Since it served the needs of commerce and administration its importance was recognised by its being given an official name, and being maintained and upgraded at public expense.

When complete, each consular road had a separate public office solely responsible for its maintenance, while lesser roads like the Via Amerina were grouped together with other roads for maintenance purposes under different officials. And they were not straight; they meandered from town to town just like the ancient trackways on which they were based.

Despite its originally non-military status, after the end of the Roman Empire the Via Amerina had a period of great strategic importance as part of the so-called “Byzantine Corridor”; that is a subject for a later post. Update: here is that later post.

The Via Amerina in Central Umbria

Here in central Umbria, the Via Amerina ran north from Todi, along the eastern bank of the Tiber to Perugia. These days that part of the route seems to be mostly covered by modern roads and I have not found many references to its northern remnants. But to the south, between Todi and Amelia and beyond into Lazio it wanders through places that later main roads did not follow, so traces of it remain – in some cases even the original basalt flagstones.

A scholarly type has gone to the effort of creating an Umbrian Via Amerina route for the ArcGIS geographical information system – you can find it here.

In the photograph below, taken towards the south from Todi, the wide road that runs up the hill is not the Via Amerina. In post-imperial times towns and villages migrated to the high ground for defensive purposes and to reduce the threat from malaria, and so new roads followed them, but in Roman times settlements were more likely to be in the valleys. The Via Amerina followed the wooded valley of the little river Arnata, to the right.

Looking south from Todi to the route of the *Via Amerina*, which followed the wooded valley to the right. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

These days identifiable sections of the Via Amerina form part of a “St Francis” walking trail between Assisi and Rome. I’m not sure why St Francis or any of his followers would have needed to come this way, and wonder whether it has been chosen because of its beauty, and because following a more strictly historically accurate route that is now shared by a motorway would be less enjoyable. In any case, a tourist industry has grown up to cater for people who want to feel that they are retracing the steps of medieval pilgrims, and that is a very good thing. An example of a travel blog written by someone who did one of these excursions (with some nice photos) can be found here.

If you decide to head south from Todi, along the route that a Roman traveller would have taken, one of the first things you encounter (with a bit of searching), is a fontana or spring that would always have been here, but in its current form dates from 1201 AD. Todi sits on a plug of permeable rock up through which water that originally falls on the Monti Martani is forced, creating multiple freshwater springs that emerge high above the level of the valley. I’m sure that much of the traditionally healthy properties of such springs are due to the fact that coming up from far below the ground and being filtered through the rocks meant that the water was less likely to give you a fatal dose of dysentery. On the way up through the limestone the water picks up quite a lot of calcium, and a rather pronounced taste.

The Fontana di Sant’Arcangelo is very pretty, despite being hidden away in a suburban area full of 1970s apartment blocks. Of course, if it were still in its original surroundings in farmland it would be even more attractive, but the fact that you have to hunt for it (and in my case, ask directions from a lady going for a walk with her daughter) adds a certain attraction.

Down in the valley the route of the Via Amerina is quite clearly marked, and we followed smaller and smaller roads until we were driving along the valley floor on a pleasant unmade road through oak woods and with wildflowers along the edges.

There are a few chapels and other buildings from the early Middle Ages along the route, but they are either ruined or have been heavily renovated. There are also castles on many high points around, showing that the road continued to see enough use to make it worth defending. Many of them look habitable – I read that some of these castles were bought and renovated in the 19th Century by wealthy local families, and some of them are clearly undergoing a new series of renovations, presumably with the intent of using them as hotels, convention centres or spas. Some of the smaller castles round here have been bought and renovated by wealthy foreigners either as private dwellings or as AirBNBs.

Castello di Fiore and Castello di Belfiore — Castello di Fiore (right) and Castello di Belfiore (left), above the route of the Via Amerina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Torre Olivola on the skyline above the route of the Via Amerina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Roman Bridge at Pesciano

I was hoping to find a bridge dating from the late Roman period, where the Via Amerina crosses over the River Arnata near the village of Pesciano. I had made a couple of attempts to get to it since I first read about it in 2018, but had been defeated by atrocious roads and ambiguous maps. This time I approached from the Pesciano Road, drove as far as I dared, then parked the car in a clearing and continued on foot for a couple of kilometres.

The road descended through oak woods and between newly-mown fields to the river, where I came to a junction with the Via Amerina.

Road to the bridge at Pesciano. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Antica Via Amerina signposts. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Turning left I continued for a few hundred metres to where there was a ford across the river, obviously used by farm vehicles, then a bit further on I found the bridge.

Roman bridge at Pesciano. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Between 2007 and 2013 the local authorities repaired the bridge, and it must be said that it still looks rather starkly new, especially from downstream. I managed to find a photograph of the bridge before renovation on this website and I have to confess mixed feelings. The romantic in me warms to the old ivy-covered partial ruin, like something out of an 18th-century veduta painting.

On the other hand, this is surely not the first time since antiquity that the local authorities have repaired the bridge, so the bridge in its pre-2007 state would not have been any more authentic than it is now. And in due course it is certain that the ivy, the weather and the occasional earthquake would have converted the partial ruin into a complete ruin. In another ten or twenty years no doubt the elements will have weathered the new stonework, and the bridge will continue to carry modern-day pilgrims over the waters of the Arnata for a few hundred years before the next repairs are due.

April 29, 2022November 19, 2023

A Town Called Bastard

In central Italy, nestled in the green rolling hills of Umbria, is a town called Bastardo – “Bastard”. Yes, really.

If you were in Umbria at any time in the last two millennia, travelling north on the original route of the Via Flaminia, the old military road from Rome to Ravenna, at some point you would have to cross from west to east from the Middle Tiber Valley to the Valle Umbra.

The two valleys run north-south, and are separated by a range of hills called the Colli Martani. In the south, near Terni, the hills are high and steep and appropriately enough known as the Monti Martani. Only about halfway up, a bit north of Carsulae, do the mountains descend into hills and form a saddle which wheeled traffic and marching legions might have crossed without major delays.

Near Bastardo — In the Martani Hills near Bastardo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

So that’s where the Roman military engineers put the road, and where generations of travellers followed. And while today the heavy traffic thunders along either the E45 or SS3 motorways, around here the route of the old Roman road is mostly followed by the modest (and badly pot-holed) Strada Regionale 316.

The empire fell, the legions demobilised for ever, and for hundreds of years the only marching feet on the road were those of invaders – Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Byzantines, Germans, French and Austrians. And French and Germans again.

But there were still the tramping feet of pilgrims, and the plodding hooves and rumbling cart wheels of trade. And so it was that three or four hundred years ago an entrepreneurial person of uncertain parentage decided to open a coaching inn and stables at a crossroads. If that innkeeper’s name and the name of his inn are known then I have been unable to find them. But in any case it seems that everyone just called it Osteria del Bastardo, or “Inn of the Bastard”.

In time, other businesses and dwellings sprang up around the inn. These days it is a town which clearly makes a decent living from servicing the agricultural area round about.

Around the outskirts are businesses which look as if they would be able to sell you a piece of farm machinery, or repair it, and as you approach the town you are likely to get stuck behind a huge tractor towing a complicated-looking piece of farm equipment. In line with its comparatively recent origins, there do not seem to be any particularly old buildings in town. There is a baroque-style church at the eastern end of the town, but it is built of rather modern-looking bricks (by “modern”, I mean some time in the last three hundred years).

In the 1920s, somehow the Osteria bit was dropped, and the officially-gazetted name of the town is now simply “Bastardo”.

Approaching it from the south the SR 316 does a bit of a dog-leg, but there is a narrow, perfectly straight lane that cuts the corner, and which I was delighted to see is called Via Flaminia Vecchia (the Old Via Flaminia).

Bastardo Via Flaminia Vecchia — Bastardo, Via Flaminia Vecchia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

I have not been able to identify the site of the original inn, but it was presumably near the main crossroads, and there is a “Hotel Bar Dany” there which, although occupying a building from the 1960s or 70s, is at the very least a spiritual successor to the Osteria del Bastardo. I suppose I could have gone in and asked if Dany was descended from the original bastard, but there would have been too much potential for misunderstanding.

Bastardo, Hotel Bar Dany. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Colli Martani around here are attractive and gently rolling, mostly covered in grapevines and olive trees. The wines are pleasant enough and good value, and DOC status has been granted to wines made from locally-grown Sangiovese, Grechetto, Trebbiano and Vernaccia grapes. One enterprising winemaker has called his wine Rosso Bastardo, and while its claims to worldwide fame are probably a bit overstated, I’m sure something called “Bastard Red” would sell all right in Australia.

Rosso Bastardo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Apparently every now and then some high-minded citizens try to build support for renaming the town to something a bit more dignified, but these efforts have never quite succeeded, and so it remains a town called “Bastard”.

March 6, 2022September 25, 2024

Princes Under the Volcano

Through much of the 19th Century, the wealthiest and most influential family in Sicily was English. A classic history – Princes under the Volcano – tells their story.

I’m going to structure this post around that book, of which I am particularly fond and which I have returned to a couple of times, despite its considerable length. Princes under the Volcano is by Raleigh Trevelyan, and is subtitled “Two Hundred Years of a British Dynasty in Sicily”. It was published in 1972 and reprinted in 2002, and again in 2012. As far as I can tell it is not currently in print, with very few new copies available online, but it seems easy enough to find second-hand editions. There was also an Italian edition (Principi sotto il vulcano) which was very popular and may still be in print.

Raleigh Trevelyan (1923-2014) was an interesting character in his own right. A descendant of the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, and related to the great “Whig historian” G.M. Trevelyan, he was born to a posh army family in British India. In due course he was sent off to boarding school in England. From Winchester College he went straight into the army in 1942. As a young officer seconded to the Green Howards, he took part in the fighting at Anzio in 1944, of which he wrote a harrowing account (he was wounded twice and many members of his battalion died). Later he was part of the British Military Mission in Rome, remaining there for two years and forming a lasting bond with Italy.

Cover of *The Fortress* by Raleigh Trevelyan, a memoir of trench warfare at Anzio in 1944. This is a copy which I inherited from my late father-in-law (click to enlarge).

After the war he commenced a career in publishing and as a writer himself produced several extensively-researched works on historical subjects. It was this that led to him being approached by a member of the Whitaker family to write Princes under the Volcano.

The “British Dynasty” that is the subject of this book was founded by Benjamin Ingham (1784-1861) and passed through Ingham’s nephew to the Whitaker family. The great bulk – and it must literally have been a great bulk – of material on which the book is based is formed of two collections of papers: firstly those of Ingham himself, and secondly the letters and diaries of Tina Whitaker (1858-1957). Tina also wrote a volume of reminiscences of Anglo-Sicilian political exiles (Sicily and England, still in print in the Italian edition).

*Sicilia e Inghilterra* (*Sicily and England*), cover of the Italian edition.

Benjamin’s papers are exclusively to do with his business, while Tina’s are full of gossip. This makes the earlier and later parts of the book a bit different in style, but as Trevelyan points out in the introduction, that does rather lend itself to the subject matter. Benjamin Ingham’s career covered the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars and the exile of the Spanish Bourbon King Ferdinand of Naples to Sicily under the protection of Admiral Nelson, then later the failed revolutions of 1849, the convulsions of the Risorgimento, Garibaldi’s campaign in Sicily, the fall of the House of Bourbon and the rise of the Mafia. Throughout it all Ingham records the events around him while grumbling about how bad wars and revolutions are for business.

Tina, on the other hand, was of the generation that didn’t make the money – it spent it. The wife of the wealthiest man in Sicily, related by blood and marriage to both English and Sicilian aristocracy, she entertained kings, emperors and celebrities, and she and her daughters were presented at court in London. The Whitakers knew the family of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and many of the real people who ended up thinly disguised as characters in Lampedusa’s book Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). Both Ingham’s and Tina’s accounts are fascinating seams to mine for nuggets of insight into Sicilian history, and Trevelyan selects his material well.

Note: until I came to write this post I had not realised that “gattopardo” does not actually mean “leopard” in Italian. It refers to a smaller animal called a serval. Lampedusa’s English publishers decided to change the name to something a bit catchier.

English Merchants in Sicily

What were English merchants doing in Sicily anyway? The answer goes back to Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and Portugal and the subsequent disruption of the Iberian wine trade. England was a great importer of sherry from Spain and port from Portugal, and many English firms were established to produce, transport and sell these wines. The fact that the wines were fortified with brandy, by the way, was less to do with English preference for strong drink than with the fact that the spirit acted as a preservative for the long sea voyage.

In 1773, an English trader called John Woodhouse had realised that the wines of Marsala and Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, made in a similar way to sherry and port, might also sell well in Britain. It seems to have been a bit of a niche market at first but three decades later the supply of Spanish and Portuguese sherry and port was interrupted by the war, and the trade from Marsala took off.

Trapani and the Egadi Islands, Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Life on the west coast of Sicily at the end of the 18th Century would have been tough. Although the Mafia would not take on its modern, organised form for several decades, brigandage and kidnapping were common. Inland there were few roads, and those few were in terrible condition. The writ of the distant Bourbon government in Naples did not really run outside the larger towns. But for a young Englishman with a taste for adventure and a view to making a fortune, it seems to have had many attractions.

The photograph below shows the rugged country inland from Sicily’s west coast – still growing grapes for Marsala wine. At the end of the 18th Century there would have been no modern road here, and quite possibly bandits behind the rocks to take potshots at travellers.

Near Castel Baida. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film. Three images, merged in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

Enter Benjamin Ingham

Ingham was the son of a Yorkshire family that traded in cloth. He arrived in Sicily in 1806 with a view to opening up an export market for their products, but quickly realised that there was more money to be made selling Marsala wine back to Britain and America. As his business grew he sent back to his family for help, and in due course William Whitaker, the son of Ingham’s sister Mary, was sent out to help him.

Ingham was almost a caricature of the dour and unemotional Yorkshireman. A Whitaker family story (apocryphal, I hope) had him, when nephew William died suddenly, writing to Mary saying “Your son is dead. Send me another.”

The replacement nephew was Joseph Whitaker (1802-1884) who seems to have been even more dour than Ingham – not a particularly pleasant or generous person at all, in fact. But the young man does seem to have been an excellent administrator, and it must have been due in part to him that Ingham accumulated the phenomenal wealth most of which Joseph and his family were to inherit.

The British Connection

There were other connections between Sicily and Britain. Many of them date to the period when Lord Nelson was active in the Mediterranean. In fact Nelson seems to have helped kick the Marsala wine trade along with a substantial purchase of wine for his ships – no doubt Nelson was pleased to find that there were British merchants in Sicily to deal with.

Then when the French armies and local revolutionaries chased King Ferdinand IV and his queen out of Naples, it was ships of the Royal Navy under Nelson’s command that evacuated the royal party to Sicily. Also on board were the British Ambassador Sir William Hamilton and his wife Emma, who had already started her famous affair with Nelson.

Note: Queen Maria Carolina of Naples was unlikely to have been a fan of the French Republic. Her sister Marie Antoinette had been decapitated by them.

For a period Sicily remained under de facto British rule, and there were some who thought it would be a good idea to make it permanent, as with Malta. To this end in 1812, a Sicilian parliament and a new Sicilian constitution on the British model were proclaimed. But the idea of Sicily as either a British territory or an independent state under British protection was met unenthusiastically in London. The island was handed back to the Bourbons, the constitution was immediately cancelled and the old regime returned, even more oppressive than before.

The constitution had been an idealistic concept, but hopelessly impractical. To expect a feudal society to adopt a range of liberal institutions at a single stroke was never going to work.

Nevertheless, and perhaps because it had never been tried and shown not to work, the stillborn 1812 “British” constitution occupied a special place in the imagination of Sicilian radicals. Subsequent outbreaks of unrest in 1820, in the failed Italy-wide revolutions of 1849, and the Risorgimento in 1860-61, were always accompanied by calls for its restoration.

Not only that, but Britain itself came to be seen by many Sicilians, rather romantically, as the only foreign power which had their interests at heart. And when Sicilian and other Italian patriots attracted the unwelcome attention of the authorities and had to flee, they often ended up in London.

Garibaldi and “The Thousand”

In 1860, Garibaldi and his famous thousand red-shirted volunteers landed at Marsala and drove the Bourbon forces out of Sicily. The exiles returned, and the Bourbons were replaced by the Piedmontese House of Savoy in the form of King Victor Emmanuel II.

Although there was in theory now a single Kingdom of Italy, for many Sicilians one foreign regime had simply been replaced by another. The catalogue of mistakes made by the new Italian government in handling its new southern territories is long indeed and would take this post in a very different direction. Suffice to say that the Piedmontese Prime Minister Cavour was not interested in any form of autonomy for Sicily, so a bunch of northern Italian administrators arrived who regarded the locals with contempt and horror, and many poor Sicilians found times harder even than they had under the Bourbons. Banditry, bloodshed and the rise of the Mafia were the result.

Throughout all this period of upheavals and excitement, Ingham kept getting richer and richer. He had married a Sicilian noblewoman (and was somewhat bothered by her impecunious relatives). He got into banking, and was said to have lent money to most of the aristocratic Sicilian families. He also got into shipping and before long had his own fleet. He died in 1861, just after Sicily had been absorbed into the new Kingdom of Italy. Part of his substantial fortune – and control of the business – passed to his nephew and long-time associate, Joseph Whitaker.

Ingham Whitaker Marsala — Label from a bottle of Marsala from Ingham Whitaker & Co.

Joseph and his wife Sophia had had eleven children (a twelfth died in infancy), and on Joseph’s death in 1884 the firm passed to two of his sons, another William and another Joseph, the latter known all his life as Pip. Pip seems to have taken more after his mother than his father – a gentle character much interested in natural history and, later on, archaeology. But it is Pip’s wife Caterina (Tina) who through her papers becomes the central character of the rest of the book.

Caterina (Tina) Whitaker, née Scalia

I find Tina fascinating, even though I suspect that I would not like her very much in real life. Born in England, baptised as an Anglican and married to an Englishman, she was a stickler for form and must have come across as a rather forbidding type of Edwardian snob to those she thought her social inferiors. She divided her time between Sicily and England, and when the Whitakers hosted King Edward VII at their Palermo villa in 1907, she informed the king that he was on “British soil”. And yet her parents were both Italian.

Earlier I mentioned the tendency of Italian patriots to end up in England when they ran foul of their governments (most parts of Italy in the early 19th Century were ruled by foreign dynasties or the Papacy, and even the sort-of-Italian Piedmontese took a dim view of radical nationalists). One such exile was Pompeo Anichini, a member of a respectable Tuscan family; Tina later maintained that they were nobility, but they weren’t really. Anichini became a British citizen, but kept up his links with Italy, trading with Benjamin Ingham, and mixing in pro-Italian circles in London with the likes of Mazzini.

Trevelyan could not find out much about the woman Anichini married, but their daughter Giulia was a striking young woman who had many friends among the italophile English aristocracy. Despite having been born in London and brought up an Anglican, she felt herself to be very much an Italian. However when circumstances allowed her to “return” to Italy later in life she found the reality did not really live up to the dream, and instead increasingly felt herself to be an Englishwoman living in Italy – the fate of many a deracinated exile.

Still in London, in due course Giulia Anichini met a dashing young Sicilian exile called Alfonso Scalia, and married him. Scalia’s father seems to have come from a rather boring middle-class Palermitan family, but his Neapolitan mother Caterina was a real firebrand who joined the Carbonari anti-Bourbon secret society. She passed on her liberal views and her spirit to her two sons Alfonso and Luigi, and when Bourbon troops came to search their house in Palermo for incriminating papers (which Alfonso and his brother were at that very moment destroying), Caterina stood at the door and told the soldiers that they would have to shoot her first. While the soldiers pondered how to proceed, the brothers, having destroyed the evidence, escaped out of a back window.

I find it slightly amusing that the ultra-conservative Tina was named after such a radical grandmother, but according to Trevelyan Tina tended to downplay her paternal ancestry anyway, it not really having been as posh as she would have liked it to be.

In his day job Alfonso Scalia was a captain in the merchant marine. Despite his youth (he was still in his mid-20s), during the uprising of 1849 he commanded revolutionary troops in Catania, shelling Bourbon naval vessels. When the revolution failed, he fled to London, married Giulia and set up a household which became a centre for the exile community, and Giulia’s aristocratic friends.

Return to Sicily

In 1860 Garibaldi swept into Sicily and before the London exiles really had time to organise, Palermo had fallen to the redshirts. However Scalia arrived as soon as he could, and Garibaldi quickly made him a lieutenant-colonel in the artillery; he was later to rise to the rank of lieutenant-general in the army of unified Italy. After Garibaldi’s campaign moved to the mainland, Giulia and Tina (still a little girl) came out and joined him in Naples. Tina would spend most of the rest of her long life dividing her time between Italy and England.

As Tina grew up she trained as an opera singer, and would have been a very good one. By all accounts she was much fêted and was on the verge of a professional career when she became engaged to Pip Whitaker; they married in 1882, and seem to have been referred to in society as “The Pips”. Pip had to spend part of his time running the wine business in Marsala, and was already showing an interest in archaeology, in particular excavating Phoenician remains on the island of Motya near Marsala (“Mozia” in standard Italian). Tina on the other hand was not at all keen on Marsala and spent as much time in Palermo as she could, when she was not back in England.

Shortly after the birth of their second daughter, old Joseph Whitaker died and Pip became the richest man in Sicily. Their house, Villa Malfitano, was one of the most impressive in Palermo, and over the years was visited by the rich and famous, and a few independently wealthy British layabouts who sound a bit like Evelyn Waugh characters. Tina’s diary and letters mention them all (the posher the better) and Trevelyan does a good job of turning the succession of visits into a series of intertwined narratives.

And while Tina was going on about how delightful had been the Princess of This, or how spiteful the Duchess of That, she was tangentially illustrating Italian and European history.

During the First World War the older of Tina’s daughters, Norina, married a military man, General Antonino di Giorgio. During the 1920s di Giorgio became Minister for War in Mussolini’s government, although he does not seem to have been a committed fascist himself, and died before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The End of the Dynasty

Pip died in 1936, and the now-elderly Tina, cared for by her two daughters, found herself in a precarious position as war approached, given her British nationality. Despite Tina’s late son-in-law having been a minister in one of Mussolini’s governments, several relations and family friends were associated with the anti-fascist side, and there are stories of arrests and people living in great anxiety. The three moved between Sicily and Rome for a while, but saw out the last couple of years of the war in Rome. Tina’s papers record tumultuous events around the fall of Mussolini, the oppression of the German occupation, and the privations of the late wartime period for the population of Rome.

Tina died in 1957, Norina having predeceased her in 1954. Delia, the other daughter, lived on until 1971, long enough to be interviewed by Trevelyan as he researched the book. She died just as it was published. Their magnificent home, the Villa Malfitana, avoided the fate of many grand mansions in Palermo, being neither destroyed by allied bombs nor allowed to fall into ruins and be converted into slums through Mafia corruption. I regret that I have not photographed it myself, but here is a photograph from Wikipedia:

Villa Malfitana (Wikimedia Commons – click to enlarge)

After Delia’s death the family wealth went into the creation of the Joseph Whitaker Foundation (Fondazione Giuseppe Whitaker), preserving the Villa Malfitana and also the results of Pip’s Phoenician excavations at Motya. You can visit the English-language version of the foundation’s website here, with some photographs of the interior of the villa. It is well worth visiting the website to see the extraordinary luxury in which the Whitakers must have lived. Note that the Giuseppe Whitaker talked about in the text of the website was in fact Pip, not Joseph Whitaker senior.

December 4, 2021February 6, 2025

Take this! Oh yeah? Take that!

In the sleepy countryside on the border between Tuscany and Umbria, the towers of Beccati Questo and Beccati Quello testify to past conflicts. And quite possibly the locals’ sense of humour as well.

This is a continuation of my previous post on Lars Porsena of Clusium, but I decided to make it separate so as not to complicate a post about the ancient Etruscans with something about medieval and Renaissance water politics. It will however be quite short.

Edit, August 2023: this post now has a companion piece – Cospaia, the Accidental Republic.

Before unification in 1861, the various Italian states were separate countries with their own rulers, laws and, to varying degrees, languages. It is hard for modern visitors to register this as they flash past a sign saying TOSCANA beside the autostrada, but 18th-Century grand tourists were well aware of it. South of Siena, travellers from Florence to Rome, on leaving the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and entering the Papal States, would have to unload all their luggage for customs inspections, show passports, pay duty on goods, and possibly have books confiscated if the border guards suspected they might be heretical Protestant tracts.

Earlier on in the Middle Ages, territories might be associated with city-states and could be much smaller than they became later. In central Italy, Siena, Florence, Perugia, Assisi and similarly-sized towns were all independent and frequently at war. What would have been just a customs post in the 18th Century might have been a border fort in the 12th.

Sitting on such a border, between the territories of Siena and Perugia (in modern terms, the regions of Tuscany and Umbria) and just near the town of Chiusi, is a lake of the same name. Today Lago di Chiusi is fairly small and rather attractive, surrounded as it is by the rolling country of the Valdichiana. In prehistoric times the lake was huge and covered all the low-lying area, while in antiquity as now the waters of the area were carefully managed to drain them away from agricultural land.

Lago di Chiusi, seen from the campanile of the Chiusi Duomo. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

By the early Middle Ages however, the water management system had gradually broken down until the area flooded again, converting a large area of productive farmland into malarial swamps and closing some important overland routes. The latter was one reason for the rise of the more westerly road that became the Via Francigena. Water drained out of the swamps in two directions, northwards into the Arno or southwards into the Tiber. This dual drainage meant that the area was strategically important to both Florence and Rome.

Water Politics

In the 14th Century, starting near the town of Arezzo, people – often monastic communities – began to build dykes and canals again to try and harness the waters, mainly to provide power for mills. Such efforts were piecemeal and done without much understanding of the overall hydrology of the area, and they usually made the situation worse in other parts of the valley.

Unfortunately, as people’s understanding of the science and engineering improved, this knowledge was often used for military purposes. During a war between Florence and Pisa, Leonardo da Vinci came up with a plan to divert the course of the Arno away from Pisa and thus destroy its commerce (it didn’t work).

In the Valdichiana, Papal and Florentine forces created or destroyed earthworks and canals in order to cause flooding in each other’s territory, or deny water to agriculture. As late as 1598, a major flood in Rome was blamed – probably unfairly – on works in the Valdichiana undertaken by the Medici.

So it will come as no surprise that, as dry ground emerged from the receding swamp, fortified towers started to appear at various points. The first we know of was built by Siena in the 13th Century, and its belligerent purpose was made clear by the name it acquired: Beccati Questo!, or “take this!”.

Not surprising either that when the Perugians erected their own tower a short distance away, it was known as Beccati Quello!, or “take that!”.

The original Sienese tower had to be rebuilt a couple of hundred years later, and the new Renaissance one is much smaller and daintier than the medieval Perugian tower which still stands – albeit not entirely vertical. Perhaps the soil beneath was not yet dry enough to make a stable base to build on.

Beccati Questo, with Chiusi behind. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Beccati Quello. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

I have not been able to find reports of the towers featuring in any military actions. It would seem that the main use of the towers over the centuries until Italian unification was to collect tolls and customs duties.

Beccati Questo and Beccati Quello — Beccati Quello (L) and Beccati Questo (much smaller, R) with Chiusi behind. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Now they sleep in the Valdichiana, surrounded by canals, dykes and, in summer, fields of sunflowers. The road which they once guarded is now a quiet back road . The tolls have not gone away though – they are now collected as you exit the motorway.

October 25, 2021May 18, 2024

Lars Porsena of Clusium, By the Nine Gods He Swore

The Etruscans were pervasive in Central Italy, but their legacy was largely overwritten by the Romans. Three years ago we visited a recently discovered Etruscan tomb in Sarteano, and then went on the trail of Lars Porsena of Clusium.

Who were the Etruscans?

If you had asked me a couple of decades ago what I knew of the Etruscans, my answer like Gaul would have been divided into three parts. First, they lived in the area now known as Tuscany, which derives its name from them. Second, they spoke an unknown language unrelated to Latin. Third, Rome had been ruled by Tuscan kings until they heroically overthrew the last one, Tarquinius Superbus, ushering in the Republican Period. I then might have quoted a couple of half-remembered lines from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, the part about Horatius defending the bridge that begins:

Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore
That (something something something) should suffer wrong no more.

Not surprisingly, it turns out that things are bit more complicated than that.

Firstly, it is true that they started out in what is more or less modern Tuscany, although their original homeland extended eastwards into what is now Umbria, to the Tiber River and Perugia. At its widest extent their civilisation extended north into the Po Valley as far as Mantua, and to the south it reached down to Campania and Naples, so it well and truly included Rome. On that southern border they came into contact with the Greek colonies in Italy, absorbing many cultural influences.

As for the language, it is tantalising how little we know of the Etruscans’ culture, given how much we know about where they were, when they were, and what other cultures they interacted with, several of which were literate. We know that their language was indeed not Indo-European, and that it (and they) therefore probably pre-dated the migration of Aryan peoples into Europe. We also know more or less how it sounded because when the Etruscans became literate they adopted a version of the Greek alphabet, albeit written from right to left. In fact, in most of the museum exhibits I have seen, they even flipped the Greek characters into true mirror-writing, which makes it look odd indeed until you work out what is going on (note 1).

Etruscan inscription from near Perugia, National Archaeological Museum of Umbria. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

But they left nothing but funerary inscriptions, and a tiny number of other documents recording religious rituals or commercial contracts, a couple of which are actually in parallel Etruscan and Latin language versions.

Finally, they left no descriptions of themselves, and the only descriptions we have are from early Greek writers, or Roman historians writing many generations later, which included the bits about the Etruscan kings of Rome. Given that Rome defined much of its early history by stories of wars in which the Etruscans were the bad guys, the traditions on which those historians – mainly Livy – were relying were probably not entirely objective. And like all such societies in that era, the great battles and glorious victories they celebrated were probably not much more than cattle raids. Finally, the Etruscan civilisation didn’t fall as such. Instead it was gradually romanised until it became indistinguishable from that of Rome, and faded away.

But it isn’t just that Etruria became Roman; some aspects of what we think of as Roman culture have Etruscan origins. It turns out that certain words which modern European languages inherited from Latin, including the English person and military, are thought to be derived in turn from Etruscan originals, so there are some distant modern echoes of that otherwise vanished language.

Chianciano and Sarteano

In June 2018 we were staying in the southern Tuscan town of Chianciano while waiting to hear whether our offer on an apartment in Umbria had been accepted. Chianciano is divided into a charming little medieval hill town and a newer town (Chianciano Terme) on the eastern slope of the range of hills that divides the Valdichiana from the Val d’Orcia. Chianciano Terme, as the name implies, is a spa town. It is mostly composed of mid-20th Century hotels catering for elderly patients who came there to take the waters for their livers. It’s a nice place and in particular the old town has some lovely views eastwards across the Valdichiana to the Umbrian hills. A particularly good place to look at the view was from the balcony of the Bar Pasticceria Centro Storico (below).

When the new town was being built they uncovered quite a few Etruscan tombs, and Chianciano now has a decent little museum in which to display the contents.

We have to admit though that a better Etruscan museum is in a town called Sarteano, about halfway between Chianciano and Monte Cetona, a few kilometres south.

As is almost always the case, the Etruscan remains around Sarteano are mostly tombs. When a few finds were turned up in the mid 19th Century, the aristocrat on whose land they were found financed some excavations which were scientific enough by the standards of the day, but proper archaeology as we understand the term had to wait until after the Second World War.

And the finds are still happening. One of the most spectacular occurred in 2003, and Lou had established that by paying a bit more on top of the price of the museum ticket, you could actually make a visit to that site on Saturday mornings. So we duly paid, and the following Saturday morning we made our way to the site following the directions given by the museum attendant (head out of town until you see a bunch of car dealers, then turn left just after the Rover sign). The road became a dirt track, then we eventually bumped to a halt in a field and got out to investigate.

The first thing to say is that it is in an absolutely splendid location, augmented in this case by the fact that it was a flawless summer’s morning, with all sorts of flowers growing around, the air heavy with their scent, and resonant with the sound of bees and birds. We were standing on the broad shoulder of a range of hills that runs north-south and which separates the Valdichiana from the Val d’Orcia. Behind us to the right was the tall conical peak of Monte Cetona. Ahead, to the east we looked down into the Valdichiana which is a patchwork of fields and vineyards thrown over low rolling hills. On one such hill in the middle distance to the left was the town of Chiusi (the ancient Clusium of “Lars Porsena of Clusium“), in the distance was Lake Trasimeno, and on the distant skyline were the Apennines.

Chiusi from Sarteano Etruscan necropolis. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The area appears to have been a necropolis, or burial area, and it seems to have been used for a period of several hundred years, stretching into the 1st Century AD. At one end of the excavated area is an oval structure of travertine stone which looks like a stage, which the archaeologists, plausibly enough, have decided was a stage, presumably used for pre-interment ceremonies. The entrances to the tombs are long passages cut into the hillside and lined with travertine; as the whole area is on a slope the passages can cut into the earth while being mostly horizontal themselves.

Over the next quarter of an hour a dozen or so more visitors arrived, then there was a hallooing from a bit further down the hill which turned out to be coming from our guide. She was an archaeologist who had taken part in the 2003 excavations herself and been present at the discovery of the tomb we were about to see.

The tomb we had come to see is called the Tomba della Quadriga Infernale (Tomb of the Infernal Chariot) because of the frescoes. That they have survived at all is quite lucky. Some finds inside date from the early Middle Ages and suggest that it was actually used as a dwelling in that period. Or perhaps a refuge in times of war, as even by the standards of the time it can hardly have been a salubrious place to live. Then – in the 1940s, they think – grave robbers broke in and did some frightful damage to one of the frescoes. Fortunately much of the entry passage was buried by then, and the earth protected the other paintings.

We split into two groups to go in; Lou and I were in the first group. All the other people in our group were Italians, so our guide spoke in Italian, but very clearly and not too fast so we were able to follow most of what she said. Of course, we had visited the museum a couple of days earlier, so the vocabulary was familiar. You were allowed to take photos without flash, so I did, but just on my phone.

All the surviving paintings are on the left side as you go in. If there were any on the right, they might have been destroyed when the tomb was used as a dwelling in the Middle Ages. The first is what gives the tomb its name – it is a demon driving a chariot, drawn by a team of lions and griffins.

Sarteano Etruscan Tomb. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge).

He is heading towards the entrance of the tomb, which leads scholars to conclude that the charioteer is heading back to the world of the living after having carried a dead soul down to the underworld, in order to pick up the next passenger. This in turn leads those scholars to identify the demon with Charon, although we are more familiar with him as a boatman ferrying souls across the Styx. You can tell he is a demon, apparently, because of his large lower canine tooth, his red hair and white face. They didn’t mention the rouged cheeks and lipstick.

Beyond the demon in the chariot is a picture of two men – one old and one young – embracing. The explanation back in the Sarteano museum had been that the younger one is the recently deceased, greeting his long-dead father in the underworld. The guide did at least acknowledge the other possibility that they were lovers – accepted enough in ancient Greece and therefore presumably possible in ancient Etruria.

Then at the back of the tomb there was a three-headed serpent and a hippocampus or sea-horse. There was a sarcophagus at the end of the tomb which had been smashed up by one of the later intruders, and later reassembled by the archaeologists. Some human remains had been found among the bits, which on analysis had been found to be those of a male in his sixties.

Sarteano Etruscan Tomb. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge).

There were several extraordinary things about all this. One was that the paintings had survived at all after more than two thousand years. Another was that they had survived in such good condition. And another was that we could just wander in there and look at them – no hermetically sealed system, no sheets of perspex between us and the paintings, and no ultrasonic alarms to prevent you getting too close. Although given that one lady almost backed into the charioteer before being warned off by the guide, maybe that might have been a good idea.

It was also fascinating to think that when we were first in these parts at the end of the 1990s, the tomb had yet to be discovered. Afterwards Lou and I lingered up above in the sunshine, admiring the view which – minus the odd high-speed railway line – was pretty much as the Etruscans would have seen it, and pondered how much else might be beneath our feet.

Chiusi

Chianciano is quite close to the town of Chiusi, which as I said is the Clusium of the ancients. In the first twenty years or so of our visits to Italy, Chiusi to us was a motorway exit on the way north from Rome Airport to the Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, and a handy shopping centre and supermarket at a place called Querce al Pino, called – significantly – Centro Etrusco. If, instead of continuing towards Montepulciano you turn east towards Città della Pieve, you go through the modern town of Chiusi Scalo which is fringed by light industry and some now shabby-looking 1950s social housing.

Once we had worked out that there was more to Chiusi we paid a couple of visits to the old town, which has much to recommend it. It is pleasantly compact and neat, up on the hilltop where those Etruscans once decided to make a home. Being close to such tourist drawcards as Orvieto, Montepulciano and Pienza it has never really cracked the foreign tourist market, but in many ways this is no bad thing. One can only buy so many fridge magnets.

We have a definite tendency, when turning up in towns for the first time, to do so on unsuitable days. In this case we got a double because not only was it market day (where do they put markets? In the car parks) but also the annual feast day of St Mustiola, one of the patron saints of Chiusi. So the market had extended hours, and later when we tried to get into the duomo there was a mass going on. However we got lucky and found a parking spot and wandered around a bit.

We walked up to a little park which is on the site of the old acropolis and which is full of various bits of antique stonework turned up in the 18th and 19th centuries and too heavy, or not good enough, to sell to foreign collectors.

The Etruscan Museum is quite large, and worth a visit. Around the town, Etruscan and Roman remains are everywhere. Several buildings have obvious ancient stonework incorporated in their walls, and next to the duomo there is an Etrusco-Roman cistern of which the base is Etruscan and the upper part Roman. The whole thing has been converted into a bell tower for the duomo by the addition of some medieval brickwork on the top. You can climb it for excellent views of the town and the surrounding countryside.

Nearby there is the entrance to something called Il Labirinto di Porsenna of which we took a guided tour. The story of Lars Porsena’s tomb being hidden under Chiusi and protected by a labyrinth goes back a long way, being mentioned by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. So when the “labyrinth” was rediscovered in the 1920s people were quick to make the association. The truth is a bit more prosaic: it is in fact a system of aqueducts and drains that made up the town water supply in antiquity. The townspeople put it to good use in the 1940s as air-raid shelters.

There are other signs of Etruscan influence. The main street is called Via Porsenna and I was hoping to find a “Lars Porsena Bar”, but we did not find one. We did at least eat at a little restaurant called “Osteria Etrusca” where one of the pizza toppings was called “Pizza Etrusca” and consisted of sausage and gorgonzola cheese. No doubt its authenticity is based on scholarly research, although the menu omitted any citations.

I have enough material to do a separate post on Chianciano one day. And we are not finished with the Etruscans either, because the following year we visited the town of Tarquinia in the northern part of Lazio, which has an extensive Etruscan necropolis.

note 1: In the excellent National Archaeological Museum of Umbria, in Perugia, I saw an inscription in the Umbrian language, which unlike Etruscan is Indo-European and in the same linguistic family as Latin. It used the Latin alphabet, but was written in mirror-writing like Etruscan.

June 26, 2021February 9, 2025

A Brief Political History of the Italian Language

In Italy, when you turn on the television you will generally hear someone speaking an elegant language from the 14th Century. I would like to explore how that rather improbable state of affairs might have come about.

We should be in Italy now, but thanks to the pandemic, we cannot be. Instead, it has been a slightly bittersweet experience to have been watching the Giro d’Italia, not on Australian TV with local commentary, but over the Internet with the original Italian commentary. While I’m not particularly interested in bike racing, the scenery is wonderful, and listening to the commentary is good for one’s Italian. Before this I didn’t know that a curva gomito (“elbow curve”) is Italian for “hairpin bend”.

Watching and listening to RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, whether it be a bike race, a quiz show or the evening news, reminds one that RAI still maintains the principle that there is a “standard Italian” pronunciation and grammar, and deliberately models that standard. The Australian and British state broadcasters gave that sort of thing up long ago, and while that doubtless says something about Anglophone societies, I’m more interested in what it tells us about Italy.

Making the Italians

Every Italian knows the quote attributed to the Piedmontese scholar and statesman Massimo d’Azeglio – “L’Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli Italiani.” (“Italy is made. The Italians remain to be made.” This is sometimes rendered more idiomatically as “We have made Italy. Now we have to make the Italians.”) That was in reference to the fact that unification in 1861 brought together a collection of very diverse populations which had not been under a single government since the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, in political terms what had actually happened was that those diverse states had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Savoy (Piedmont), one of the less “Italian” of the states of Italy, in the sense that it had historically looked north across the Alps rather than south. To the extent that there was much of a sense of national identity, it was largely a middle-class urban phenomenon; a minority interest.

One of the principal ways in which Italian diversity was expressed was linguistic. I have read that at unification, only 2.5% of the population is estimated to have spoken what would become standard Italian, and Italy’s so-called “dialects” would actually have passed most of the tests that academic linguists require of discrete languages. So Italian dialects were not just the same language with different accents and a few funny words, but showed significant divergence – to the point of being mutually unintelligible in some cases.

Identifying and promoting a standard language would therefore have been high on d’Azeglio’s to-do list. There is an old joke among linguists about a language being a dialect with its own army and navy, so one might have expected the Piedmontese to impose their own – except that in Piedmont itself, the elite actually spoke French.

A Medieval Language

Instead, the decision was to adopt “literary Italian” as the national language. What was literary Italian? Well, it is not too broad a statement to say that in the 1860s it was essentially that of the 1300s – which is to say the language of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. That’s pretty remarkable when you think about it – imagine if the English of Dickens was little changed from that of Chaucer.

Dante’s thing – later emulated by Petrarch and Boccaccio – was to write in the Florentine vernacular. I’ll talk a bit later about why that was special, but the effect was to put the Tuscan dialect at the centre of the Italian literary scene.

The Tuscan town of Certaldo, Boccaccio’s birthplace. Canon EOS-3 35mm film camera, 28-135mm IS lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

And so it remained – which is why Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist for Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan’ Tutte, wrote Italian in the 1780s that was not significantly different from that written by Dante 480 years earlier, or found on Italian TV now. This despite the fact that da Ponte came from the Veneto and presumably originally spoke that dialect.

Fast-forward to the great “making the Italians” project of the 19th Century, and the decision to adopt literary Tuscan Italian as the official language would have had obvious advantages. It was already written and understood by educated people throughout the new country, which would have made proceedings in the new parliament easier. But in addition, as education became accessible to more of the population it instantly provided a body of national literature which could be taught to youth. And it invoked great Italian names that would stoke national pride.

Of course it would have had the side effect of making the Florentines even more insufferable, but there is always a cost.

There had been a counter-proposal to choose the Roman version of educated Italian that was spoken in the higher levels of the Catholic Church, but apart from annoying the Florentines it would have lacked most of Tuscan’s advantages. Moreover I suspect that the suggestion would not have been helped by the increasingly adamant opposition to Italian unification from Pope Pius IX.

Rinsing in the Arno

New literature was written, and some existing works in regional dialects rewritten, in standard Italian. The novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni was first published in 1825, and remains one of Italy’s favourites which everyone studies at school. Manzoni was a Milanese, and the novel is set on Lake Como, further north in Lombardy. Despite this Manzoni was in favour of adopting literary Tuscan Italian as the national language, and so he rewrote the book twenty years later, replacing the original Lombard idioms with Florentine ones. As he put it, he “rinsed his clothes in the Arno” (the river that flows through Florence).

Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni by Francesco Hayez, Brera Gallery, Milan. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, 35mm lens (click to enlarge)

Florence and the Arno. Canon EOS-3 35mm film camera, 28-135mm IS lens, Fujichrome Velvia film. Five images stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

Despite consensus on a language having been achieved, the original Italian constitution did not explicitly require that there be a single Italian language (I read somewhere that King Vittorio Emanuele did not speak Italian himself, so that might have been a bit embarrassing). In fact it was not until the Fascist era that a law was passed giving primacy to standard Italian. This is not surprising, as the Fascists were particularly keen on the idea of a single language as a national unifier (or as an instrument for controlling society, if you prefer). Characteristically they overdid it, forcing Italian on non-Italian-speaking minorities such as Slovenes and the German-speaking South Tyrolese. That was a bit rich from the country that invented the term “irredentism” (see below).

The cumulative effect of all this was that by the early 1950s, more and more people (almost 90%) understood standard Italian, although a significant number (over 60%) still spoke their own dialect at home or in the community. Seventy years on, standard Italian has triumphed, and the institution that has been more responsible for this than anything else is the national broadcaster, RAI (compulsory military service was another factor, but only for men). After the war, more and more people got access first to radio and then television, and just as people used to refer to “BBC English”, there was and remains a “RAI Italian”.

Powerful evidence of this change is the experience of members of the Italian diaspora – mostly not highly-educated – who emigrated from Italy to countries like Australia after the war. One hears many reports of people who left Italy as children or young adults speaking only their local dialect, and who returned there in old age to find that they could not understand what was being said around them in the street. I have had a couple of these stories at first hand, including from my elderly barber of a few years ago, a lovely fellow called Franco who came to Australia from Sulmona in Abruzzo in the 1960s.

People value most what they fear to lose, and so nowadays one sees more interest in, and respect for, dialects and regional languages. The attitude of the authorities has gone from intolerance through tolerance to official recognition in the form of bilingual road signs in some areas. Will this be effective? It is increasingly common for younger people to use dialect, if at all, only when speaking to their grandparents’ generation.

How Different are the Italian Dialects?

One of our favourite aids to learning Italian is a TV quiz show called l’Eredità. This screens each evening on RAI 1 for much of the year, and with its genial host and cheesy dancing girls, is hugely popular especially during COVID lockdowns. And from the language student’s point of view, the formulaic nature of quiz shows is quite helpful.

The questions mix popular and “high” culture, – for example one contestant might be asked to identify which hit songs were recorded by which popular artist, while the next is given a list of literary characters and asked whether they are to be found in the pages of Dante or Manzoni. A third might be asked for the past participles of various irregular verbs (we are reassured to find that even Italians don’t always get them right).

A theme to which the program often returns is “dialetti”, in which contestants are asked for the meaning of proverbs and sayings in regional dialects. While the examples are obviously chosen for their difficulty, it is entertaining to see how some nugget of folk wisdom from – say – Calabria will baffle a person from Trentino, and the other way round as well.

When seeing such dialect phrases on the screen, one is struck by how very different they look from standard Italian – not just the vocabulary, but more fundamental aspects of language like syntax, conjugations and phonology. Some of the strangeness can presumably be attributed to the spelling – scholars and enthusiastic nationalists who devise orthographies for minority languages will generally wish to emphasise what distinguishes them from the majority language, rather than what they have in common. But it remains striking that standard Italian looks more like Spanish than it does Neapolitan.

Not only that, but it actually looks more like Latin than it looks like most Italian dialects. A recent (and very funny) Italian film is called Quo Vado, which is both good Italian and good Latin.

When I first noticed this many years ago it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. After all, Italian is derived from vulgate Latin, and is spoken in the same part of the world. But, on reflection, so are all other Italian dialects, and they are separated from Latin by the same amount of time. So why is this? Why is standard Italian so unlike regional dialects, and so similar to Latin?

It would seem that there are a few reasons, the first one being that canonical works of literature slow down the rate of change in the languages in which they are written. If you need examples in English, you have Shakespeare and, more profoundly influential, the King James version of the Bible. And in Italy, the literature that all educated people learned was written in Florentine.

Not only that, but at the time when it was elevated to canonical status by Dante, it seems that Florentine was already a rather old-fashioned Italian dialect, preserving more archaic features than others. In one of those sound shifts so beloved of historical philologists, every version of Italian other than Florentine and Corsican had already undergone some major changes. Oddly enough the result is that today a dialect that is closer than many to standard Italian – Corsican – is spoken in what is now a part of France.

The combined effect of these was that Florentine started out a bit more archaic than other dialects, and then evolved more slowly than they did.

A third reason is the association of Florentine culture with the Renaissance. The rediscovery of antiquity as a source of artistic models would have had the obvious effect of causing scholars to emphasise those elements of language that they believed to represent continuity with antiquity, and to place less emphasis on others. This occurred in all of the main European languages, even those not of Latin origin. An English, Dutch or German scholar looking to dignify their language with Latinisms would face the problem that their language was basically Germanic, and could only look for introduced vocabulary that had, or could be argued to have, Latin or Greek origins. But in Florentine Italian, scholars and enthusiasts had a great deal more Latin-derived material to work with – not just most of the vocabulary but syntax and verb declensions as well.

The first institutional attempt to “purify” any European language arose in Florence in 1583, in the form of the Accademia della Crusca, still the notional source of authority on the Italian language . “Crusca” means “bran”, and the idea was that the members – writers, philosophers and other intellectuals – would winnow out the less worthy bits of the language, and keep the better parts. The Accademia was the model for the better-known Académie Française, created in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu – however the Accademia has managed to do its job with less pomposity and chauvinism than has the Académie.

Postscript: Irredentism, Fascism and minority languages.

When the unified Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, substantial chunks of territory with Italian-speaking populations were not yet part of it as they remained under Austrian rule. These were the modern regions of Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, plus some parts of what are now Slovenia and Croatia such as the Istrian peninsula. They were referred to by Italian nationalists as le terre irredente, or “the unredeemed lands”. The idea that people speaking the same language should have their own country, and that political boundaries should match linguistic ones, thus came to be called “irredentism”. The term came back into vogue for a while in the 1990s, as eastern European countries re-drew their boundaries (or, in the former Yugoslavia, went to war with each other) after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Rovinj in Croatia, originally an Italian-speaking part of the Venetian empire called Rovigno. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens. Two images, stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

With the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War 1, Italy made a bid for those territories in the Treaty of Versailles, even the German-speaking South Tyrol. President Woodrow Wilson, whose grasp of the geography of that part of the world seems not to have been very strong, agreed with Italy, and so it came to pass- apart from the bits that went to the newly created state of Yugoslavia. Shortly after that, the Fascists came to power in Italy, and as we have seen, started forcing Italian onto their minority populations. In the South Tyrol, a particularly unpleasant Fascist called Ettore Tolomei drew up a list of measures that included preventing children being given German names, and creating new Italian placenames for towns, mountains and rivers that had never had them. Most of those confected names are still officially gazetted, albeit now alongside the original ones. As I said, it was a bit rich coming from a government that had spent the previous seventy years complaining about the rights of oppressed Italian speakers under foreign rule.

The picture below was taken in the town of Seis in the South Tyrol, and as you can see it doesn’t look very Italian, despite also having the Italian name of Siusi.

This photograph is of Schloss Prösels nearby – again, not a very Italian name, and not a very Italian-looking scene.

The Fascists also relocated some non-Italian-speaking groups into monoglot Italian areas. Readers of Eric Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines may recall that this was how his wife-to-be Wanda, a Slovene, came to be living in the middle of Italy.

With the fall of Fascism and the creation of the Italian Republic in 1946, the new constitution actually contained, in its Article 6, recognition of the rights of linguistic minorities. Article 6 was largely ignored for fifty years though, and relief for German and French speakers from oppressive laws only came about as a result of pressure from the Austrian and French governments. Only in the late 1990s did the Italian Parliament actually pass any laws giving practical effect to Article 6, and resentment still persists. I quickly discovered, when visiting the South Tyrol, that attempting to engage the locals in Italian was not a good idea – and as I speak hardly any German, English turned out to be a better choice.

The political fortunes of Fascism had an unlikely effect on the Italian language. The Fascists did not like the (curious, to the ears of English speakers) Italian use of the feminine-gender third person singular pronoun Lei as the polite form of address to people of either sex. They thought it unbecoming for manly chaps such as themselves to call each other, in effect, “she”. So good Fascists started using the second-person plural voi as the polite form, as with the French use of vous and the English you (and which was always preferred in the south of Italy anyway). In other circumstances, that change might have stuck. But after the war there was a general updating of people’s CVs to show that they had never actually been fascists at all, really. So in central and northern Italy the Lei form suddenly became “correct” again, as it remains.

Note: in July 2024 we were visiting the Brera Gallery in Milan, where I found the Hayez portraits of Manzoni and d’Azeglio, so I photographed them and added them to this article.

April 7, 2021November 19, 2023

Cremona, Mantua and Venice – the life of Claudio Monteverdi

I would like to invite you on a tour through northern Italy, to Cremona, Mantua and Venice, the three cities in which lived one of the greatest composers in the history of music – Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643).

If you have not heard of him, or not heard much about him, there might be a few reasons for that. Two of the principal ones are firstly that the conventional classical musical pantheon is mainly inhabited by 18th and 19th-Century composers from German-speaking countries. Secondly, his non-vocal music is intended for instruments which are not typically available to modern symphony or chamber orchestras. As a result, Monteverdi’s music did not really become accessible to audiences until the early music revival of the 1970s. And it was in the late 1970s that, at a university choral festival, I first made his acquaintance through his Vespers of 1610. At the time my ignorance was such that I did not really appreciate how extraordinarily pivotal he was in music history, or how innovative was his music. Instead my critical insights were along the lines of “wow, this is good stuff!” (at least I got that bit right).

Before we start on the travelogue, let me try and set the context with some musical examples. Monteverdi’s long career straddles the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods, and he was a key influence on the transition from the older style to the newer. Oh, and along the way he managed to more or less invent opera.

Let us start with what came before. Here is an example of mature Renaissance music in the polyphonic style, a motel by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina from 1604. You can hear how, rather than having a melody on top and an accompanying harmonisation underneath, each part is equally important and they weave around each other in a glorious harmonic soup.

Sicut Cervus by Palestrina, performed by The Gesualdo Six

It certainly is not simple or primitive music – it is very complex, but the structure imposes restrictions in terms of both harmonic and textural variations. Compare that with the following piece by Monteverdi – Nigra Sum sed Formosa from the 1610 Vespers. The basic structure is actually simpler – a melody and underlying chords, but that gives the composer (and the performer) more scope for expression.

Nigra Sum sed Formosa by Monteverdi, performed by Thomas Cooley and the San Francisco Early Music Ensemble

Cremona

Monteverdi was born in the elegant city of Cremona in the Po Valley, then part of the Duchy of Milan. These days the name Cremona is redolent with musical associations, but that is due to its having become, a century or so later, a centre for musical instrument manufacture by luthiers such as Stradivari and Guanieri. These days it is still elegant, and in the traffic-free zone in the centro storico, it has a relaxed feel.

Monteverdi’s father was an apothecary, but young Claudio and his brother Giulio Cesare were destined for careers as musicians from a young age. It is known that Claudio was a student of a musician called Ingegneri who was maestro di cappella at the duomo in Cremona. This may well mean that Claudio was also a member of the cathedral choir.

Cremona DUomo — Cremona, the Duomo. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

The Duomo still stands in the main piazza of Cremona. It is the expected palimpsest of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles, but the overall effect is harmonious enough. For our purposes, the important thing is that it looks today almost exactly as it would have done when the young Claudio wandered home across the square for lunch after a morning studying music theory, or scurried along under the cloisters on a dark wet winter’s morning on his way to sing at early mass.

Mantua

Monteverdi’s first published works date from his youthful studies in Cremona, but it was not long before he got the first of the only two jobs he held over the course of his long life. It was in Mantua, at the ducal court. He started there as a string player, but it was not long before his other talents were recognised, and the tasks flowed in. Compositions sacred and secular, for grand and intimate occasions, theatrical productions, you name it. The demands were continuous, and the schedule punishing.

While the work was regular, his pay was not. We met the ruling family of Mantua, the Gonzagas, before, in their glory years around the turn of the 16th Century. But a hundred years later the Gonzagas’ party was coming to an end, although no-one was ready to admit it. Mercenary soldiering didn’t pay as well as it once did, and Duke Vincenzo wasn’t actually all that much of a soldier anyway – although he was good at striking martial poses. He was also quite good at flouncing off the battlefield if he thought his dignity had been impugned, or if there looked like being any chance of real action. Nor were the strategic circumstances as conducive as they had been to skilled balancing acts between the major powers. Not that Vincenzo would have been much good at that either, probably.

The one thing that remained important was putting on a good show – facendo una bella figura – and among other things, it helped to be seen to be employing the greatest musician of the day, even if the state revenues didn’t quite run to paying him regularly. The state archives of Mantua contain many letters from Monteverdi, pointing out how badly in arrears his salary was.

But – and posterity must be grateful – that didn’t stop Monteverdi churning out innovative music of great beauty and variety. We think of the Italian Renaissance as being the centre of innovation in the arts, but in fact this wasn’t quite the case for music. In the late Middle Ages and much of the Renaissance, the action was in northern Europe, and when Italian courts started employing the great composers of the day, they were people like Josquin des Prez and Roland de Lassus from northern France and Flanders. When Monteverdi arrived in Mantua, the maestro di cappella was a Fleming whose Italianicised name has come down to us as Giaches de Wert. Monteverdi was therefore probably one of the first great Italian musical innovators, and his early madrigals showed a willingness to push the rules of harmony to breaking point in order to capture the emotional intensity of the text.

Mantua Ducal Palace — Mantua, courtyard in the Ducal Palace. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

That led him into inevitable controversies, and he conducted a long-running argument with a grumpy old musical theorist from Bologna called Giovanni Artusi who wrote a treatise called On the Imperfections of Modern Music. In this, although he did not name Monteverdi, Artusi illustrated his arguments with copious examples of Monteverdi’s own works! Monteverdi countered that there were two styles of music at the time – prima pratica, which was the older polyphony, and seconda pratica which was the newer melodic style. And to drive home the point, he showed that he was adept at both. But Monteverdi had his supporters too, who were happy to enter the lists on his behalf while he concentrated on composition.

Meanwhile, the Renaissance enthusiasm for artistic models from Greek and Roman antiquity was still running high. Having worked their way through the obvious options – visual arts and architecture – scholars turned their attention to theatre and music. The latter had the obvious disadvantage that there were no surviving examples or even any useful descriptions of ancient music, but some scholars noted references to the fact that the chorus in Greek plays sang their lines rather than speaking them. This, and the contemporary evolution of the highly emotional seconda pratica style of solo songs and madrigals, led people to consider the idea of a dramatic work in which all the dialogue was sung.

Monteverdi was not the only musician active in the field, but his l’Orfeo (Orpheus) of 1607 has long been considered the first proper opera. Below is a photograph of the Sala degli Specchi (Room of Mirrors) in the Ducal Palace in Mantua. It has been remodelled since the early 17th Century, but it is thought that the first performance of l’Orfeo took place in this room, or an adjacent one. And as you can see, it is still used for performances.

If this is indeed the location of the original performance, you can see that the audience would not have been all that large. And while the interior may have been remodelled, the view out of the windows is not likely to have changed very much.

Meanwhile Monteverdi had become fed up with Mantua. He was overworked, the damp climate disagreed with him, and his wife had died young, leaving him to raise two small boys on a small and unreliable wage. But if you worked for a ducal court, you couldn’t just resign; you had to be granted permission to leave. Despite several written requests from Monteverdi, this permission was always refused. In 1610 he published a mass and “some other pieces” dedicated to Pope Paul V, and it is thought that this was part of an unsuccessful attempt on his part to get a job in Rome. The Mass – Missa in Illo Tempore – was a polyphonic piece in the prima pratica style, showing his mastery of that older form, although not without some unexpected harmonic modulations of which Artusi would have disapproved.

The “other pieces”, though, were the psalms, motets and Magnificat which make up a complete setting of the vespers service, and of the works of Monteverdi that survive, the Vespers of 1610 is his masterpiece – probably the greatest unsuccessful job application ever.

The Vespers demand a full listening – my favourite recording is that by Philippe Herreweghe. But here are some more examples to go with the Nigra Sum sed Formosa linked above. Let us start with the stunning opening – Deus in Adiutorium Meum Intende (O God, make speed to save me). The Gregorian chant opening phrase is performed by the tenor soloist, “operatically” as if he is really crying out for help, after which the chorus and orchestra let rip, with a fanfare (recycled from l’Orfeo) playing underneath a monolithic D Major chord from the chorus. Wake up, music – the 17th Century is here!

Monteverdi, Deus in Adiutorium Meum Intende, performed by Szczawnica Chamber Choir, Cappella Infernata, Musica Aeterna Bratislava, dir. Agnieszka Żarska

The Vespers is a real tour de force in which Monteverdi displays mastery of different styles, and invents some more. What could have been more of a shock to old Artusi than to hear the psalm Nisi Dominus set to music in dance rhythms?

Monteverdi, Nisi Dominus, The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, dir. John Eliot Gardiner

Then in 1612, the Duke died, and his successor, faced with state finances that were completely out of control, did what all incoming governments do, and slashed spending. Monteverdi and his brother were unceremoniously sacked and found themselves returning to Cremona in real financial hardship.

Venice

But finally something went right for him. The following year, the most prestigious musical job in Italy – Director of Music at St Mark’s in Venice – suddenly became vacant, and Monteverdi got it. He was to live another thirty years, and he spent them all in Venice.

I have been lucky enough to hear Monteverdi’s music performed in St Mark’s. In 2016 we were poking about near the Basilica when Lou noticed a small poster in Italian announcing a free concert that evening, to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the founding of a permanent musical establishment there. While there are always concerts on in Venice, most of them assume you only want to hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. So this promised to be special. And it was – not only for the music, which included a movement from the Missa in Illo Tempore, but interesting also to hear Monteverdi’s music in the sort of highly resonant acoustic for which it was composed. This sets practical limits on the speed at which it can be performed, and is something to which I feel musicologists sometimes pay insufficient attention. (Similarly, I feel that arguments about the appropriate number of musicians to perform Bach Cantatas should take account of the size of the choir loft in St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig).

These days, the selfie-stick plague means that photography is not permitted inside the Basilica during tourist visiting hours, but there seemed to be no such prohibition during an evening concert, so I grabbed a couple of shots on my phone.

It is sobering to think that, while what we have of Monteverdi’s music contains pieces of extraordinary beauty, much has not survived. Several of his operas and perhaps the major part of his liturgical music are lost. One of the lost operas was his second – Arianna (Ariadne) which tells the story of Ariadne’s abandonment on the island of Naxos by Theseus. Fortunately, the dramatic high point of the opera, Ariadne’s Lament, was so popular that it survives in several editions. It is in a recitativo style, where melodic sections are interspersed by sections where the rhythms match the natural rhythms of speech – another novelty.

Monteverdi, Lamento di Arianna. Accademia degli Imperfetti, Silvia Piccollo, soprano.

After Monteverdi’s death, his music (apart from the Lament) appears to have faded from the repertoire, and while no book of musical history would have been complete without a discussion of his influence, concert-goers would have been hard put to actually hear much of his music until the early music revival of the second half of the 20th Century. A major contribution to this was the publication of a performance edition of the 1610 Vespers, in modern notation, by the musicologist Denis Stevens in 1961.

These days there are many performing groups, and audiences, for whom Monteverdi would be considered core repertoire, which is an excellent thing. Here is an exuberant performance of Zefiro Torna by the group l’Arpeggiata.

Monteverdi, Zefiro Torna, performed by l’Arpeggiata, with sopranos Nurial Rial and Philippe Jaroussky.

Oddly, an early partisan of the rediscovery of Monteverdi at the start of the 20th Century was the poet and proto-fascist Gabriele d’Annunzio. Though I suspect that for d’Annunzio, the main attraction of Monteverdi was not necessarily his music, but the fact that he was Italian and not German.

But even though he may have been largely forgotten in his native country, it is possible with a bit of historical licence to trace Monteverdi’s influence on German music. The Dresden composer Heinrich Schütz studied twice in Venice, the first time under Giovanni Gabrieli, from whom he acquired his facility with polychoral composition. The second time it was with Monteverdi. On his return, Schütz composed operas and Venetian-style motets, although there wasn’t much demand for them during the privations of the Thirty Years War. But the other thing he brought back with him was Monteverdi’s recitativo style that we heard earlier in Arianna. This he incorporated into the emerging German cantata form, in which, as in Monteverdi’s operas, the music served the meaning of the text. In due course this tradition found its highest expression in the music of J.S. Bach. The idea of a direct line from Monteverdi to Bach is one that I find particularly appealing.

One of the reasons we know so much about Monteverdi’s career is that he was, almost from the start, a civil servant employed by two states whose official archives, including his correspondence with his employers, have mostly survived. If you go and see Monteverdi’s tomb in Venice, you will find it in a church (see below) that is next to the building that contained the official archives of the Republic.

Venice, Archives — Venice, the old Archives Building. Hasselblad 500C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Although he became a priest in 1631 (never having remarried after the death of his wife) Monteverdi continued to compose secular as well as sacred music, including several more operas. His final opera, published in the year of his death – 1643 – is l’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea). This is, simply, extraordinary. Absent are the Olympian gods, gone are the arcadian nymphs and swains, gone are the heroes of legend. Instead it is a bloody historical drama from ancient Rome about the Emperor Nero and his lover Poppea. At the end, after all the good characters are dead or exiled and only the two evil characters remain, they sing this meltingly beautiful (and highly erotic) love duet. Astonishing stuff from an elderly priest.

“Pur ti Miro” from l’Incoronazione di Poppea, with Philippe Jaroussky as Nero and Danielle de Niese as Poppea.

Some of the material in Poppea is known to be by other composers – not unusual at the time. There is a bit of discussion about whether Monteverdi actually wrote Pur Ti Miro. I’ve recently listened to a podcast on the subject from the BBC Radio 3 “Early Music Show” and I’m inclined to come down on the side of it having been Monteverdi. If not, then whoever wrote it went to great pains to reproduce Monteverdi’s style with complete fidelity.

On his death, Monteverdi was buried in the great Franciscan church of the Frari, in Venice.

Frari, Venice — The Frari Church, Venice. Hasselblad 500C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

If you enter from the glare of the street, and, having taken in the altarpieces by Bellini and Titian, you look down to your left, you will see the composer’s simple tombstone. You may find an offering of some sort placed on it, maybe some of the spring flowers that feature so often in his madrigals.

January 24, 2021November 19, 2023

Mantua – Grumpy Old Artist, Charming Painting

The city-state of Mantua, and its ruling family the Gonzaga, are the centre of a story of wars, politics, and art.

For some time now I’ve been contemplating a post on some aspect of the complex history of Mantua and Ferrara in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, their respective ducal families the Gonzaga and d’Este, and all the political, artistic and personal stories that swirl around those two cities. But it is such a big topic, and as with all big topics, it took me a while to think of how to start.

What a story it is though, with larger-than-life characters, heroes and villains, triumphs and tragedies. Other famous families have walk-on parts, including the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Montefeltro of Urbino, the Baglioni of Perugia and the most infamous family of the Renaissance, the Borgia.

The Context

Let us start by quickly setting the context. Mantua and Ferrara are two cities in the flat eastern Po valley, about 60km apart.

In terms of modern regional boundaries, Mantua is in Veneto, and Ferrara is in Emilia-Romagna. Mantua (birthplace of the Ancient Roman poet Virgil) sits on a pair of lakes in the course of the Mincio, the river that drains Lake Garda and flows into the Po. Apparently Ferrara was once on the banks of the Po, but the river’s course altered after a medieval flood or earthquake and it now passes north of the city.

The flat land offers no particular advantages in terms of defence, although the marshy country would slow an army down a bit, and potentially infect its members with malaria and other fevers. The lakes on the northern side of Mantua would have assisted defenders to an extent. But the Po itself is no Rhine or Danube, and did not represent much of an obstacle to the movement of armies, especially in dry seasons.

Instead, the main strategic advantages of Mantua and Ferrara were geopolitics. From the Middle Ages onwards they found themselves in the border regions between more powerful states – Venice to the north and the Papacy to the south. To the west was Milan, and later, often, invading French armies. Other players included at first the German armies of the early Habsburg emperors, then the Spanish troops of their descendants.

The two cities took advantage of the strategic ambiguities of their borderland positions to play a game, lasting hundreds of years, to maintain their independence. As the major powers fought, the armies of Mantua and Ferrara were large enough, and their dukes generally had sufficient military skill, to tip the balance away from whichever was the stronger side at any given moment.

And they changed sides frequently. Usually these were commercial as well as political arrangements, and the income from mercenary activities as well as the surrounding rich agricultural land was sufficient to maintain armies as well as run magnificent courts (or the appearance thereof: Mantuan ducal jewels spent a lot of time in the care of Venetian moneylenders). Regular dynastic intermarriages between the two, and with other states like Milan and Urbino, reinforced the ties between them to the extent that when Mantua and Ferrara were on opposing sides, their employers never entirely trusted them not to connive together.

Mantua

We shall stay with Mantua for the rest of this post. The Gonzaga dynasty was long-lived, and the architecture associated with the family ranges from frowning medieval fortresses through elegant Renaissance palaces and pleasure pavilions, to exuberant mannerism.

The photograph of the ducal palace above shows an architectural innovation attributed to Palladio, where pairs of slim elegant columns take weight which would previously have required thick and solid single columns.

In addition to mercenary warfare, another lucrative business conducted by the Mantuan state was the breeding and sale of warhorses. Even Henry VIII of England sent an embassy to Mantua to acquire some. A field in the grounds of the ducal palace complex where these horses were exercised and displayed had an architectural surround built in the 1560s in the new “mannerist” style, which is pretty over-the-top.

So what about the paintings?

In the second half of the Fifteenth Century, ducal courts in Italy commissioned elaborately decorated rooms in their palaces. These were often semi-private rooms, where favoured guests would be invited to marvel at the wealth and good taste of the Duke, but also see pictures of members of the Ducal family in carefully-chosen settings, usually allegorical. A famous example is the chapel in the Medici Palace in Florence, decorated by Benozzo Gozzoli. In the cities of the Eastern Po Valley, one of the sought-after artists of the time was Andrea Mantegna, of whom more later.

One of the things that distinguished the artists of the Renaissance was their discovery of the mathematics of perspective. Once the initial novelty wore off, some started experimenting with vertical as well as horizontal perspective. It seems to have been more of a thing in the various cities of the Po Valley – or at least most examples I can recall come from there (although Goya did a famous one in Madrid).

As I’ve noted elsewhere, mythological subjects seen from below (especially Apollo and/or Phaeton) were popular as they were an excuse to show the rude bits.

Palazzo Tè — Ceiling decoration, Palazzo Te, Mantua. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

As the Renaissance faded into the Baroque, one saw a few attempts to treat the ascension of Christ or the Virgin in the same way, although it was more of a challenge to do it decorously.

Parma Duomo — An “Assumption of the Virgin” painted on the inside of the Dome of the Duomo in Parma. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Mantegna and the Camera degli Sposi

Using increasing mastery of the mathematical theory of perspective to create realistic-looking paintings is known, unsurprisingly, as “Illusionist” art. It had a long run, up to the end of the 19th Century, but started in the early Renaissance. One of the better exponents during this first wave was Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506). Had he not made the mistake of not being from Tuscany, he would probably be better-known today. Instead he came from a place near Padua, and spent his early career in the Venetian Empire, before finally yielding to continuing offers from Ludovico III Gonzaga to move to Mantua in 1460 to become the court painter.

Despite Mantegna being famously difficult to deal with (getting even grumpier as he grew older) three generations of Gonzaga rulers treated him with great respect and generosity, granting him a remarkably large salary and in due course a knighthood.

Mantegna was required to turn his hand to many things, but his principal job was to decorate, and redecorate, the ducal palace. His acknowledged masterpiece is the so-called Camera degli Sposi (“Bridal Chamber”). Despite its name, it is unlikely to have been a private bedroom – the Gonzaga were too practical to waste expensive art on something that would not be seen by others. Instead it would have been a semi-public room into which important guests would be invited for audiences, to note the luxury in which the family lived in their supposedly private apartments, and to draw conclusions about their wealth and power. Such were the games that were played, and the illusions were created not just on the walls and ceilings, but in people’s minds.

On the walls of the room are very carefully-composed paintings of Ludovico and the Gonzaga family, replete with coded messages about the status of the family. In the “Greeting Scene”, Ludovico and his family (and their dog) are greeting their second son Francesco, who, after much expense and diplomatic effort by the family, had just been made a cardinal when Mantua had hosted a council presided over by Pope Pius II. Also in the picture are the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, and the King of Denmark, Christian I. Although no such meeting with these foreign monarchs ever took place, the message is clear – you are being told that the Gonzaga are the equals of such rulers. Almost as eloquent are the omissions – no penny ha’penny Italian warlords such as the Sforza of Milan (actually Ludovico’s employers at the time!) merit inclusion. In the background is an idealised ancient city which looks nothing like flat Mantua amid its swamps.

Mantua, Camera degli Sposi, the Meeting Scene. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

In the “Court Scene”, Ludovico, surrounded by his family, is shown in the process of ruling, turning aside as a secretary whispers in his ear, no doubt something to do with the piece of paper in his hand. Courtiers await their turn for an audience. The scene is located above a fireplace, higher on the wall than the Meeting Scene, and Mantegna has emphasised that with a from-below perspective, which emphasises that the viewer is both actually and figuratively at a lower level.

All very imposing, not to say pompous. But look up. On the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi is something that is, in its whimsicality and intimacy, completely different from the didacticism of the wall paintings. And the mastery of technique Mantegna shows here is greater than anywhere else in the room. The painting represents an “oculus” open to the sky. Courtiers lean over the balustrade, and rather than ignoring you, as in the other paintings, here they are looking straight at you and sharing a joke (or perhaps planning a practical joke on you). It seems that the old curmudgeon had a playful side after all.

I have followed convention in referring to Mantua as a duchy, and the palace complex as the “Ducal Palace”. In fact Ludovico was only a Marquis – his grandson Federico became the 1st Duke of Mantua in 1500.

If the title “Duke of Mantua” has sinister overtones to you, it may be because a Duke of Mantua is the cruel and licentious villain in Verdi’s Rigoletto. True to Italian form, you can buy a cold drink or a souvenir in the “House of Rigoletto” across the piazza from the Ducal Palace, and look at the statue of the tragic jester in its grounds. It’s all completely bogus though. The play on which the opera is based was Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’Amuse. But the opera had been commissioned by the La Fenice opera house in Venice, then under Austrian rule, and the Austrian censors frowned on depicting a monarch as the villain, so the libretto was rewritten to pin the rap on the – by then extinct – House of Mantua. It’s a bit unfair on the Gonzaga, although the last couple of dukes sound as if they would have been up for it.

Now that I’ve finally started, I’ll have more to say on Mantua and Ferrara in due course.

Historical Sources

Any decent history of Italy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance should give an overview of the Gonzaga, their wars and politics. One book which is only about them is A Renaissance Tapestry – The Gonzaga of Mantua (London 1988) by the New York writer Kate Simon. Given the complexity and length of the story, it contains that most useful of visual aids – an extensive family tree. Simon made her name as a travel writer, so she has an easy, readable style, but it is firmly grounded in scholarship. It was one of her last published works (she died in 1990).

A note on the Photography

As I have said elsewhere, the best way to take interior photographs of art and architecture is to mount the camera tripod on a platform at the same height as the subject, and illuminate it with bright, even, colour-neutral lighting. When you haven’t been employed to take the photographs, but have paid your 10 euros and are milling around at floor level with the other tourists, wishing that the bloke in the floral shirt and bermuda shorts would get out of the way, one is forced to compromise.

Digital post-processing helps a lot, allowing perspective correction to fix the “leaning backwards” effect caused by photographing from below, and correcting the colour cast caused by tungsten or fluorescent lighting. I have done both of these on the interior shots above, using Hasselblad Phocus software and Photoshop. Unfortunately sometimes the light sources are mixed. In the Court Scene, a shaft of natural light comes in from the bottom left. When I corrected for the predominant yellow tungsten light, the natural light turned blue.

I didn’t correct all of the from-below perspective in the Court Scene, because it was put there on purpose by Mantegna!

October 31, 2020November 19, 2023

Venice Curiosities

Venice is full of of little curiosities which reward keen-eyed and historically-minded visitors as they flee into the dark alleys away from the heaving crowds in the Piazza San Marco, or the souvenir sellers on the Riva degli Schiavoni.

You can see the commemorative plaque on the wall of a house from which, in the year 1310, an old lady dropped a mortar on the head of the standard-bearer of the would-be coup d’état leader Bajamonte Tiepolo, killing him on the spot, and foiling the rebellion. Or one of the little courtyards named del milion after one of its inhabitants, Marco Polo. Apparently people got so tired of his boasting about the fabulous wealth he had enjoyed in the East that they gave him the nickname milion.

Try not to drop the True Cross in the canal

I have a couple of other examples for you. Let us start in the Accademia gallery, with Gentile Bellini’s painting, executed around the year 1500, of The Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo.

Small pieces of wood, purporting to be fragments of the True Cross (ie the cross on which Christ was crucified) were especially venerated in the Middle Ages. There were quite a few of them – perhaps enough for several crosses. A particularly precious fragment found its way into the possession of the post-crusader kingdom of “Cyprus and Jerusalem” in the mid-14th Century. By that time of course, it was only Cyprus, as Jerusalem had been lost to the West for all practical purposes almost two hundred years earlier.

Cyprus itself became an effective Venetian colony, through some typically tough Venetian realpolitik involving a young Venetian lady named Caterina Cornaro, who became Queen of Cyprus. Hers is a sad and romantic story, and I should write a separate post about her one day. But one of the items of treasure which found its way from Cyprus to Venice in that period was the fragment of the True Cross, which in 1369 was donated to one of Venice’s religious-commercial brotherhoods, in this case the Scuola of St John the Baptist.

Soon after its arrival in Venice, the relic in its elaborate reliquary was being taken through the streets for public veneration in its annual possession. Unfortunately, as the procession crossed the bridge over the San Lorenzo Canal, it fell in the water. Various members of the scuola dived in after it, but the relic mysteriously evaded efforts to retrieve it, until the head of the scuola himself entered the water.

As miracles go, it doesn’t seem to have involved a conspicuous suspension of the laws of nature, but an attested miracle associated with a relic was thought for obvious reasons to confirm the relic’s authenticity. So a miracle it became.

A century and a bit later, the scuola commissioned a series of paintings from leading artists of the day, including Perugino and Carpaccio, of miracles attributed to the True Cross. Gentile Bellini (1429-1507) got the commission for the San Lorenzo incident. In the picture below you can see the procession, halted on the bridge, the unsuccessful rescuers sloshing about in the canal, and the head of the brotherhood holding up the relic. To the right, an African, possibly a domestic servant, prepares to jump in and help, and the praying lady in black at the far left is thought to be Queen Caterina.

San Lorenzo Bellini — The Miracle of the True Cross at Ponte San Lorenzo by Gentile Bellini. Source: Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge).

Now leave the Accademia with the picture fixed firmly in your mind, or even better, buy a postcard of it in the gift shop for reference purposes. Head eastward, past the Piazza San Marco, crossing a couple more canals, until you get to the Rio Di San Lorenzo. Cross the canal at the Ponte dei Greci, stop halfway across, and look north. That is where I took the photograph below, approximately 520 years after Bellini painted it. But it is recognisably the same place!

Ponte San Lorenzo from Ponte dei Greci. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

There are a couple of nice canal-side trattorie by the bridge; after your exertions you could do worse than stop there for an Aperol Spritz and imagine Bellini’s scene around you.

Graffiti was a problem a thousand years ago too.

After your drink, keep going in the same direction, away from St Mark’s and towards the Arsenale. This famous shipyard, the name of which became synonymous with military industry, was the wonder of its age, in which a ship could be rapidly built to a standard pattern. On one famous occasion a visiting King of France was shown the laying of a keel first thing in the morning, and the completed and fully-crewed ship sailing out through the gate that same evening. These ships were used for trade in time of peace, but could be rapidly converted for war, giving Venice access to a sizable fleet when it was needed, without the expense of maintaining it when it wasn’t.

We’ll come back to the Arsenale, but first I should mention another Venetian habit. Since Venice adopted St Mark as its patron, the evangelist’s symbol of the winged lion became Venice’s symbol. It is everywhere in the Veneto, and I still remember the thrill I felt on my first visit when I saw my first winged lion – albeit somewhat prosaically on an overpass as the emblem of the regional motorway maintenance organisation.

Venice itself has stone lions by the hundreds, many locally carved and resting their right paws on a book with the words spoken to St Mark by an angel: “Pax tibi Marce, evangelista mea” (Peace unto you, Mark, my evangelist). One of the fiercest-looking lions is on the gate of the Arsenale, in one of the first pieces of Renaissance architecture in the city, executed by the artist Gambello in commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 (the Renaissance came late to Venice). Famously it doesn’t feature “Pax tibi…” as those words were felt a bit too pacific for such a martial institution.

But not all the lions were home-grown. As Venetian merchants roamed the Middle East, they developed the habit of souveniring any stone lions they came across. Some were much older than Venice. The lion on top of one of the two columns by the Doge’s Palace came from ancient Persia, although the wings were added after its arrival in Venice.

One such peripatetic lion, which ended up as one of a group outside the Arsenale gate, arrived in Venice from the Athenian port of Piraeus in 1687, during the campaign in which a Venetian cannon ball blew up a Turkish ammunition dump, unfortunately located in the Parthenon. But the lion was extremely ancient even then, having guarded Piraeus since antiquity.

Arsenale lion — Lion outside the Arsenale, originally from Piraeus. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

On arrival it was seen to have some strange characters – not Greek – engraved on its flanks. These remained a mystery until a visiting Danish scholar in the 19th Century recognised them as Norse runes. They turn out to have been carved on the instructions of a Norwegian mercenary called Harald the Tall who fought in various Mediterranean campaigns in the 11th century, and who died in 1066 fighting the Saxons at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, just before the Battle of Hastings. The inscription records the fact that Harald had captured Piraeus, and mentions the activities and locations of various of his companions.

Arsenale lion runes — Norse runes on the side of the lion. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

At this point I can do no better than to quote from Jan Morris’s Venice:

“And on the right haunch of this queer animal is inscribed, in the runic: ‘Asmund engraved these runes in combination with Asgeir, Thorleif, Thord, and Ivar, by desire of Harald the Tall, although the Greeks on reflection opposed it.’ What all this means, only the lion knows: but modern scholars have interpreted its general sense as implying that Kilroy, with friends, was there.”

It is almost too much for the history enthusiast to take. Ancient Greece! Viking Mercenaries! The Battle of Lepanto! You probably need another drink and a bit of a sit-down. Fortunately there is another trattoria opposite the Arsenale gate.

August 22, 2020November 19, 2023

Reasons to be Thankful

On a hillside in Umbria, a quiet chapel contains countless tiny memorials to deliverance from peril – the ex-votos of the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni.

An ex-voto is a votive offering in thanks for divine intervention. It might take the form of a small model of a body part that was afflicted by disease or injury, or a picture of an incident in which someone was was healed, or injury or death was averted. It might even take the form of a motorcycle helmet that had protected the wearer in an accident. These tend to be found in chapels, churches and cathedrals in Italy. In the case of pictures, the interceding saint is usually shown as well. Frequently the letters P.G.R. appear, short for per grazia ricevuta – “by grace received”, or “for favours received”.

That this is deep-rooted in our culture is shown by the large number of votive objects that have been recovered from wells and springs known to have been sacred to pagan deities or demigods (and for that matter, have you ever thrown a coin in a wishing well or fountain?). The continuation of this practice into the Christian era has been described as the pragmatic appropriation of pagan practices by the early Church, in the same way that they built churches on the site of pagan temples. But if it is such a fundamental impulse, it may be that people were going to do it anyway, whatever the church fathers thought.

I’ve wanted to do a post on ex-votos for a while, but a couple of things have inhibited me. One reason is that if I put phrases like per grazia ricevuta in these articles then various algorithms will group this site with religious websites, which is already happening due to some of the historical, artistic and architectural subjects I have covered. So be it, but I fear that those who come across this site by that route will be disappointed.

A more important reason for caution is that I am worried that any treatment of this subject will come across as condescending. And it is hard not to smile indulgently when you see an ex-voto of a child surviving a fall from a merry-go-round through divine intervention, like this one in a museum in Taormina in Sicily.

You can find votive pictures like these in many museums and galleries across Italy, typically folk museums and small municipal galleries, and of course the churches in which they were originally displayed. Most of the pictures which accompany this post are from a particular church – the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni in Umbria. It is located south of Perugia, in rolling hills which descend to the middle Tiber valley, just near the town of Deruta. The name “dei Bagni” apparently refers to mineral springs nearby.

The story of the sanctuary’s origin is that in the early 17th Century a wandering Franciscan friar found a pottery fragment depicting the Virgin and Child lying in the road. He picked it up and placed it reverently in a young oak tree. Over the following decades the tree grew around the image and fixed it in place, making a natural version of a roadside shrine. Travellers who prayed there, either to seek divine assistance, or to give thanks for assistance received, would often have left ex-votos.

It is the proximity to Deruta that makes this place special. Then as now, Deruta was a centre for glazed pottery, and not surprisingly one of the things that Deruta’s potters would make you was an ex-voto illustrated to your requirements. Traditional Deruta ware, with its folk designs and its cheerful primary colours, is not much in fashion at the moment, as it doesn’t really go with contemporary design taste. But one thing you can say about it is that kiln-fired and glazed ceramic is a good deal more durable than pictures painted on bits of wood. The style and appearance of the pictures have changed little over the centuries – for they are still being offered by the faithful. In deference to the story of the origin of the sanctuary, the image of the Virgin and Child in the pictures appears in an oak tree.

In 1687 the present church was built to house the shrine and growing collection. Since most of the pictures bear dates, many can be seen to predate the building of the church, and perhaps even started their lives attached to that oak tree.

Santa Maria dei Bagni — Behind the altar at Madonna dei Bagni. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Behind the altar, behind a pane of glass, a piece of oak is preserved. It would be wonderful if it were from the original tree of the story.

This man, being possessed, was liberated by recourse to the Blessed Virgin, 1678. Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni, Deruta. Phone camera (click to enlarge).

These days the main road is the busy E45 motorway, and the trucks that thunder through its concrete channel are thankfully a bit further away from the church than the old road.

As you look at the illustrations you will be struck by how the details remind you that these are real things that happened to real people.

Giovanni Bresciano is attacked by corsairs, 1551. Church of Saints Vittore and Corona, Feltre, Veneto. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

As I said, it is hard not to smile indulgently at some of these, and feel a bit superior when seeing mental illness ascribed to demonic possession, and recovery from it attributed to miraculous intervention.

For five years, this woman was tormented by four spirits that were telling her to drown herself, 1668. Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni, Deruta. Phone camera (click to enlarge).

Or at the modern kid on the motor scooter who has had an accident when racing the traffic lights (honest officer, the light was still amber, just look at this ex-voto). Other contemporary disasters include car accidents, close encounters with trains, and the crash of a light aircraft.

But then you might reflect that in some ways it is not the metaphysical explanation that is important. It is the fears and hopes and gratitude of real people that you are seeing recorded before you, whether it is the husband whose wife has survived a dangerous childbirth, or the wife whose husband has returned safe from the wars.

And if in that moment of empathy you find yourself wiping away a tear, then you might have just received your own gift of grace, in some sense.

_________________________________

Postscript: we returned to the Santuario in September 2022, and sure enough, found an ex-voto giving thanks for a family’s survival of the COVID pandemic.

April 13, 2020June 13, 2024

Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia

Renaissance Perugia was as violent and as full of art as was Florence. But it doesn’t occupy the same hallowed place in art history. One reason is that it is admittedly hard to compete with Donatello, Michelangelo and Botticelli. Another is that Florence (as part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany) stayed independent, more or less, up to the Risorgimento, and its rulers kept on collecting art, while Perugia finally fell to Papal domination and suffered an inevitable decline.

And a further subtle but influential reason is that the story of Italian Renaissance art which most of us absorb, from whatever source, is essentially that first told by a bloke named Giorgio Vasari in the 16^th Century. And old Giorgio, who was from Tuscany, was as parochial as any Italian. So to be admitted to membership of the pantheon he created in his seminal Lives of the Artists, it helped a lot to be Tuscan. Others tended to be damned with faint praise, even someone like Raphael, who had the poor judgement to have been born in Urbino and trained in Perugia, and who then compounded the offence by moving to Rome. And if other Italians weren’t good enough for Vasari, it’s not surprising that he understates the profound affect on Italian art of Flemish painters like Van Eyck.

Note: I had been contemplating writing this post for some time, but could not proceed because the Baglioni Chapel in Spello was closed for post-earthquake repairs for three years. The chapel reopened in late 2019 and I was able to take some photographs, but now I have the problem that a couple of the reference books I really ought to consult are in our bookcase in Umbria, and we are stuck in Australia because of the coronavirus. I might also need to revisit the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia to check a couple of things. So I’ve decided to forge ahead with what I have to hand and make a few sweeping assertions from memory. When in due course I can return to Italy and check those sources, I will update this post.

Note, May 2022. I am back in Italy now, but the gallery in Perugia is closed for renovation. I have at least managed to correct the attribution of the painting about Saint Bernardino, below.

Note, August 2022. The gallery is finally open again, and much improved by the renovations.

Perugia’s most famous painter was named Pietro Vannucci, but he is so closely associated with the place that he is referred to in art history as “Perugino”, which means “the guy from Perugia”. This is cause for a certain amount of resentment to this day in the place he actually came from, a town a bit further west near the border with Tuscany, called Città della Pieve.

Perugino was a major influence on what is often referred to as “The Umbrian School” of painting, with serene-looking saints and Madonnas in pastel colours set in idyllic landscapes. While most of his surviving pieces are frescoes, he was a pioneer of the use of oil paints in Italian art. It is one of the wonderful things about Umbria that you can stop at a local parish church and see, unprotected on the wall, a work of art that, were it to be the centrepiece of an exhibition in Australia, would be behind an inch of toughened glass and cost $50 to see.

Perugino – Adoration of the Magi (fresco), Church of Madonna delle Lacrime, Trevi, Umbria. Nexus 6P phone camera, perspective corrected in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

After beginning his career in Perugia – where he trained the young Raphael – Perugino worked in Florence and Rome before returning to his native Umbria. While in Florence he had a feud with Michelangelo which would have set Vasari even more against him (although the list of contemporaries with whom Michelangelo did not feud would be short). Vasari also accuses Perugino of atheism, for which there does not appear to be any other evidence.

Perugino is sometimes criticised for the uniformity of his work, and it is also true that some of his stuff, particularly the backgrounds, was probably done by his apprentices. But much of his work that survives was for local Umbrian churches. Compared to the sort of thing they might have been able to acquire before then, Perugino’s beautiful faces in beautiful landscapes, and his geometrically accurate perspective, would have been breathtakingly modern and exactly what they wanted their parishioners to see and be uplifted by. However as we shall see below, when working for a wealthy patron (and doubtless being paid accordingly) Perugino was capable of producing very individual pieces.

Now for the violence promised earlier. Even by the standards of those days, the Perugians were famously bellicose, having long-standing quarrels with many of their neighbouring towns. During the endless rivalries between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in the Middle Ages, those towns sometimes chose the opposite of whichever faction Perugia happened to adhere to at the time, just so they could be on the other side. When Perugia switched sides, so did they, in the other direction.

It cannot be unrelated that paintings of the era, whatever religious event was being depicted, often had bands of armed men or even acts of violence occurring elsewhere in the picture. The picture below, probably by Pierantonio del Niccolò del Pocciolo, is notionally about Saint Bernardino healing a young man who had been gravely wounded in an attack. But the attack takes up much of the canvas, with the saint and his patient visible in the distance through a window.

Bonfigli — Detail of “Saint Bernardino Restoring Giovan Antonio Tornano to Health After He Was Wounded in an Ambush” by Pierantonio del Niccolò del Pocciolo, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

In the 15^th and 16^th Centuries, the dominant family in Perugia was the Baglioni, whose behaviour sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, right down to one half of the family massacring the other half at a wedding. At this point I will quote from one of my favourite books on Umbria, the result of a collaboration between an excellent writer and an outstanding landscape photographer.

“Perugia’s story during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is almost a parody or a pastiche of our wildest fantasies of violence and passion in Renaissance Italy… The ne plus ultra of savagery, egoism and tyranny was reached with the rise, during the early 1400s, of the Baglioni family. Everyone was afraid of them, but even the many who hated them admired their physical courage, and their beauty was a legend throughout Italy. Where they walked, crowds gathered to marvel at their handsome faces and lofty stature. Their very names – Gismondo, Astorre, Grifonetto, Atalanta, Zenobia – have the dimension of romance. Many were put to death in the appalling sequence of murders and revenges known as il gran tradimento (‘the great betrayal’) which took place in 1500, when Grifonetto tried to wipe out his entire clan and was himself killed by order of his cousin Gianpaolo.” – Jonathan Keates, Philip’s Travel Guides – Umbria, 1991, with photography by Joe Cornish, p.52.

Gianpaolo Baglioni (1470-1520) was a condottiero (mercenary captain) and Lord of Perugia who, like several nobles in the Romagna, fought for Cesare Borgia on the grounds that it was better for them to be on his side than not. When it became obvious that being on his side was no protection from his ambitions, Gianpaolo and the others changed sides. Unlike most of the others, Gianpaolo survived the experience.

If you are visiting Perugia there are a great many excellent things to see – I shall make them the subject of another post one day – but one thing that no-one should miss is the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria which, not surprisingly, contains some fine specimens of the Umbrian School. One large and grand painting in oils is an Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Perugino. It is known to have been commissioned by the Baglioni family, and given both that and the very individualistic depictions of the three kings and their attendants, it has been plausibly speculated that they are actual portraits of members of the Baglioni. One youthful face at the far left of the group, looking straight out at the viewer, is thought to be a self-portrait by Perugino, and it certainly looks similar to an authenticated self-portrait of an older, pudgier Perugino in the Collegio del Cambio, just down the street.

Perugino Adoration — Perugino, Adoration of the Magi (oil painting), Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

In the detail below, it certainly looks as if the principal king is someone used to giving orders, and given that no-one else in Perugia would have been doing so at the time, the idea that these are indeed members of the Baglioni family is an attractive one.

Perugino adoration detail — Detail of Perugino’s Adoration of the Magi. Those depicted are believed to include members of the Baglioni family, with the exception of the young man in a red cap at the extreme left, thought to be a self-portrait of Perugino. Photographic data as above (click to enlarge).

The ancestral lordship of the Baglioni family included the pretty town of Spello, a bit further south from Perugia along the Central Umbrian Valley, between Assisi and Foligno. The old town spills down the hill towards the valley floor in a most picturesque way, and you get a delightful view of it to the left as you head down the SS75 towards Spoleto. It has nice restaurants and bars, some with excellent views of the gap in the mountains through which our old friend the Via Flaminia heads northeast.

One of the most remarkable places to visit in Spello is the Baglioni Chapel in the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The church was damaged in the 2016 earthquakes and only reopened in late 2019 – even then you had to pick your way through scaffolding to get to the chapel.

The chapel is decorated with frescoes by another painter of the Umbrian school – Pinturicchio, both a contemporary and student of Perugino. Naturally, that’s not his real name. He was born Bernardino di Betto, but was called Pinturicchio (“little painter”) because he was short, and he was a painter. Those names are so inventive, it beats me how they came up with them. But since he signed a couple of works with that name he was presumably at least resigned to it. He did quite a bit of work in Rome, and probably his most famous work is in the Piccolomini Library in the duomo of Siena.

Pinturicchio Annuciation — Pinturicchio, Annunciation, Cappella Baglioni, Spello. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c Digital Back (click to enlarge).

There are three superb frescoes by Pinturicchio in the chapel – an Annunciation, an Adoration of the Shepherds (with the Three Kings queueing up to wait their turn in the background) and a Christ at the Temple.

Pinturicchio Adoration — Pinturicchio, Adoration of the Shepherds, Cappella Baglioni, Spello. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c Digital Back (click to enlarge).

Off to one side in the Annunciation, Pinturicchio has included a framed self-portrait hanging on the wall of Mary’s cloister.

Pinturicchio Adoration detail — Pinturicchio, Adoration of the Shepherds (detail), Cappella Baglioni, Spello. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c Digital Back (click to enlarge).

The chapel was commissioned by the local bishop, Troilo Baglioni of that ilk. I have seen a reference to the commission supposedly having been to commemorate the end of the period of conflict within the family which featured the gran tradimento, and the dates would certainly fit. And there are features of the frescoes which further support the hypothesis – if you look past the beauties of the main subjects, in the background there is a Renaissance Italian countryside ravaged by war. Bands of armed men wander the countryside. On a distant hilltop a corpse hangs from a gibbet. It is beautiful, but there is a slightly nightmarish quality to it as well.

Pinturicchio Annunciation detail — Pinturicchio, Annunciation (detail), Cappella Baglioni, Spello. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c Digital Back (click to enlarge).

Many of the characters playing bit parts – shepherds, kings and the like – are depicted with such individuality that it seems almost certain that they are portraits of real people. And among the crowd observing Christ at the Temple, we find Troilo Baglioni himself. He may have been a churchman, but he was also a Baglioni, and in an age when bishops, cardinals and even popes led armies and despatched assassins (let’s face it, the Pope at the time was Alexander VI Borgia) Troilo looks like someone who could take care of himself.

Pinturicchio Troilo Baglioni — Pinturicchio, Christ in the Temple (detail showing Troilo Baglioni), Cappella Baglioni, Spello. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c Digital Back (click to enlarge).

Eventually the Baglioni fought each other to exhaustion, and in 1535 the Papacy saw its chance and took Perugia by force, beginning a period of severe authoritarian rule, and three hundred years of intellectual, economic and artistic impoverishment. There are other interesting stories to tell about Perugia, and more photographs to show, so this will not be my last post on the subject. (Note: it wasn’t. “The Buried Streets of Perugia” was added in June 2022.)

But standing before the Pinturicchio frescoes in the Baglioni Chapel in Spello (and the Perugino in the gallery in Perugia) is a many-layered experience. You are looking at art of great beauty and undoubted piety. But it also depicts real people who were players in desperate and violent personal and political dramas, and the landscapes in which they fought. And it was painted by people who were there at the time. And you are standing where they stood.

Note: in June 2024 we revisited the Baglioni Chapel, to find that the church management has imposed a ban on photography, probably related to the fact that there is now a souvenir shop next door. In any case, I feel I should point out that the photographs included here were taken before any restrictions were imposed.

January 31, 2020November 19, 2023

Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire

Ravenna contains some breathtakingly beautiful art and architecture, miraculous survivals of a fascinating period in Italian history – fifteen hundred years ago – of which relatively few artistic and architectural records remain elsewhere. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. For a while it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire, so if my previous post was not historical enough, this one should redress the balance.

Ravenna San Vitale — Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Hasselblad 500 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The Place

Ravenna is on the Adriatic, near the mouth of the Po. Just north of Rimini, it was on a major military route in antiquity. Not far away is the little river Rubicon which marked the boundary past which a Roman General could not approach Rome without Senate permission. When Caesar defied the senate and crossed the Rubicon, he remarked that the “die is cast” (alea iacta est). Ravenna was an important port, and shortly after he defeated Mark Antony and became emperor, Augustus built a separate military port in Classis (modern Classe), a mile or so to the south, from which Rome could project power into the northern Adriatic.

Over the centuries, silting of the northern Adriatic has moved the coastline a few kilometres east, where a modern industrial area has grown up. The port of Ravenna was a target for allied bombing in World War 2, and while some of the irreplaceable cultural sites in the old city were damaged or destroyed, it may be that the displacement of the coastline and the growth of the new town is what saved the others.

Capital of a Declining Empire

How did Ravenna come to be the capital? By the end of the 4^th Century, the Western Empire was at a tipping-point into terminal decline – economic, military and political. The frontiers were coming under pressure from increasing populations of “barbarians” – populations on whom Rome was becoming ever more dependent as a source of men for its armies. As agricultural productivity started to fall, the spread of a nasty new strain of malaria from Africa exacerbated the problem in the south, and the effects would eventually be felt through every tier of the economy.

The Eastern Empire, ruled from Constantinople, was where the action was. That left the West as the domain of the also-rans, and it showed. Most of the emperors of the West in the later 4^th Century were either gormless nonentities increasingly dependent on military strongmen, or the strongmen themselves overthrowing each other in regular coups d’état. They didn’t even spend much time in Rome – for much of the 4^th Century the effective capital of the West was Mediolanum (modern Milan).

Then in 402, after the Visigoths besieged Milan, the Emperor Honorius moved the seat of government down the Po Valley to Ravenna. The perceived advantages of the move were all military – the marshes surrounding it to the west should have been a defence against land attack. Since none of the barbarian nations had a navy worth the name, the military port at Classe would guarantee open supply lines to the Eastern Empire, and the Via Flaminia was an overland military route to Rome.

Goths and Arians

But the Western Empire had only 75 years or so to live. Rome was sacked by the Vandals in 410 (they simply bypassed Ravenna on their way south). In 476 the last western emperor – the derisively-nicknamed Romulus Augustulus (the little Augustus) – was deposed by one of his generals, the German Oadacer, who styled himself not Emperor, but King of Italy. Traditionally, historians like Gibbon marked this moment as the fall of the Empire. In fact, and to the extent that anyone in Italy at the time cared, the Western Empire was subsumed into the Eastern, and Oadacer, it seems, was careful to acknowledge the authority of the Emperor in Constantinople even though he was effectively independent. But the eastern Emperor Zeno cared, and he encouraged Theodoric, the Byzantine-educated leader of the Ostrogoths, to invade Italy and overthrow Oadacer in his turn. After inflicting a number of defeats on Oadacer’s forces across Northern Italy as far as Milan, Theodoric met Oadacer in Ravenna in 493. There, at a ceremonial banquet, Theodoric drew his sword and killed Oadacer with a single blow. Ravenna was henceforth the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy.

Which was a pretty big deal, and a more definitive break with the past than the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, whatever Gibbon might have said. For all his barbarian origins, Oadacer had led what was more or less a military coup by Rome’s own forces. Theodoric, by contrast, led not just an army but a people, who, like the Lombards and Franks that followed, formed part of the mass movement of peoples that marked the end of the classical period, and fundamentally changed the genetic, linguistic and artistic development of Italy.

The Goths were Arian Christians, deemed heretics by the Catholic Church (the final schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox branches of Christianity lay in the future). As with many such religious disputes, there was no real disagreement over anything in the gospels, or the central Christian message of redemption. The clash instead was between the complex theological arguments which had been erected on that simple foundation. And no question was more vexed than that of Christology – the nature of Christ. Was the Son of the same substance as the Father and co-eternal with Him (the Catholic position), or like any son, did he have his own separate existence, albeit partly divine (the Arian position)? From the former comes the recondite doctrine of the Trinity, and the latter, perhaps because it required fewer intellectual gymnastics, seemed to appeal to the Goths. However they were a tolerant lot and even when they ran the place they didn’t really mind what the Latins and Greeks thought, especially as they probably didn’t really care what all the fuss was about.

Ravenna Arian Baptistry — Arian Baptistry in Ravenna. Hasselblad 500 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

There are two great architectural relics of this particular period in Ravenna. The first is the Arian Baptistry, an octagonal building with elaborate mosaic decorations. On the ceiling there is a representation of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by St John the Baptist. To the modern eye, accustomed to conventional representations, there are some departures from the iconography to which we are accustomed. One is that Jesus is portrayed as a beardless youth. Another is that he is completely naked, rather than decorously draped. And the third is that the River Jordan is personified by a sort of pagan water spirit. (Edit: when I first published this post I speculated that these iconographic differences were “Arian” in character. However later we revisited Ravenna we saw the older Orthodox Baptistery and apart from the lack of a beard, it seems much the same.)

The second great relic from the Arian period is the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo. This is a church built by Theodoric in the early 500s as his palace chapel. It is a large, light, airy building with a great deal of wonderful mosaic decoration – including a Virgin and Child and processions of male and female saints. But given the history of the place, there are two decorations worth particular attention. One is a depiction of the Three Kings approaching the Infant Christ, and their extraordinary costume – bright red Phrygian caps and elaborately-decorated trousers. I’ve seen the costumes described as “to emphasise their oriental origins”, but also, much more appealingly, as “Gothic dress”. If the latter, then this would be such a rare thing – an illustration of how Gothic noblemen looked, by contemporary craftsmen competent enough to do so accurately. Also, despite what pasty-faced modern teenagers might think, it shows that Goths did not wear black.

Ravenna Sant Apollinare Nuovo — We three Goths of Orient are, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. Hasselblad 500 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

At the other end of the church, high up, are depictions of palace buildings, lined with arches. These arches once contained pictures of human figures, presumably Theodoric himself and other worthies. However at some later point, after the suppression of Arianism and possibly on the instructions of Pope Gregory the Great, the central arch was blanked out in gold, and the other arches were reworked with images of curtains, covering the figures in an attempt to remove them from history. It seems that the Catholics were less tolerant of the Arians than the Arians had been of them. But the craftsmen given the job were not terribly careful, and if you look carefully, in several places you can see the hands or fingers of the censored figures, like the spare foot of someone otherwise airbrushed out of a photograph of Stalin’s politburo.

Justinian and Theodora and the Exarchate

In 527 Justinian became Emperor in Constantinople. Probably the greatest emperor of the post-classical period, he came from humble origins in what is what is now Albania. Apart from a major codification of imperial law and an attempt to heal religious differences between Constantinople and Rome, for our purposes his principal achievement was the reconquest of Ostrogothic Italy.

Like many English-speaking readers, I first came across this bit of history in Robert Graves’s historical novel Count Belisarius, where we meet the noble and talented general of the title, the equally talented (but less romantic) general who followed him, the elderly eunuch Narses, and the Emperor Justinian and his Empress.

While Justinian was – to put it mildly – a strong personality, his choice of consort makes him look somewhat plain vanilla in comparison. The Empress Theodora was the daughter of a bear-trainer at the hippodrome, and as a young woman had been a performer in what might euphemistically be called a sort of cabaret. She added a distinct element of cruelty and ruthlessness to Justinian’s reign – and almost certainly was responsible for its longevity as well. Theodora was tailor-made to become one of Graves’s arch-villainesses, like Livia in I, Claudius. And as with Livia this is in part due to Graves’s desire to write as would a contemporary witness, and his use as a result of contemporary historians. In Theodora’s case the historian in question was Procopius (c.500-565) and he clearly hated both Justinian and Theodora, stopping at nothing if it would blacken their reputation. After quoting a particularly pornographic description by Procopius of one of the young Theodora’s theatrical routines, John Julius Norwich sums it up quite even-handedly, firstly by calling Procopius a “sanctimonious old hypocrite” who is clearly enjoying telling the tale, and secondly by observing that “Theodora was, as our grandparents might have put it, no better than she should have been. Whether she was more depraved than others of her sort is open to question.”

As a result of the campaigns of Belisarius and Narses, Ostrogothic Italy returned to Byzantine rule, and once again the choice of capital in the West fell on Ravenna, governed by an exarch or representative of the Emperor. But another invading people had arrived – the Lombards – and by the late 6^th Century they controlled considerably more Italian territory than did the Exarchate. Before long most of the Exarchate was absorbed into Lombard domains before they in their turn were conquered by the Franks.

During this tumultuous period, a rich citizen of Ravenna commissioned the building of the Basilica of San Vitale. It is a jewel-box of 6^th-Century architecture and decoration, and would be worth visiting just for that. But it contains two large mosaic panels, one of Justinian and his attendants, and one of Theodora and hers, completed in their lifetimes.

Justinian and attendants. Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Hasselblad 500 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

While it seems implausible that they actually sat for them, the individuality of these portraits, not just of the principals but of the other characters, and the force of personality they show, argues strongly that at some remove, they were based upon somebody’s actual observation of their subjects.

Theodora and attendants. Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Hasselblad 500 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The bald chap standing next to Justinian and identified as “Maximianus” was Bishop of Ravenna at the time and it must therefore be considered a likeness. The bearded fellow with a pudding-basin haircut, standing immediately to the left of Justinian, is someone I have seen identified as Belisarius, although most writers do not do so. To look into their faces across a gap of 1500 years is extraordinary. And it must be said that Theodora does not look like someone in whose bad books you would want to be.

In 787, two hundred and sixty years later, the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne visited San Vitale, and looked upon the face of Justinian. You can tell that he was impressed, because he used San Vitale as a model for his new imperial chapel at Aachen. Not only that, but the chapel at Aachen re-uses some columns scavenged from the ruins of other buildings in Ravenna.

Classe

At around the same time as San Vitale was erected, in the military port of Classe a large church was built and dedicated by Maximianus to his predecessor Saint Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna and Classe. The Church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, as it is called in Italian, now sits quietly some distance inland thanks to coastal silting, with no trace of the old port fortifications visible. Inside, the iconography is of the saint as a shepherd leading his flock.

The real genius of the artist was to place it all in beautiful green fields. It is a peaceful place to visit now, both outside and inside, and it must have been a peaceful place to sit when it was new, while outside empires fell and kingdoms rose.

A note on the photography

The best way to take photographs of things high up on walls is to get the building owners to let you build a scaffold to raise the camera to the same height as the subject. And you should use bright white photographic lighting to ensure you get true colour rendition.

Lacking the right sort of connections and equipment, I took all these from ground level and under the sort of tungsten lighting you normally get in these places. As a result they all had a “leaning backward” perspective and a strong yellow cast. I’ve tried to reduce both of these in Photoshop, by applying perspective correction and a slight blue filter.

The Serious Business of Dressing Up – Part II

Lest anyone need more evidence that dressing up to take part in historical festivals in Italy is taken very seriously, I provide the following exhibits.

Foligno, Giostro della Quintana 2019

The first four photographs were taken at the Giostro della Quintana (“Joust of the Quintain”) which has been held twice a year in the Umbrian town of Foligno since its revival in 1946. The joust (where mounted lancers try and hit a target on a rotating wooden dummy) is preceded by a parade in costume. I took these photographs in the park in which the participants were forming up.

Foligno is located, somewhat unusually for this region, on the valley floor rather than perched on a hilltop or halfway up the side of a mountain. That means it has spread out a bit and the outskirts are quite industrial (which also means it was bombed during the Second World War). So our visits to Foligno had been restricted to shopping trips to the outskirts, until friends recommended we take a look at the centre.

That turned out to be good advice. The centre of Foligno has lovely buildings, nice restaurants, and cheap parking. And being flat, you can wander around it with less effort than in most Umbrian towns. It also has a museum (the Palazzo Trinci) with extraordinary frescoes and a staircase that could have been designed by M.C. Escher. I plan a separate post on all that one day. Edit: I have now posted two articles on the Palazzo Trinci. You can find the first here and the second here.

My readers, being all very educated, will have noticed that the Renaissance costumes in these photographs are consistent in both period and authenticity, unlike in some festivals where the concept of – say – “medieval” can be a bit elastic, as is how the participants’ trousers are held up . This consistency is not the result of careful selection of the photographs; they are all consistently based on Renaissance originals, and consistently this good.

You can find more on the actual joust here.

Todi, La Disfida di San Fortunato 2019

The remainder of these photographs were taken at the annual festival of the patron saint of the town of Todi, also in Umbria. I wrote about the 2018 festival here. The grand parade in Todi is preceded by various events, including an archery competition between the town districts, flag-tossing, and a competition between drumming groups from various towns in the region.

Todi San Fortunato — La Disfida di San Fortunato, Todi 2019. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Some of the drumming groups were very good indeed, but the prize went to the local team (admittedly a popular decision).

Although some Renaissance (and later) themes appear in the parade, here the emphasis is on the medieval, and specifically the High Middle Ages, because let’s face it, the costumes were more fun then than earlier.

San Fortunato Todi — La Disfida di San Fortunato, Todi 2019. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

However just because the costumes are a bit flamboyant, that does not mean that the participants are not extremely serious about it.

Indeed, sometimes it seems that there is an inverse relationship between the exuberance of the costume and the demeanour of its wearer.

There is one group of participants who have trouble maintaining the regulation straight face, and that is the children, because they are all having such tremendous fun.

September 21, 2019November 2, 2024

Piazza Armerina, Morgantina and Siracusa

Piazza Armerina

Ragusa is an excellent base from which to visit three very ancient sites – Piazza Armerina with its Roman villa, the ancient Greek city of Morgantina, and of course Siracusa (Syracuse).

From Ragusa we made a trip almost into the centre of Sicily to visit the town of Piazza Armerina. According to our guide book this town was settled by Lombard troops of the Norman King Roger II – according to other sources the Lombard settlers were brought in by King William II after the area was depopulated. Either way, the local population is supposedly therefore fairer in complexion than most Sicilians and speaks a distinct dialect. We didn’t see much evidence of this. I did see a bus full of fair-haired people speaking a distinct dialect but Lou suggested that they were more likely to be German tourists.

The interior of Sicily is the region of Latifundi – vast estates growing grain, worked in antiquity by slaves, then serfs, and later tenant farmers and landless labourers. Even though legally free, the farmers were kept in extreme poverty, which led to all sorts of social ills, not least the Mafia which by some accounts originated as a self-help system for those without any other means of redress against the power of the landowner and the state. Astonishingly, the Latifundia system operated continuously under the same name in Sicily and Calabria from Roman times until after the Second World War. When the estates were compulsorily acquired by the state for redistribution in the 1950s, the compensation paid to the owners was reportedly based – in a rare instance of official humour – on the productive value of the land nominated by those owners in their previous tax returns, which needless to say was not very much¹.

The effect of centuries of this system on the cultivated and settled landscape is clear – unlike elsewhere in Italy where every hill has a village or small town on top and scattered farmsteads in between, in central Sicily the population is concentrated in larger villages and towns, from which they had to walk long distances to work in the fields. Between the towns the landscape, planted with grain, looks as sparsely-populated as Kansas or southern New South Wales, if hillier than either.

Anyway, the reason we were here was to visit the ruin of a Roman villa. Not just any villa, but a very substantial one which may at one stage in its existence have been a country retreat for the Emperor Maximian, or perhaps just a wealthy noble landowner, but parts of which date variously from the 2nd to the 4th Centuries AD. Towards the end of the Roman period the archaeology shows evidence of the troubled times with the thickening of the external walls for defensive purposes, and partial destruction during the period of the Vandal invasion in the 5^th Century. After the Roman period it survived in increasing disrepair until it was covered by a mudslide in the early Middle Ages and not properly explored till the 1920s. Excavations are still in progress.

What makes it famous is the extraordinary mosaics. To the best of my knowledge there are none like these anywhere, not in Pompeii, not in Herculaneum, and it is not just the number of them, but the size and above all the workmanship. The closest thing we have seen is in Aquileia, right at the other end of the country. There are scenes of hunting, scenes of legionaries capturing exotic animals in Africa and shipping them to Rome, mythical scenes and – most famously – the soft-porn scenes of young ladies in bikinis taking part in various sports including what looks like beach volleyball. Whoever lived out in the sticks here could clearly afford to bring skilled craftsmen and expensive materials from a long way away.

The villa is famous for the number of its tourists so to beat the crowds we had set out quite early and got there not long after opening time – so early were we that most of the tents selling souvenirs were not even open. It is an archaeological excavation in progress so there is no guarantee what will be open but most of it seemed to be. We got round the site while very few other people were around but as we left the tour buses were starting to roll up, filled with the descendants of Roger’s troops, or perhaps Germans.

Morgantina

From Piazza Armerina we went to another ancient site – much older and far less crowded. It is a Greek city called Morgantina, dating from the 5th Century BC, but formerly a settlement of the pre-Greek Sicel people after whom Sicily is named. There’s not a lot left, but enough to work out where the centre of town was, and where the citizens met in the agora. The theatre is fairly well-preserved, and the bits of the theatre that weren’t preserved have been restored.

In the many wars during the period of Greek settlement Morgantina seems to have generally sided with, or been a vassal-state of, Syracuse (see below). In the Punic Wars Morgantina, like Syracuse, took the side of Carthage against Rome. It seems to have been abandoned by the First or Second Century AD. It was also the source of a grape variety from which a highly-regarded wine was made, and it would be nice to think that some of modern Sicily’s unusual grape varieties were its descendants.

Unlike the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, which is in a small valley, Morgantina is on a mountain top. Presumably, given their proclivities for fighting each other, the Greeks chose such spots for defensibility, but it must be admitted that it gave them some tremendous views.

From Morgantina we headed to the nearby town of Aidone (on another mountain top) in search of lunch. Here we managed to demonstrate that it is actually possible to find a bad meal in Sicily. We followed signs to a restaurant which turned out to be in a small hotel. We stuck our heads in, didn’t see anyone and headed out again, when an old lady appeared, asking if we wanted to eat, smiling and beckoning. By that stage it would have been rude to demur, so we accepted, which we then had plenty of opportunity to regret. I’ll spare you the details, but when the meal eventually appeared it had mostly come out of jars and the cost was €40, which was exorbitant by local standards for what we got. Needless to say we ate alone.

Siracusa

The following day was another long-distance effort, when we got up early and drove to Siracusa. Yes, this is the Syracuse of antiquity, for a few hundred years an independent Greek city-state, home to Archimedes and the focus of stubborn if ultimately unsuccessful resistance to Rome during the Punic Wars.

The old city of Syracuse was on the island of Ortigia in the harbour – easily defended and the site of a copiously-flowing freshwater spring which still flows into the harbour today. It is called the fountain of Arethusa and needless to say there is a mythological story to explain it. Like most nymphs, it would seem, Arethusa was beset by the unwanted attentions of another god or demigod. In this case it was a river god, and when Arethusa turned herself into a spring to get away from him, he turned himself into a river and his waters mingled with hers, thus ensuring he got his wicked way with her after all. In hindsight the turning-into-a-spring strategy was probably flawed.

As a child, I read about Greek myths in Look and Learn magazine and illustrated encyclopaedias. To the extent that I thought about it at all I thought that the Greek myths took place in what we now think of as mainland Greece, Crete or the Aegean. But Sicily was then part of the Greek world and it seems that several mythological or heroic episodes were explicitly understood to have happened there. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades at a lake in central Sicily. The Cyclops, in particular Polyphemus who gave Odysseus such a hard time, lived on the east coast. Scylla and Charybdis (Odysseus again) were on either side of the strait of Messina. Perhaps Sicily had a place in the general Greek imagination a bit like the Wild West in the 19th Century – a real place, but far away enough to be exotic.

Back to the present. These days Siracusa is a pretty big town with a fair bit of industry on the outskirts but it has done well to protect the historic centre on the little island of Ortigia. The town was pretty badly bombed in 1943 but most of Ortigia survived. The Siracusan town authorities have done what the better-advised tourist towns in Italy have done: they have not only restricted traffic in the historic centre – easy enough – but they have built a large parking garage on the edge of Ortigia and run a free bus shuttle from it into the centre. According to the guide book the parking used to be free as well but in these tough times that couldn’t last. However to park there for a day will not cost you much.

Once in the centre of Ortigia we got our bearings and headed straight for the cathedral. In an Italian town or city the cathedral is almost always called the “duomo”, and there is almost always a Piazza Duomo in front of it and in that piazza there is almost always a Cafe Duomo. Lou has a theory that this will always be one of the better cafes in town, on the grounds that to have grabbed the name they will have had to be in existence for quite a long time. Anyway there is only one way to test this theory empirically so we had a coffee and a pastry each.

Thus fortified we headed into the duomo which is a quite extraordinary building. The façade facing the street is conventional baroque, but inside, or on the outer side wall, something much more complicated appears. Not only has there been a Greek temple, a Byzantine church, an Arab mosque and then a Catholic church on that spot since 480 BC or so, but elements of most of those are still present. In particular, the columns that supported the original temple of Athene are still incorporated into the walls. Also, as was the case with the duomo in Cefalù, some brave soul took the wise decision to strip off the rubbishy baroque accretions from the interior and as a result the church has regained much of its nobility. We thought it very good indeed.

After the duomo the next church we wanted to see wasn’t open so we walked around the edge of Ortigia then cut back into the middle and went into the church of Santa Lucia. This is supposedly on the site of the martyrdom of said saint, but the main attraction for us was the altarpiece which is a large painting of “The Burial of Santa Lucia” by Caravaggio, done in atonement for one of his many run-ins with the authorities.

After spending some time there we visited another Sicilian cultural icon – a museum of puppetry. Sicily has a long history of puppet theatres which provided entertainment to people who had no other alternatives, and these theatres, amazingly, survived well into the 20^th Century. As a result, when the inevitable revival came along, it wasn’t the resurrection of a culture that had completely died and which needed to be reconstructed from books, but the reinvigoration of something whose original exponents were still living.

The fascinating thing about these puppet theatres is how formulaic but historic the stories are. They are a mixture of historical characters (the Norman Count Roger defeating the Saracens, for example) and stories from Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” which in turn is derived somewhat loosely from the Song of Roland. So there are lots of knights, Saracens, giants, dragons, beautiful maidens, beautiful maidens disguised as knights, and so on.

Many of the same scenes were portrayed on the sides of the traditional brightly painted donkey carts which alas have now largely been replaced by little “Ape” two-stroke three-wheel trucks (but whose owners occasionally show a similar flair for decoration, happily).

Puppets with cart. HTC phone camera (click to enlarge).

Note¹: I can’t remember where I read this but if I manage to track down the reference I will update the post.

September 13, 2019November 19, 2023

Puglia and the Salentine

Puglia feels different: the terrain, the climate and the culture. The Apennines sweep down the entire length of peninsular Italy but when they get to the bottom they turn west and run down to the “toe”. Puglia, on the Salento peninsula – the “heel”- is bypassed by the mountains and is comparatively flat. I read somewhere that geologically Puglia is not really part of Italy but is joined to Albania, which isn’t far away – you can see it on the other side of the Adriatic on a clear day. Puglia is very fertile – at least it is now. The climate is hot and dry, but a large-scale irrigation scheme in the Fascist era brought water down from the mountains in Abruzzo and agriculture was transformed. That being said, some of the very ancient olive trees you see in Puglia clearly pre-date the coming of irrigation by hundreds of years.

Sadly, these olive trees are currently threatened by the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium, although there have been reports that some varieties may be resistant to the infection.

To my Australian tastes the intensely-flavoured red wines of the region made from grape varieties such as Negroamaro, Primitivo and Aglianico are very good, and excellent value.

In the last ten years or so Puglia has been well and truly discovered by northern Europeans and especially Brits, assisted by direct flights into Bari. This has driven property prices up and earned it the ironic name “Salentoshire” (cf. the “Chiantishire” of twenty years ago).

The towns look like nowhere else in Italy: either white-painted and looking like they belong in the Aegean or North Africa, or in the larger towns, with buildings made of the most fantastically-carved sandstone. In a small area around the town of Alberobello you also get the famous cone-shaped huts called trulli.

We visited Alberobello to see the trulli – not to do so would be like visiting Pisa and skipping the leaning tower – but it was a very touristy experience with many of the trulli on the main street having been converted to souvenir shops selling snowdomes and fridge magnets. By ducking into a doorway we just avoided being accidental extras in a Japanese TV travel show. The best place to see trulli is out in the countryside, where a reasonable number still survive.

We were staying in the town of Ostuni. Its Greek origins are clear from the name: it is from Αστυνέον or “new city”– Latinised as “Astynéon” (at some point the stress moved to the first syllable in Italian). It has to be one of the classic Pugliese views – a snow-white town sitting on its hill a few kilometres from the coast, with the coastal plain beneath it covered with olive groves and dotted with masserie all the way to the horizon.

To be in the centre of Ostuni is a delight – little winding streets in among all the white houses, leading up to a gorgeously-carved duomo at the top of the hill. Nearby were a caseificio from which we could buy fresh burrata and mozzarella, and a bakery. We were there on Easter Sunday and after mass the families came out with their children dressed in white and took them to buy gelato as a reward for being good during the service.

It is quite common to find reputable travel guides and online publications ascribing the “Greek look” to the fact that this region was settled by the Greeks in antiquity, and formed part of Magna Graecia. With all respect, this sounds like rubbish to me. Partly because it was a very long time ago indeed (starting from the 8^th Century BC in fact) and other parts of Magna Graecia like Sicily and Naples do not show any such influence. Secondly because if there were to have been a period of Greek influence, it is far more likely to have been when this area was last under Byzantine rule in the 9^th-11^th centuries AD – much more recently. But it could also be a matter of simple proximity to Greece.

So what is the history of Puglia like? Complicated, is the answer. The Greek colonists arrived in the 8^th Century BC, fought fiercely with each other, but largely co-existed with the pre-existing Messapian people. In 216 BC Apulia, as it was then called, was the location of the second catastrophic Roman defeat by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae. The city-states of Apulia were gradually absorbed into the Roman state, particularly after the so-called “Social Wars” of around 90 BC.

After the fall of the Western Empire, Apulia was overrun by the Goths, then reconquered by the Byzantines, conquered by the Lombards, ravaged by the Saracens, reconquered by the Byzantines again, then taken, in the 11^th Century, by our old friend the Norman adventurer Robert “Guiscard” de Hauteville from whom it passed to his nephew Roger as part of a unified “Kingdom of Sicily”. You can read more about Robert and his family in my post on Norman Sicily.

After the extinction of the male line of the Hauteville dynasty, the kingdom passed through Constance de Hauteville to the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperors in the person of Constance’s son, the polymath Frederick the Second (Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world). For Frederick, Apulia seems not to have been just a part, but the heart, of his domains. Although he grew up in Sicily and spent his early manhood in Germany, he publicly announced his choice of Apulia as his favourite place to live. Praise for one’s home region or province or town is the way to the Italian heart and so the Pugliese have returned the compliment and to this day regard him as very much one of their own.

After the Hohenstaufens came the Angevins from France and then the Aragonese from Spain, and the realm became known as the Kingdom of Naples. In due course the kingdom was inherited by a minor branch of the Bourbons in whose hands, apart from a couple of interruptions caused by Napoleon, the kingdom remained until Garibaldi’s astonishing campaign delivered it to the House of Savoy and it became part of united Italy in 1861. The later stages of Bourbon rule got quite a bad press in the rest of Europe. Some of it was deserved, as occasional experiments in liberalisation were regularly followed by periods of drastic conservative overreaction and oppression. Banditry was rife. Some of it was less deserved, as the cause of Italian unity had been embraced by liberal thinking, especially in Britain, and all such stories need their villains.

I intend to write further on this period but it will have to wait for another visit to Naples after which I will have some more photographs to go with it.

To the legacies of all these dominant cultures must be added the effects of external forces. Saracen raids over centuries led to the construction of coastal watch towers, and rural populations tended to group together in fortified farmsteads called masserie. Both add a characteristic look to the landscape (these days, many masserie have been renovated as agriturismi and resort accommodation).

Torre Nasparo, one of the ruined watchtowers on the Salentine Coast. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

As the Ottoman Empire advanced through Greece and the Balkans in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries, some groups of Greek and Albanian refugees emigrated to Puglia and lived in villages where forms of Greek and Albanian were spoken until very recently.

As in Sicily, the main architectural legacy of the Normans is in the form of massive Romanesque cathedrals, such as that in Bari. Frederick II left many castles, the most famous being the celebrated octagonal “Castel del Monte”. Later, under Bourbon rule, the exuberant carved decoration on buildings in towns like Lecce added a unique local flavour to the baroque style.

Baroque goes berserk in Lecce – Basilica di Santa Croce. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Altogether the effect, as in Sicily, is of the sort of layer-cake of cultures that causes the classier sort of travel writer (ahem) to use the word “palimpsest”.

For English-speakers, one of the other famous castles in Puglia is the one in Otranto – rather by accident, it turns out. In 1786 Horace Walpole created the “gothic” literary genre with his novel The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story. However Walpole had never been there, and picked the name from a map because he liked the sound of it (ensuring that generations of English speakers have mispronounced the name: as with Ostuni, the accent is on the first syllable). Walpole later admitted that at the time he didn’t even know whether the town possessed a castle. It does, and there are some excellent views from the battlements.

Also worth a visit is the cathedral which has an extraordinary early-medieval mosaic floor showing a “tree of life”, which in addition to depicting the conventional bible stories, shows various endearing mythological creatures and references to the story of King Arthur. The cathedral also contains a grim memorial containing real human skulls – in 1480 the town was taken by the Ottomans as the first step in a campaign intended to conquer Rome. Around 800 people were decapitated after refusing conversion to Islam. The Ottomans held the town for a couple of years before abandoning the campaign.

Otranto is quite close to the bottom of the Salentine Peninsula and it was a short but very pleasant drive down the coast along clifftops covered in spring flowers to the Cape of Santa Maria di Leuca. On the way we passed a good many watchtowers, in varying stages of disrepair.

Clifftop flowers near Capo di Otranto. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

South of Otranto we stopped for lunch in a small place called Porto Badisco. There we found a little trattoria serving fresh sea urchins (“ricci”), a speciality of the season. You don’t actually eat the flesh of the sea-urchins – someone cuts them in half with shears and throws away the flesh. That just leaves the roe, which you scoop out with a plastic spoon. It tastes of the sea. Lou then had spaghetti with a ricci sauce and I had Polipo in Pignata, which is octopus in a tomato, potato, garlic and chili sauce. It was one of the most enjoyable meals we have eaten in Italy (not to mention one of the cheapest).

Trattoria Le Taiate — Trattoria “Le Taiate” in Porto Badisco. If you are visiting Otranto, then come here for lunch. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Polipo in Pignata. Canon digital pocket camera (click to enlarge)

Another characteristically pretty Pugliese town is Polignano a Mare. It sits on the edge of a low cliff over the Adriatic, and needless to say the seafood is excellent. We ate in a restaurant where the proprietor turned out to have fond memories of some years spent in Melbourne.

Not surprisingly, Polignano has been used as a location for a few films and TV series. Also not surprisingly, it has real estate agents whose window displays are in English, which gives you an indication of the prices.

September 9, 2019November 19, 2023

A Continuous String of Onions: Padua Market

In my post On the Pleasure of Old Travel Books I mentioned the writer H.V. Morton’s felicitous comment that the market at Padua was “obviously joined to the Middle Ages by a continuous string of onions”. What I did not mention at the time was that it is one of our favourite markets in Italy, more so even than Campo dei Fiori in Rome.

There are many good reasons to visit Padua, and in my view the principal one is to visit the extraordinarily beautiful Scrovegni Chapel with its frescoes by Giotto. But there is also the botanical garden, founded in 1545 by the University of Padua, part of the formalisation of the study of botany, and to house new specimens being brought to Europe from the New World and Asia.

Actually, most visitors to Padua are probably there to visit the Basilica of one of the most popular saints in the Catholic hagiography, Saint Antony of Padua. Outside the basilica you can see the magnificent bronze statue by Donatello of the condottiere Erasmo di Narni, known to history as Gattamelata or the “honeyed cat”.

And it’s just a really pretty place all round.

But for all its many attractions, we would never visit Padua without going to the market. Not only does Morton’s observation about the sense of historical continuity hold true, but the quality of the produce is outstanding, it sits under, and beside, an extraordinary medieval building called the Palazzo della Ragione (Palace of Reason), and it’s a great place for people-watching.

The market gets going very early and is a heaving mass of activity all morning. Then, after everyone has bought the ingredients for their lunch and is going home to cook it, a miracle happens. Within half an hour or so the shops under the Palazzo are shuttered, the stalls in the piazza outside are folded up and taken away, and before you know it the place is deserted and the sleepy afternoon sets in.

So here is a photographic tribute to the Padua Market.

Florist outside in the Piazza. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Under the colonnade in the Palazzo della Ragione. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The deserted Piazza delle Erbe, shortly afterwards. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Next to the market is a pleasant bar where we enjoyed an aperitivo. Later, while at the Basilica of St Antony, I realised that I had mislaid my combined walking stick and camera monopod. I hurried back to the bar, to find that they were keeping it for me behind the counter. When I rejoined Lou, she observed that its recovery was to be expected, because among his other portfolios, St Antony is the patron saint of lost property.

September 7, 2019February 3, 2025

Vanished Kingdoms

I’ve just finished a most interesting and thought-provoking book about European history: Vanished Kingdoms, The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies.

Davies is a proper historian with all sorts of professorships and fellowships to his name. While his academic background is conventionally English, he has specialised in Eastern Europe and holds an academic post in Poland.

The book is – not surprisingly – about states that no longer exist, starting with Gothic and Celtic kingdoms in the post-Roman period, and ending with the Soviet Union. Davies spends a lot of the book in Eastern Europe, not just because it is his area of expertise, I suspect, but because there are so many candidate states to talk about in the region.

That notwithstanding, of his fifteen case studies, three are of interest in varying degrees to the Italophile. The first is about Burgundy in its various forms from 411 to 1795. Although centred in modern-day south-eastern France and western Switzerland, it did at times extend into the Valle d’Aosta and western Piedmont. It contains an interesting discussion of the Franco-Provençal or Arpitan language, which I mentioned in my post on the Valle d’Aosta.

The second is about the House of Savoy, from their origins in the 10^th Century as counts of an Alpine fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire, all the way through to their becoming the ruling house of united Italy in 1860 and the eventual extinction of the monarchy after the referendum of 1946. Davies offers quite a neat summary of the diplomatic skullduggery that saw chunks of the kingdom of Piedmont handed over to France in return for Napoleon III’s support against Austria, justified by some very dubious “plebiscites”. All this was under the auspices of the Piedmontese prime minister, the extremely slippery Count Cavour. Now celebrated in every Italian town as an Italian patriot, Cavour was nothing of the sort. He was not terribly interested in the Risorgimento and saw it only as a vehicle for the expansion of Piedmont and the interests of the House of Savoy.

The third is about the period during the Napoleonic Wars when France occupied several Italian states and handed them out to new kings, queens, dukes and duchesses, mostly Napoleon’s brothers, sisters and in-laws. As Corsicans, the Buonapartes were of course more Italian than French. This was the period in which a significant amount of Italian art was stolen and taken to The Louvre, where most of it remains. Not surprisingly, this is a period that tends to be glossed over a bit by post-Risorgimento Italian historians, despite the fact that some aspects of French rule, particularly the legal code, did find their way into the modern Italian system in some form or another.

Despite the fascinating subject matter, there is an air of melancholy about much of the book, especially the Eastern European parts. One is accompanied by the ghosts of glittering aristocrats and vibrant folk cultures – Jewish, Catholic and Orthodox – now all gone.

But when it gets to the 20^th Century, the mood is positively sombre. The Germans – and even more so the Russians – didn’t just redraw borders. In the name of liberation, they exterminated and expelled populations, and then re-wrote history as if they had never existed. Davies relates visiting the modern Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg in East Prussia, a place of high culture and learning and the home of Immanuel Kant. Almost all the original population is gone, replaced by ethnic Russians. Davies writes of one such, a journalist, who says that at school her teachers told the students that Stalin liberated the city from the Nazis in 1945, but said nothing whatsoever of what might have gone before.

It was that gloomy anecdote which got me thinking. Even dabblers such as myself are fully aware of the old trope that “history is written by the victors”, and to an extent part of the fun is teasing apart the myth-making accretions of, for example, post-Risorgimento Italian historians, to reveal the truth underneath. But there is a truth underneath. An historical narrative coloured by the filter of a particular culture is not at all the same as a deliberate, systematic set of lies intended to keep people in servitude.

Davies makes a powerful point in the introduction. He studied under historians in Poland, who had spent their careers resisting such industrial-scale deceit purporting to be history, and as a result they had “a passionate belief in the existence of historical truth”. In other words, the more threatened objective truth becomes, the more you value it, and the less likely you are to deny it with silly semantic games. I wish some post-modernist academics in the Anglosphere would take a bit more notice of that.

The next post will be more Italian, and more cheerful.

August 20, 2019November 19, 2023

The Serious Business of Dressing Up

Watching one of the countless Italian events where people get dressed up in historical costume is great fun for tourists. But here’s the thing – most of the time they aren’t really doing it for you, they’re doing it for themselves.

Yes of course, events like the Palio in Siena are big tourist drawcards, but by all accounts the municipal rivalries on display are no less intense for that. And for every big event there are dozens if not scores of smaller local ones. Few are genuine survivals from antiquity, but many have been bolted on to things that are, such as the commemoration of a town’s patron saint, or a Good Friday recreation of the Passion.

Moreover, there seems to be a difference between the way these things are approached in Italy and in English-speaking countries. While living in England several years ago we saw an historical re-enactment which was clearly exemplary in its attention to historical detail – in costumes, weapons and military tactics. In Italy things can sometimes be a bit more approximate – the costumes worn by participants in a “medieval” festival might range from the 13^th to the 17^th Centuries.

But, with great respect to the English lot, they do seem to come from a more narrowly-defined (dare I say nerdy?) group than do their equivalents in Italy. In Italy you might find your neighbour – a carpenter during the week – walking solemnly along dressed in a monk’s cowl. Or the chap who wins the archery contest is the accountant who helps you work out your annual property tax. Or the gonfaloniere (banner carrier) in the parade is your plumber. Or the beautiful damsel in the flowing dress is the girl who serves your morning coffee at your favourite bar in the piazza. In other words, in Italy you get the sense that a broader section of the local community is involved. And thoroughly enjoying itself, to boot.

Here are four vignettes of this – one from Como in Lombardy, one from Rome, and two from Todi in Umbria.

Como, 2017

We had been staying in Cadenabbia, halfway up the lake, and had caught the hydrofoil down to Como for the day. The main object of the visit was the 11^th-Century Lombard-Romanesque Basilica of Sant’ Abbondio, which involved a pleasant walk through the length of the historic centre of Como.

On the way back to the ferry terminal we heard the characteristic sound of a group of drummers some way off, and before long we came across a group of drummers and sbandieratori – those people who do the complicated displays with flags, including tossing them into the air and catching them.

Como Sbandieratori — *Sbandieratori* in Como. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

They were accompanied by a leather-lunged individual who, in breaks between drumming and flag-tossing, announced the forthcoming highlights of the medieval fair that was on that weekend. He in turn was accompanied by a small serious-looking child in a white smock and skullcap, and large spectacles. The effect (hopefully intended) was of some sort of miniature Doctor of Physick.

The flag-tossers were not the most expert, and a couple of times had to run into the crowd to catch the flags before they landed on spectators, but no-one seemed to mind very much.

Buon Compleanno, Roma, 2015

We were making our way into the city from our digs in Trastevere, intending to visit the Aventine Hill (one of the Seven Hills of Rome^tm). On the way, near the church of Santa Maria in Cosmadin, I pointed to a crowd in the distance and observed that there seemed to be an awful lot of tourists down there. Lou’s eyesight was better than mine in those days and she thought that it looked more like some kind of political demonstration.

At that point we realised that it was at least seventy years since political demonstrations in Rome involved people marching in ranks wearing polished helmets, carrying weapons, and axe-heads in bundles of sticks. In fact, what we had stumbled on was the annual celebration of Rome’s traditional birthday. By tradition, Rome was founded on the 21st of April, 753 BC. That made the following Tuesday the 2768th birthday of the city. So instead of fascists (OK, some of them were being fascists but in the ancient sense) what we were seeing was a large number of historical re-enactment societies from all over Italy – and there are a LOT of them – descending on Rome to take part in a parade.

Centurion — A centurion. Google Nexus phone camera (click to enlarge).

Several of the societies clearly took it very seriously indeed. They had adopted the legion that was raised in their own area and had put enormous effort into authentic recreation of the armour and weapons of the era. Others were a bit – well – cardboard, but everyone was having a jolly good time.

There were lots of legionaries, chanting the Latin version of the Romans, united, will never be defeated, a fair few gladiators, a handful of foederati (barbarian allies), and lots of vestal virgins.

A group of senators dressed in their scarlet-trimmed white togas came past. I gave them an “ave” which they solemnly returned.

Festa di San Fortunato, Todi, Umbria, 2018

Saint Fortunatus is the patron saint of Todi. He seems to have been an historical figure, as he was a bishop of the town in the 6th Century who is said to have persuaded the invading Goths not to attack. On the other hand it is possible that they were just put off by the prospect of the long steep climb up from the Tiber Valley below, which is challenging enough for a Fiat Panda.

Falconry — A falconry demonstration. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

His saint’s day continues to be marked by religious observance in Todi, and there is no reason not to believe that the tradition has continued without interruption since antiquity. In recent times, the tradition has been augmented by a weekend of medieval high jinks including falconry demonstrations and an archery competition between the rioni or town districts, culminating in a grand parade.

Many of the groups in the parade were from other towns in the region, and as I said before, the definition of “medieval” was elastic enough to include costumes from eras up to the 17^th Century.

Some groups, in costumes that could have been painted by Rembrandt, looked so fine that I was prepared to forgive them the anachronism.

Several of the young women of Todi had obviously decided to go with a general medieval vibe over strict authenticity and rather than wearing long dresses, had opted for long tights and short tunics. After careful consideration, I was prepared to forgive them that as well.

Archery Competition and Sbandieratori, Todi, Umbria, 2019

Medieval archery has become quite a thing in Todi and in April there is a competition which attracts teams from all over Italy. Contestants move between various locations in the town, where they take part in different events – shooting at conventional targets, shooting at targets that move, shooting from moving saddles that mimic the movement of horses, and so on. You can see a video of the 2018 tournament here.

Todi Archery Festival — That little girl has just decided what she wants to be when she grows up. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

There is a medieval-themed market, some of which is just stalls selling the usual local produce with the stallholders in period dress, but some of which are selling “medieval” wares of varying degrees of authenticity.

Todi medieval market — Todi, Festa di San Fortunato. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

A group of drummers and sbandieratori is associated with the Todi archery group and they are very good.

Todi sbandieratori — Todi Sbandieratori. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The crowd favourites were three small girls who took part with special lightweight flags, and who took it all very seriously indeed. Each did a session with an adult (maybe her dad) in which they followed his movements with great concentration.

June 28, 2019March 24, 2025

Villas and Vistas in Tivoli

A while ago we took ourselves off for a short trip to Tivoli, just east of Rome. Tivoli is famous for the ornate Renaissance water gardens of the Villa d’Este – so famous as a place of refined pleasure that people everywhere appropriated the name. Hence the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, and various Tivoli theatres around the world. Apparently there is a suburb of Kingston, Jamaica called Tivoli Gardens which is ravaged by drugs and poverty, so the name didn’t always help.

Tivoli is one of the fortified towns on outlying hills at the base of the Apennines where the mountains run close to the coastal plain. They belonged to the various powerful Roman families in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and from time to time when a family’s fortunes were temporarily on the wane they would retreat to their town and put the fortifications to use defending against their rivals.

Much earlier, it was an independent Latin city in the early years of ancient Rome, and after its absorption into the Roman state it became a location where wealthy Roman families built villas.

Today, Tivoli is administratively and culturally part of greater metropolitan Rome. So the food is good and the traffic is crazy.

The Villa d’Este

To start with the gardens, then. These are attached to a large Renaissance palace called the Villa d’Este. The d’Este family were rulers of Ferrara in the region of Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy, quite a long way from Rome. The d’Estes and their close allies, the Gonzaga family of Mantua, always tried to ensure that at least one of their number held high office in the church, doubtless with an eye to influence in the Papal curia as their small states tried to maintain an uneasy semi-independence from Rome (which did them no good in the end, both states eventually being brought under direct Papal rule). To gain such advancement for their sons they dealt with the church more on a material than a spiritual basis, making monetary and military contributions as required.

The chap who built the Villa d’Este in Tivoli was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. He was actually a grandchild of the Borgia pope Alexander VI, being the son of Alexander’s famous daughter Lucrezia Borgia, who married one of the d’Este dukes, and who apparently doesn’t deserve the infamy inflicted on her by history. Unlike her brother Cesare, who absolutely does. Anyway, young Ippolito was clearly a talented little fellow who was marked for future greatness, being appointed (purely on merit, of course) as Archbishop of Milan at the age of ten. Ippolito grew up to be enormously wealthy, a cardinal and a generous patron of the arts.

He was very keen to become Pope, but kept missing out. As it transpired, he was a man out of his time. Enormously rich cardinals leading Lucullan lifestyles had regularly been waved into the papacy in former generations, not least because of the huge bribes involved. But Ippolito’s misfortune was to be around during the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent, and that sort of thing didn’t quite fit the zeitgeist. So after one of his failed attempts he was awarded a consolation prize in the form of the governorship of Tivoli, which ended up suiting him fairly well, although he kept nominating himself whenever there was a vacancy in the Holy See.

The visit begins in the Villa d’Este, through which most visitors sprint in order to get to the gardens, but if you want to see inside a 16th Century palace built and decorated by an extremely wealthy patron of the arts, this is the place for you. After descending a couple of floors and going through multiple frescoed rooms, you eventually emerge onto a terrace above the gardens, which descend down the side of a steep hill. Being at the foot of the Apennines, Tivoli has many rivers and springs and these were all harnessed by some very talented hydraulic engineers to feed an extraordinary number of fountains. After falling into disrepair in the 18th and 19th Centuries, most of the fountains have now been restored.

Tivoli Villa d'Este — Tivoli, Villa d’Este. The Rometta Fountain. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Looking down at the gardens from the villa I noticed that several picturesque areas were fenced off, which initially seemed a bit disappointing until I realised that this was actually a good thing. This way there would at least be a few places that were not swarming with elderly tour groups and people waving selfie sticks. There was even a picnicking mother-and-daughter pair who parked themselves right in the middle of the view of the main fountain. And I’m ashamed to report that overhearing them later, I realised they were Australians. Sorry about that.

Villa d'Este — Tivoli, Villa d’Este: Fontana dell’Ovato. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Time and again my attempts to get a decent picture were obstructed by couples grinning at their phones, or elegant young women making duck-faces while their obedient boyfriends took photos which would be critically reviewed, rejected, retaken, and resubmitted for approval. We even saw a young couple set their camera up and do a short dance routine. Presumably this will in due course be edited into a composite video taking in all the major tourist spots of Italy, and uploaded to YouTube. Fortunately in bright sunshine at ISO 100 you only need the narcissists to stay out of the way for 1/500 of a second at f/8.

After spending about an hour and a half in the villa and the gardens we made our way to a space above the main fountain where there is a hydraulic organ (meaning that air is forced through the pipes by water pressure) and which plays every two hours. The original seems to have been quite impressive with various mechanical effects, but having fallen apart long ago it was replaced this century by a completely new system which just plays music. However it does play actual Renaissance dance tunes by Susato and the like so one shouldn’t complain.

The Town

The town of Tivoli is pleasant enough, and occasionally one happens upon a view that seems strangely familiar. This is because Tivoli had a few ancient Roman remains lying about and was close enough to Rome to be visited frequently by 18th Century grand tourists. This in turn created a market for so-called veduta (or “view”) paintings and prints. The original veduta paintings were highly accurate representations of real scenes, like those of Venice by Canaletto. In places like Tivoli a distinct sub-genre emerged, which was of old ruins in romantic settings. Initially realistic, these quickly became even more romanticised at the expense of strict accuracy. You can see second-rate examples of such paintings by the score in provincial Italian museums in places where all the good stuff was pinched by Napoleon. A typical example might contain a ruined temple half-overgrown with ivy, with a broken column in front of it and in the foreground a lonely shepherd leaning on his staff, or a couple of blokes in tricorn hats, one gesturing with his stick to illustrate the vanity of human pride, or the transience of worldly glory, or something. This veduta genre was like statue-busking today; the first person to do it was very original, and most weren’t.

One such view of Tivoli can still be seen, and is where the Aniene river runs out of the Sabine Hills, down into a gorge and over a waterfall, past the remains of a Roman temple, variously described as “The Temple of the Sibyls” or “The Temple of Vesta”. Of course you have to mentally block out the hotels and bars in the frame, so you can see why the vedutisti painters took a few liberties.

Tivoli Temple of Vesta — Tivoli, Temple of Vesta (Temple of the Sibyls). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

The Villa di Bruto (Villa of Brutus)

As I said, during the classical period wealthy Roman families built villas in Tivoli. Our B&B had the grandiose name of “Antica Villa di Bruto” meaning “Ancient Villa of Brutus” but we had taken that with a pinch of salt. When we checked in, the chap who ran the place asked if we were interested in seeing some of the Roman remains in the grounds. We said yes out of politeness, expecting to see a few stones in the olive grove out the front. The next morning we were shown around by the manager’s brother, whose wife is the owner of the property.

The archaeological remains are extensive – they include large cisterns on which the present house is built, and, down the hill under the olive grove, extensive rooms and galleries. Much remains underground, and cannot now be excavated without state approval. Of what has been excavated over the past couple of hundred years, there is evidence that frescoes and statuary have been illegally taken. The olive grove that sits over the bulk of the remains is also pretty ancient – the oldest trees have very wide and gnarled trunks and look as if they had been drawn by Arthur Rackham. Our host estimated that the oldest are six or seven hundred years old.

Villa Bruto — Ancient olive tree in the grounds of the VIlla Bruto, Nokia 6.1 smartphone camera (click to enlarge).

There seems to be some historical basis for believing that the Villa was owned by the Brutus family, of which Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins, is the most famous. The attribution of the property to the Bruti is at least a couple of hundred years old as there is a fairly well-known print of the place dating from 1794 – doubtless drawn with the usual artistic license.

Villa di Bruto 1794 — “Villa di Bruto” as interpreted by the artist Albert Cristoph Dies in 1794 (click to enlarge).

The Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa)

About 5 kilometres down from the town of Tivoli, but before the hills descend fully to the coastal plain, there is a very large archaeological site called the Villa Adriana, which is the “villa” of the emperor Hadrian. I say “villa” in quotation marks because it covers about 80 hectares or 200 acres and was actually more like a small city. There were artificial lakes, fountains, temples, offices, baths and boulevards. There is an excellent model of the villa in the visitors’ centre and I include a photograph below. As you can see, it was a humble little place.

Villa Adriana Model — Model of the Villa Adriana, Nokia 6.1 smartphone camera (click to enlarge).

At a time when the standard treatment for a newly-discovered ancient marble statue was for it to be burnt for its lime content, it was actually a bit fortunate that the Villa Adriana started to be excavated when Ippolito d’Este was in charge, because he actually cared about antiquity, and was rich enough not to need the money to be had from recycling ancient remains.

Hadrian is of course known in the English-speaking world as the builder of Hadrian’s Wall (as defended by Parnesius in Puck of Pook’s Hill) but he was a prolific instigator of building projects all around the periphery of the empire. Unlike most of his predecessors, he often travelled to these remote provinces in person rather than taking reports from local officials. In doing so he appeared to apply a more consistent approach to the long-term defensibility of the Imperial borders.

Tivoli, Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

According to the sources quoted in Wikipedia, he was a keen architect himself and rated his own talents quite highly, so it seems more likely than not that the overall plan of the Villa Adriana, as well of the designs of the major buildings therein, bear his personal stamp.

The combination of the size of the villa and a surprisingly small number of visitors meant that it was less crowded than the Villa d’Este by a couple of orders of magnitude and we strolled around happily in the hot sun mostly by ourselves for a couple of hours.

I was speculating that the size of the place was due to the fact that when the Emperor was in residence, it would have been the de facto centre of government of the empire. So – a purpose-built place up in the hills, full of pretentious architecture and artificial lakes, populated by government officials who were forced to move there reluctantly from the real city. “Just like Canberra then” said Lou.

June 7, 2019November 19, 2023

Carsulae: On the Legions’ Road to Rimini

I’d been meaning to visit the ruins of the ancient town of Carsulae for almost a year. It is mentioned in all the historical guides to Umbria, and every time we drive up or down the E45 motorway we see the signs to it. After an unusually cold and wet May, last Friday finally promised some fine weather, and we determined to go there.

We (that is, Lou and I and you, gentle reader) had our last good look at the Via Flaminia where it passes through the gorge of the River Nera below the town of Narni, still called the Via Flaminia, but also the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), carrying heavy goods traffic. As I have said in other posts, this was the major Roman military road in central Italy. It was built in 220 BC during the consulship of Gaius Flaminius, from whom it took its name. It went north from Rome through Umbria and crossed the Apennines near Iguvium (modern Gubbio), finishing at Ariminum (Rimini). From there the roads led north, towards the frontiers of the empire.

‘When I left Rome for Lalage’s sake
By the Legions’ Road to Rimini,
She vowed her heart was mine to take
With me and my shield to Rimini—
(Till the Eagles flew from Rimini!)
And I’ve tramped Britain, and I’ve tramped Gaul,
And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall
As white as the neck of Lalage—
(As cold as the heart of Lalage!)
And I’ve lost Britain, and I’ve lost Gaul,
And I’ve lost Rome, and worst of all,
I’ve lost Lalage!’

That is an excerpt from a marching song of the Roman legions – at least as imagined by Rudyard Kipling in Puck of Pook’s Hill. It is overheard by the two children in the story as it is sung by Parnesius, the centurion of the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion – the Ulpia Victrix.

I’ve just done a bit of googling on these chapters of Puck of Pook’s Hill, and needless to say various po-faced modern scholars have written papers on the bits that Kipling got wrong – apparently he overstated the height of Hadrian’s Wall by several feet. But there is something about the books you read as a child that penetrates deeply, and when it dawned on me that the Via Flaminia was in fact the “Legions’ Road to Rimini” of my childhood, the memories came straight back. I realised that when I imagine a legion swinging along on the march – the tramp of sandalled feet, the sound of metal armour on leather, the smell of sweat and dust – it is not some academically impeccable history that created those impressions for me, but Kipling. And I’ve always remembered that a legion marched a set distance each day. As Parnesius explains to the children:

“A Legion’s pace is altogether different. It is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. “Rome’s Race—Rome’s Pace,” as the proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less. Head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass-collar open one handsbreadth—and that’s how you take the Eagles through Britain.”

And through Italy too, of course.

The original route of the Via Flaminia led due north from Narni. Later, a more easterly alternative route was added which took in Interamna (Terni) and Spoletum (Spoleto), rejoining the original route a bit further north, but for now we will follow the original route. After crossing the plain of the lower Nera, the road starts to rise and runs over pleasant rolling country on the western side of the steep Martani Hills. There, about half a day’s march from Narni by Kipling’s reckoning, the legionaries would have come up a long hill and found themselves in the town of Carsulae. If it was on a warm day I hope that they got an early break and that there was some cool white wine available, made then as today from the local Grechetto grape variety – described by Pliny the Elder as “typical of the area”, and still available in the local supermarkets!

For much of this part of the Via Flaminia, it is followed closely or even covered over by modern roads such as the SS3 and the E45 motorway. It makes sense that they should all follow the same route in hilly country – after all, the topology imposes the same sort of constraints on modern engineers as it did on ancient ones.

However just before you get to Carsulae the old and new roads separate. The old road runs along by itself for a couple of kilometres through oak woods, and it is here that you can find the ruins of the old town.

Parking beside the modern road we walked to the archaeological site along a path through fields of young green barley, with poppies and wild orchids lining the path, and wild roses in the hedgerows.

It took some effort for me to try and mentally superimpose an image of bustling Roman Carsulae on what is now a sleepy rural scene. An oak wood has grown up within the northern boundary of the town, and a small flock of sheep and goats was grazing under the trees.

For me the best way to try and visualise it was to walk along the Via Flaminia as it goes through the middle of the town from south to north. You start by coming up a hill and then encounter the first ruins. If you turn around and look back down the hill, you are looking at the road from Rome.

Via Flaminia at Carsulae — Carsulae: looking back down the Via Flaminia in the direction of Narni and Rome. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Turn around again, and up to the left there are the remains of baths, built over natural springs. Away to the right is some slightly more modern architecture – the church of Saints Cosmas and Damiano, built in early Christian times on the foundations of an existing building, then extended in the 11^th Century using material scavenged from elsewhere on the site. Passing that, we get to the site of the forum, on raised ground to the left. Parts of it, including the entry arch, have been re-erected, which purists might object to but I don’t mind.

Carsulae Forum — Carsulae: the Via Flaminia passes the entrance to the forum. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 40mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Carsulae forum arch — Carsulae: looking east towards the amphitheatre from the forum. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Continuing uphill along the road you can see the remains of a theatre and amphitheatre off to the right, and then the road runs into the oak wood. Looking down you can see that the paving stones in the road are grooved by chariot and cart wheels, as they are at Pompeii.

Carsulae Via Flaminia — Carsulae: the Via Flaminia with wheel ruts. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

The road starts to run downhill again and you reach the remains of a substantial town gate, beyond which the road bears left into more oak woods. This is where the northbound legions would have passed on their way to Rimini and beyond. I have no idea whether the land was wooded or cleared in ancient times, but in my imagination I saw the legionaries marching away through the gate into the cool shade of the wood, to be lost from view.

Carsulae town gate — Carsulae: northern town gate. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Carsulae was abandoned by the 5th Century. The Wikipedia article says that the reason is unknown, but that it could have been destroyed by an earthquake, or during the wars and invasions at the end of the Roman era, or that it may have become impoverished after road traffic dwindled. Signs at the site say that the town was abandoned because its position in relatively open country meant that it could not be defended in troubled times.

Note, added January 2022: I am currently reading Tim Parks’ latest book The Hero’s Way in which he and a companion walk the route taken by Garibaldi and his men after escaping from Rome in 1849. It turns out that they came through Carsulae, so while my mental image of the legionaries marching away into the wood might have been a bit fanciful, the oak trees were probably there in 1849. So Garibaldi would have ridden under that arch, and led his force off into the shadows.

May 25, 2019May 27, 2025

A Visit to Narnia

We went to Narnia the other day – not in the conventional way through the back of a wardrobe, but in a Fiat Panda. Ancient Narnia, or modern Narni, is a place that illustrates the way the geography of Italy has shaped military and political strategy, and in turn the geopolitics of Italy at various critical times. It is also a pretty medieval town.

In peninsular Italy – that part south of the Po Valley – the mountains all run roughly north-south. This means it is hard to move overland in an east-west direction, and easier to move north-south, but your opportunities to do so are constrained to certain valleys and passes. Which in turn means that certain places are natural choke-points. One such – in 1944 as well as in the Middle Ages – is Cassino, between Naples and Rome. Narni is another.

Narni sits on high ground on the edge of a deep ravine through which the River Nera – a tributary of the Tiber – flows south out of Umbria into Lazio. It is literally on the edge of the ravine; houses and palaces on the western side of the old town, including the Eroli Museum, look straight down into it. To the north and east of the town is the valley of the lower Nera, which, although surrounded by mountains, contains a good deal of industrial development. On the plain around Narni is the modern industrial town of Narni Scalo, which makes getting a decent photograph of or from the old town something of an exercise in artful composition.

Narni from the Rocca Albornoz. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

To the northeast, at the other end of the valley, is the town of Terni, the provincial capital (Umbria is divided into two provinces: Perugia and Terni). Thanks to nearby sources of hydro-electricity, Terni was a centre of industrialisation and was known as “The Manchester of Italy”. Unfortunately, one of the industries was arms manufacturing, as a result of which Terni was heavily bombed during the Second World War, destroying much of its medieval centre.

Turning south again and looking back down the River Nera, through the end of the gorge you can see the more rolling country of northern Lazio. There is a road running along the side of the gorge; now carrying heavy road traffic, this is the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), which as I noted here is still known as the Via Flaminia, as when it was first built by the Romans in 220 BC. If you were a legionary marching from Rome to the northern Adriatic coast (and beyond to the eastern frontiers of the empire), this is the way you would come. And if you were a traveller in the other direction – in an army of barbarians after the fall of the empire, or a medieval pilgrim, this is one of the few roads by which you would approach Rome. If you were coming from France or Britain you would come by sea or over the western Alps on the Via Francigena.

Looking down the Nera Gorge from Narni — Looking south down the Nera Gorge towards Lazio and Rome. The road that runs along the side of the gorge is the Via Flaminia (modern SS3). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Dominating Narni from an even higher point is a fortress or Rocca, of a type known as a Rocca Albornoz, of which there are several examples in central Italy, and of which there were once several more. This requires a bit of explanation.

Between 1309 and 1376 a series of seven popes ruled not from Rome but from Avignon. All were French. This happened as a result of some naked power politics from the French Crown, bringing the papacy under effective French control.

When a range of factors, including the influential advocacy of St Catherine of Siena, caused Pope Gregory XI to decide to end the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy” and return to Rome, Gregory faced several challenges. One was the re-establishment of political control over the Papal States – formerly independent states in central Italy which had been brought under secular papal rule, and which, during the exile in Avignon, had started to show renewed signs of independence.

Another challenge was how to rebuild the military capacity of the Papal States to defend themselves against invasions from the “Holy Roman Empire¹” in Germany.

Both these problems Gregory assigned to the eminently capable Spanish fighting prelate Cardinal Albornoz, a representative of the church militant if ever there was one. Albornoz built a series of fortresses in towns throughout central Italy, with the immediate purpose of subduing the local population, and the longer-term aim of defending the Papal territories against foreign incursions from the north. In time many of these became prisons and symbols of the suppression of intellectual and political freedoms under Papal rule. Apart from in Narni, you can see surviving examples of Albornoz Roccas in Assisi and Spoleto among other places. They are all similar in design, with few aesthetic embellishments as they were intended for rapid construction (the Narni Rocca went up in only five years) and were to be used by garrisons, not local aristocrats. The fact that they have square towers, not round ones, shows that they pre-date the widespread use of cannons in siege warfare (cannon balls are more likely to bounce off round towers).

Narni’s most famous son, born shortly before the papal return from Avignon, was the condottiere (mercenary military leader) Erasmo di Narni, better known to history as Gattamelata or the “honeyed cat”. After serving various rulers, Gattamelata worked for the Venetians and ended up as podestà (governor) of Padua. If you have been to Padua you may have seen the celebrated statue of him by Donatello outside the basilica of St Anthony. Incidentally, this was the first free-standing equestrian statue cast in bronze since ancient times; Donatello had to rediscover the technique.

Donatello's Statue of Gattamelata — Donatello’s statue of Gattamelata in Padua. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

If you visit the Rocca of Narni, and are fortunate enough to have as a guide the same knowledgeable young lady that we did, she will point out where the original large stone blocks of the castle walls have been replaced with smaller, more haphazard stones. This marks rebuilding after the destruction of the Rocca, and much of the town, by the landsknechts forces of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, part of a much greater cultural and human catastrophe – the Sack of Rome in 1527. Guarding the approach to Rome was not a good thing if the invading forces turned out to be stronger than you.

Narni Rocca Albornoz — The Rocca Albornoz at Narni. The lower, lighter stones, are original. The higher, darker stones show the rebuilding after 1527. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

We can recommend a couple of places to visit in Narni. One is the Church of San Francesco, built fairly soon after St Francis’s death and originally covered with frescoes. While we were there a pleasant chap turned up, who turned out to be a custodian. He offered to open up the richly-decorated Eroli chapel for us which was a bonus as it is normally only open on weekends. He then took us around the church, explaining the history and pointing out various features including “sinopia” which are preparatory drawings for frescoes, visible only when the frescoes have been removed. He also explained that the poor condition of the frescoes is due in part to the fact that in the 17^th or 18^th century, they were all plastered over and the church redecorated in the baroque style. This vandalism only started to be undone in the 1950s, but there is still a long way to go. If you visit there, please be sure to make a donation to the fund for restoration of the frescoes.

St Francis Exorcises Arezzo — St Francis drives out the demons from Arezzo, Church of San Francesco, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Eroli Chapel, Narni — Ceiling of the Eroli Chapel, Church of San Francesco, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Next door to the Church of San Francesco is the other place we would recommend – the museum and gallery in the Palazzo Eroli. The collection is small and eclectic – from a pair of preserved mammoth tusks, through various bits of Roman stonework, some medieval and Renaissance art, some third-rate baroque religious art, some strange re-creations of relics from the Napoleonic conquest of Italy, through to some Second World War memorabilia. There are two highlights. One is a room where there is an Annunciation of Pinturicchio and a Crowning of the Virgin by Ghirlandaio, both from the 15^th Century. The other is the view from the windows on the west side of the building, which looks straight down into the gorge of the River Nera.

Coronation of the Virgin by Girlandaio — Coronation of The Virgin by Ghirlandaio, 1486. Palazzo Eroli Museum, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

After leaving the museum we walked around the medieval town; there is an old fountain, some impressive municipal buildings and an appealing little Romanesque church called Santa Maria Impensole, built in 1175 on an older site on which once stood, according to local tradition, a temple of Bacchus. It retains some of the form and components of the older building, including a classical-style portico.

Narni Palazzo del Podestà — Palazzo del Podestà, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Narni, Church of S Maria Impensole — Portico of S Maria Impensole, Narni, showing antique Roman inclusions. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

From there we walked along the northern town wall, enjoying the sunshine after a period of indifferent weather in this part of Italy, and the view of the mountains to the north and east. There we found a restaurant called “La Gallina Liberata” (the liberated hen) where we had a lunch of traditional Umbrian cooking which was excellent value.

Narni Looking North — Looking north along the old town wall, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Note (¹) In the words of Voltaire, “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”.

Edit, 2024: I wrote an article about Catherine of Siena and Cardinal Albornoz which you can find here.

May 12, 2019September 21, 2024

The Garden of Livia Drusilla

I started writing this post in Rome, where I had to go and visit the Australian Embassy to cast a vote in the forthcoming federal election. We decided to make a trip of it and chose a place to stay in walking distance of the embassy, near the Piazza Bologna metro station.

On previous visits to Rome we have always stayed in the Centro Storico, but this time we had a car with us and we didn’t want to go anywhere near the dreaded Zona Traffico Limitato (ZTL) – the permit zone that can see hapless tourists cop several expensive fines within a few minutes as they desperately try and find a way out. We too have had the unpleasant experience of finding ourselves in a one-way street, surrounded by surging traffic, being swept inexorably into the ZTL. In that case we got away with it – maybe because it was during one of the short periods that the ZTL does not operate, or maybe the camera was not working. But I wouldn’t want to repeat it, so we chose somewhere at a safe distance.

The area near the Piazza Bologna is called Nomentana (named after a gate in the late Roman-era city wall) and turned out to be a cheerful bustling district with much to recommend it, not least a Sicilian cafe called Mizzica where we had a cheap but excellent breakfast both mornings, of coffee and Sicilian pastries. Learning to eat the latter without getting sticky sweet mascarpone all over my chin remains a work in progress. In the evening we went back for aperitivi and snacks, sitting at a table outside and watching the world go by.

A bit further away we tried a restaurant recommended to us by the hotel, called Hostaria “Al Monumento” da Giulio which promised typical Roman cuisine. Going by the presence of tripe on the menu, this was probably true, as Romans are great offal-eaters. There were however other options, and it being spring, I had Carciofi alla Giudia which is Jewish-style deep-fried artichoke. Lou had abbacchio which is roasted milk-fed lamb.

Being close to a metro station it was fairly simple to get into the centre of Rome, which was its usual self, heaving with tourists and touts. In the evenings, we found we preferred just hanging around Nomentana, where the voices around us were mostly speaking Italian, rather than – as they would have been in central Rome – Mandarin, Japanese, German, Dutch, or variants of English.

The next morning we travelled in to Termini to visit a nearby museum called Museo Romana Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. The terme in question are the baths of Diocletian, close by.

Rome, not surprisingly, has a lot of museums. I do my best, but I have to confess that my heart sinks a bit when we turn a corner and see yet another corridor lined with several dozen marble busts, all helpfully labelled either Portrait of a Man or Portrait of a Woman (gosh thanks, I would never have guessed). I usually manage to give the first few a conscientious examination, after which it all becomes increasingly cursory. Strange – if any one of them were the only surviving example, one would sit and stare at it for hours.

The reason we were going to this museum is that it offers more than statuary – it features mosaic floors and, even better, frescoed walls from various excavated buildings.

I always find it a bit miraculous when I see a surviving fresco from ancient times – plaster being inherently brittle and friable – but I must admit that when good conditions and good luck combine, the results can be startling, especially in the case of some Etruscan tombs.

One of the highlights of the museum is a set of restored frescoes recovered from a Roman villa near the site of the existing Villa Farnesina on the western bank of the Tiber between the Gianicolo and Trastevere areas of Rome. Then as now in a very desirable area, the villa may have been built by Octavius (later the Emperor Augustus) for his daughter Julia, and was abandoned at some point due to flooding from the river. It was buried and forgotten for centuries until rediscovered at the end of the 19^th Century when the modern river embankments were being built. The frescoes are displayed in representations of the original rooms.

I regret that the only photos taken in the museum were taken on our smartphones – museums in Rome usually insist on bags of any size going into a cloakroom and I was reluctant to risk my Hasselblad equipment in there, so I didn’t take it.

Museums in Rome - Fresco from the Villa Farnesina in the Museum Palazzo Massimo — Fresco from the ancient Villa Farnesina, with trompe-l’oeil effect. (click to enlarge)

Fresco from the Villa Farnesina in the Museum Palazzo Massimo — Is this a contemporary view of the the Tiber outside the villa? (click to enlarge)

Impressive as they are, those frescoes were not the high point of our visit to the Palazzo Massimo.

When I was at university two of my favourite books were I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. I remember devouring them when I should have been wading through my set texts. Graves’s story is not short of villains, but surely the worst is the evil, scheming, murdering Empress Livia, the wife of Augustus and grandmother of Claudius. Then a couple of years later we were treated to the superb BBC adaptation with Derek Jacobi in the title role, and many other brilliant actors. One of the best of them was Siân Phillips as Livia, who demonstrated the truth of the old theatrical adage that it is more fun to play villains than heroes.

Graves was a highly educated man who based his historical novels on classical sources – ancient historians like Suetonius who inevitably had their own axes to grind. Needless to say there are modern historians who advance plausible arguments as to why Livia probably wasn’t as bad as she is made out to be by those sources. One such article is here.

Of course historical fiction needs villains and heroes and it would not have made such a good story otherwise. I note that Graves’s other great villainess, the Empress Theodora from Count Belisarius, had a similarly bad rap from contemporary sources, but both she and Livia still sound pretty scary. Theodora looks scary too, in the mosaic portrait from Ravenna. Something else for the list of future posts (edit: I have now posted on Ravenna and Theodora).

Livia Drusilla was a wealthy aristocrat and had property of her own before she married Augustus (her second husband), including a country villa. It was a few miles north of Rome on the Via Flaminia, on a hill looking back down the Tiber towards the city. The villa was rediscovered in the 16^th Century, but not recognised as the Villa of Livia and properly excavated until the 1860s. These days the site lies near the flyovers of the junction between the Rome Ring Road and the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), the latter still called – bless the Italian Ministry of Transport – the Via Flaminia.

One room, south-facing and thus probably intended for use in winter, was decorated with beautifully realistic frescoes of trees and birds. A fresh breeze agitates the leaves and birds fly to and fro. These frescoes, after cleaning and restoration, were moved to the Palazzo Massimo where they are on display in a room of the same size as the original. If there were nothing else in the museum, I would recommend you go there and see them. We will definitely go there again.

Museums in Rome - The garden of Livia — The garden of Livia (click to enlarge)

The garden of Livia: opposite wall (click to enlarge).

Not only are they beautiful, but it is almost certain that those actual frescoes were looked upon by Livia and Augustus. They could have strolled about in front of them discussing affairs of state. If you believe Graves’s depiction of Livia, she might have despatched her poisoners from there.

We got to the museum relatively early and had the luxury of a period alone in Livia’s garden, and a relatively undisturbed visit to the rest of the exhibits. Then, around mid-morning, that scourge of Italian museums arrived, in the form of several school groups. The younger children did at least seem to be partly listening to their teacher. The adolescents behaved as they always do – after fanning out to occupy every single seat in the place, they then stared at social media on their smartphones, while ignoring everything the teacher was saying. At least it keeps them quiet, I suppose. Doubtless when the time comes to write a report on their visit, they will use those same smartphones to share material cut and pasted from Wikipedia.

In my post on The Paradox of Old and New Italy I criticised the implicit attitude of Grand Tourists of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries that “Italy is wasted on the Italians”. Nevertheless, it is a bit depressing to see young people so determinedly impervious to their own culture. Hopefully it’s just a phase they are going through.

Update: we revisited the museum in August 2024 and I wrote a separate post on the subject.

May 10, 2019March 3, 2024

Of Emperors and Onions

Last Tuesday we went to a town near us called Bevagna. There had been some unusually cold weather for May, so as we bounced along atrocious Umbrian back roads in bright sunshine, through the vineyards, olive groves and spring wildflowers of the Martani Hills, we could see fresh snow on the Apennine peaks across the valley.

Apennines from Colli Martani — The Apennines from the Colli Martani. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150 lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Bevagna sits on the north-eastern side of the Colli Martani where the hills come down to what is now a fertile plain, but which, before being drained in the Middle Ages, was marshland. Across the valley are the towns of Spello and Assisi. Like many towns here Bevagna has exceedingly ancient pre-Roman beginnings, but in Roman times it was called Mevania and lay on the western branch of a principal military road, the Via Flaminia, the route of which still runs through the town.

After the end of the Roman period, being on the Via Flaminia ceased to mean that you were on the route by which the legions marched north, but rather that you were now on the route by which invading armies marched south (more on that one day). So Bevagna would have seen Goths and Lombards in the Dark Ages. In the early Middle Ages it was part of the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, and in the later Middle Ages it was on the route of several campaigns by the Hohenstaufen Emperors in the struggles between Papacy and Empire (whose factions were the Guelphs and Ghibellines, respectively).

During some of these later incursions, the town was largely destroyed a couple of times, so although there are a few Roman remains, including some temple pillars which survived through being incorporated into a medieval building, these days the general air of Bevagna is of the (middle) Middle Ages. It sits within a medieval town wall, the River Clitunno (the Clitumnus of the ancients) flows past, and you enter through one of the town gates. It’s very pretty, and deservedly a member of I Borghi Più Belli d’Italia.

Bevagna San Silvestro Rear — Bevagna – the rear of the Church of San Silvestro. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

If you enter the town from the south you cross a bridge over the Clitunno and there below is a weir which creates a reservoir for what Lou identified as a public laundry, surrounded on two sides by a stone wall with a flat top on which to pound the clothes.

Bevagana Public Laundry — Bevagna – The Public Laundry on the River Clitunno. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The main piazza is particularly attractive, surrounded by several medieval buildings including two 12th Century Romanesque churches – both built by a local master craftsman by the name of Binello – and a Gothic town hall from the 13^th Century. All were damaged in the 1997 earthquake which so badly damaged the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi, but have now been restored. On the front of the church of San Silvestro is a stone bearing an inscription saying (I think; medieval Latin is not my strong point) that the church was commissioned in AD 1195 by the Emperor Henry, and built by Binello.

Bevagna Inscription on Church of San Silvestro — Inscription on the front of the Church of San Silvestro, Bevagna. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge)

The Henry in question would have been the Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen, son of Frederick Barbarossa and father of Frederick II “Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world”, who was the child of Henry’s marriage to Constance de Hauteville of Sicily. I mentioned Constance in the post on the Normans in Sicily.

San Silvestro isn’t always open, but if it is you should definitely have a look inside. It is one of the most beautiful little Romanesque churches I have seen (NB: in architecture, “Romanesque” has nothing to do with the Romans, and “Gothic” has nothing to do with the Goths.)

Opposite San Silvestro is the church of San Michele Arcangelo which has around the door some wonderful carvings of the eponymous archangel taking on the devil in single combat. The stone carvings are original; the wood carvings are relatively modern, being a mere 500 years old.

Bevagna San Michele Arcangelo — Church of San Michele Arcangelo at Bevagna. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Not far from Assisi, Bevagna is the location where St Francis is supposed to have preached his famous sermon to the birds. There is a church dedicated to the saint elsewhere in the town – at some point (presumably either in the 17^th or the 18^th century) the interior was comprehensively renovated (or comprehensively ruined, depending on your taste) in the baroque style.

Apart from its being historic and beautiful, good reasons to visit Bevagna are its gastronomy and oenology. Although the wines of this part of Umbria are not particularly famous, apart from the Sagrantino of Montefalco, they are pleasant and good value. The reds are mostly based on the Sangiovese grape, while the whites, which are very good, are made from a grape called Grechetto which I have not seen a lot elsewhere in Italy. I have read that Grechetto was the grape used to make wine round here in antiquity, but I am not sure of the authenticity of the claim.

There are some good restaurants here. I have tried a couple, but the one we will come back to is “Antiche Sere” in Piazza Garibaldi. It is a small trattoria with a limited menu, but the food is very good and made from seasonal ingredients, which is as you would expect, since it is affiliated with the Slow Food Movement . Last time we visited, in October last year, I had an omelette with black truffle and Lou had pasta with pumpkin. This time I had fresh mozzarella with Cantabrian anchovies and Lou had strangozzi pasta with freshly-gathered wild asparagus, which is much thinner than the cultivated stuff. You see people gathering it at this time of year beside the roads.

Just down the road from Bevagna is a town called Cannara which is famous for its strongly flavoured onions. The picture below is of a poster for a shop in Cannara which sells them, and which was on display in the Antiche Sere. In translation, it reads “there are more tears in a Cannara onion than in a hundred love stories”.

Note: I updated this post in June 2022 to include the interior shot of the church of San Silvestro.

April 30, 2019May 25, 2025

The Paradox of Old and New Italy

For the history nerd, Italy and Italian history are a powerful drug. From where I am writing this, I can look out of the window and see a largely surviving wall that was built as a town fortification when Emperor Frederick II was in these parts, around 1250.

Somewhere beneath me, the foundations of this building sit on parts of a town wall built in the late Roman period (around 400 AD) when the Goths were invading. And I need only walk a hundred metres or so to see substantial remains of an Etruscan-Roman wall, dating from the 2^nd Century BC.

This is heady stuff, particularly if one comes from a “young” country like Australia (I put that in quotation marks to acknowledge a non-indigenous perspective). But even people from “old” countries like Britain and Germany, when visiting Italy, are aware that they are surrounded by places that witnessed the events, the people and the art that they read about at school. As Samuel Johnson said in the 18^th Century, “a man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see”.

To have rectified that deficiency is a powerful intoxicant and you do rather get drunk on it at first, like grand tourists of three hundred years ago. The first time we came to Italy, two decades ago and in somewhat less style than 18th Century grand tourists, the time taken to drive from Rome Ciampino airport to our accommodation in Umbria was extended by my desire for frequent stops to take photographs of landscapes that looked as if they belonged in the background of a painting by Leonardo. And indeed I read somewhere (my apologies for being unable to attribute the quote) that part of the appeal of central Italy to visitors is its familiarity, their having seen it before behind the madonnas and saints painted by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Raphael and the rest.

For the photographer, the fascination is not only a result of the potential subject matter, but the light itself. On that first visit, I recall driving between Pienza and Montepulciano in a late afternoon in August, and reflecting not just that I was looking at some of the most beautiful places in the world, but that God had obligingly slipped an 81C warm-up filter over the sun.

Here are some pictures taken on that first visit when I was giddy with the beauty of it all. All are very conventional, and all were taken on a Canon EOS 50E camera with either a Canon 28-80 zoom lens or a Sigma 70-300 zoom lens, and Fuji Velvia 50 35mm film.

And yet – returning to the present – if I look through my window, in the distance down in the valley beyond the 13^th Century wall I can see modern supermarkets and factories, and trucks speeding along a motorway. If I turn on the TV in the evening I can see adverts for mobile phone providers interrupting the cheesy quiz shows. Last year I was looking at a landscape that the Etruscans would have walked upon, when a high-speed train shot through the middle of it.

When I first started coming to Italy, this juxtaposition of old and new was unwelcome. I winced at graffiti on medieval walls, advertising billboards in otherwise historic scenery, and light industry in front of Renaissance towns.

In my photography, I often still strive to capture the old Italy to the exclusion of the new, for aesthetic reasons. One of my favourite pictures, of Urbino, was greatly improved by a morning mist that hid the bus station which would otherwise have been in the foreground (I won’t reproduce the picture in this post, because I plan to make it the subject of a future “history in focus” post). Edit: here it is. And the modern supermarkets, factories and motorway that I can see from my window are likewise often hidden in the early morning by a low mist that turns all the medieval villages on the high ground to islands in a timeless sea.

But the paradox is really only in the mind of the beholder. In fact, in seeing the paradox, one is committing the same offence that Luigi Barzini (see below) attributes to the Grand Tourists of the 18^th Century, who saw the Italians as not entirely worthy custodians of Italian history:

“The concentration on art, nature and the remnants of Roman antiquity was perhaps one of the reasons why the rest of the Italian scene seemed to interest travellers so little” (writes Barzini). “They watched the contemporary life of the people with the absent-minded detachment with which Egyptologists consider the mores of Fellahin in Egyptian villages. The people crowding the streets in their colourful costumes were seldom described and then only as if they were not really alive, but quaint wooden puppets in a vast Presepio (note 1)”.

Later Barzini quotes a particularly offensive passage from Ruskin that I am too ashamed to repeat here.

Modern Italians are justly and deeply proud of their heritage, and conscious of their responsibility to it, yet they do not wish to be considered as just museum-keepers. Theirs is also a modern country, although they would repudiate the Italian artistic movement called “Futurism” at the start of the 20th Century which went so far as to call for the destruction of museums, libraries and ancient monuments. While its violence was fortunately more a matter of cafe rhetoric than action, the movement’s fascination with war as the agent of cleansing destruction, and its association with the proto-fascist poet Gabriele d‘Annunzio, has led it to be associated with fascism. But in the 1920s and 30s the communists were just as enthusiastic in their denial of historical Western culture, as indeed are today’s political extremists.

The solution to the paradox is either to ignore it and only see the old Italy, or to embrace it, and see and love them both – the country that produced both Botticelli and Berlusconi, both a Madonna of Filippo Lippi and the 1980s-style dancing girls gyrating on nightly TV. Loving the new takes more effort, and isn’t for everyone. So I don’t despise the tourists I see wandering around gaping in delight at the beauty of the old Italy; to do so would be doubly hypocritical, not just because I was once as they are now, but because when I see perfect light falling on a perfect medieval scene, or wander by chance into a roadside church and see a Perugino fresco, I still feel a bit of that intoxication that I first did. And I hope that people keep visiting Italy for generations to come, and feel it too.

A while ago I posted on the pleasure of old travel books on Italy – which, by and large, do fit within the tradition of venerating the past while treating the inhabitants of the present as character actors in walk-on parts. So what modern books are there which might better manage the task of capturing the old and the new? There is certainly no shortage of contemporary books on Italy in English. But many of them fall into two categories, described with only slight overstatement by Beppe Severgnini (note 2) as follows:

“Almost all modern accounts of the country fall into one of two categories: chronicles of a love affair, or diaries of a disappointment. The former have an inferiority complex towards Italian home life and usually feature one chapter on the importance of the family and another on the excellence of Italian cooking. The diaries take a supercilious attitude towards Italian public life. Inevitably, there is censure of Italian corruption and a section on the Mafia.

“By and large, the chronicles of love affairs are penned by American women, who display love without interest in their descriptions of a seasonal Eden, where the weather is good and the locals are charming. The diaries of disappointment tend to be produced by British men, who show interest without love. They describe a disturbing country populated by unreliable individuals and governed by a public administration from hell.”

I will recommend two books which fall into neither category, both, as it happens, titled The Italians. The first is by Luigi Barzini. Barzini (1908-1984) spent part of his youth as a journalist in America, during which time he developed an easy and approachable writing style in English (regrettably, the ornate quality of written Italian, if too faithfully captured in translation, can come across to English readers as turgid and ponderous). Published in 1964, The Italians is necessarily a bit dated, but feels a lot more modern than H.V. Morton’s A Traveller in Italy, published in the same year.

Italian History - The Italians by Luigi Barzini — A scan of my own copy – it is is very battered by having been carried back and forth between Australia and Italy in my carry-on bag.

The second book is by John Hooper, published in 2015. Hooper is, or was, the Italy correspondent of The Guardian and The Economist, and his writing is as good as you would expect from the latter. There is an article by him regarding the book on the Guardian website.

The Italians by John Hooper — A much better copy, bought here in Italy and never having travelled

Barzini was in Italy during the Second World War and was interned by the fascists. As a journalist in Italy for 15 years, Hooper saw plenty of the grittier side of Italian life. So neither of them is inclined to sugar-coat their descriptions. But to me both accounts manage, to use Severgnini’s terminology, to combine both interest and love.

Note (1) Literally a “manger”, a presepio is a nativity scene. By convention the tradition of constructing model nativities was started by St Francis. They often include quaint scenes of daily Italian life in addition to the official participants. See here for an article about them.

Note (2) In Severgnini’s book “La Bella Figura”. Confusingly, it is also published as “An Italian in Italy”. Annoyingly, I have acquired copies under both titles, believing, on the second occasion, that it was a different book.

April 25, 2019July 28, 2024

Norman Sicily

There are all sorts of reasons – geo-political, cultural, artistic – why the brief period of Norman rule in Sicily should be better known than it is. There are not many histories of the subject in English, and by far the best is that by John Julius Norwich, originally published in two volumes (The Normans in the South 1016-1130 and The Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194) and later as a single volume titled simply The Normans in Sicily. This is one of my favourite books and I would recommend it to anyone just for the quality of its writing, but it is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to understand Italy in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

Cover of “The Normans in Sicily” by John Julius Norwich. Penguin edition, 2004.

Lord Norwich’s writing is as elegant and engaging as always, but it is also an extraordinary story. How did one of the younger sons of a minor and impecunious family in Normandy, the de Hautevilles, found a dynasty that – almost a thousand years ago – synthesised French, Italian, Greek and Arab cultures into a sophisticated and tolerant regime? A dynasty that dictated terms to popes, built some of the most beautiful buildings anywhere, and which – through the female line – produced the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, a polymath known as Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world.

Well, Norwich takes two rather substantial volumes to tell the story, so I’m not going to do it in a blog post. But here’s a very quick sketch.

In the former Lombard duchy of Apulia (the modern Italian region of Puglia), temporarily re-absorbed into the Byzantine Empire, the Lombards were trying to take back control and sought the assistance of some Norman knights returning from the Holy Land. Word got around back in Normandy and one of the adventurers who appeared was Robert Guiscard (“the crafty”) de Hauteville who soon started carving out his own dukedom in the South of Italy. One of the Norman knights who joined Guiscard was his younger brother Roger.

Sicily was then under Arab rule and in due course Roger mounted an expedition to take control of the island. After several years of campaigning he succeeded. Roger only ever held the title of count but his son, Roger II, was recognised as King of Sicily by the Pope.

Rather than exterminate, exile or marginalise the Arabs and Greeks on the island, Roger I and Roger II allowed free exercise of religion and employed members of both communities, along with northern Europeans, in their governments.

Roger was followed by William the Bad (not really that bad) and William the Good (not really that good, but his reign was marked by peace). During the reigns of both Williams the most powerful courtier was a cleric whose name has come down in Sicilian history as “Gualtiero Offamiglia”, but that is an Italianisation of his real name, Walter of the Mill – he was an Englishman. You never know when knowing that fact will come in handy.

William II died without direct heirs, and the throne passed to his aunt, Constance, who had married Henry, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (see post on Val d’Orcia). Constance’s son became Frederick II, on whom I will write a separate post one day. I’m still looking for a really good biography of Frederick II in English.

The Normans ruled the whole island in the end, but their major architectural legacy is in the northwest – places like Palermo, Monreale and Cefalù. I had assumed that this was because their power was centred on Palermo, but I suppose it could be possible that over the centuries earthquakes in the southeast have destroyed any Norman buildings that were there.

But what a legacy it is. The combination of huge Norman buildings with Byzantine and Arabic decoration is extraordinary and the visual demonstration of this syncretic culture is more eloquent than many thousands of words.

Cappella Palatina, Palermo. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge)

And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, Byzantine mosaicists were better than their western European contemporaries in the 12^th Century, but in the giant images of Christos Pantocrator in Monreale and Cefalù they were not creating images in the formal, mystical and remote eastern tradition. They were working to a very different brief – showing the western preoccupation with the humanity of Christ, and they succeeded in a way that other European artists would not even begin to approach until Giotto came along two hundred years later, and perhaps not even then.

We started with the Palazzi di Normanni in Palermo, with its Cappella Palatina or palace chapel, then later visited the cathedral in Monreale, in the hills overlooking Palermo.

In the picture of Monreale below, you can see a portrait of King William the Good himself, presenting the church to the Virgin. Presumably this was done during his lifetime or shortly after. And what an exotic oriental monarch he looks! His great-grandfather was born in a small manor house in Normandy, but the figure here is far from the conventional image of a Norman thug in a chain-mail hauberk.

Later we visited Cefalù on the mid-north coast – built on the orders of Roger II to house his sarcophagus, but despite that his heir buried him in Palermo.

Cefalu' — Exterior of the cathedral in Cefalù , Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Cefalù interior, Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

There are two places in Palermo of which I wish I had photos to show you. One is a church called the Martorana, which was closed for restoration when we were there. The other is an absolute jewel box in the Palazzi Normanni called “King Roger II’s room”, which we did visit, but since I seem to be one of the only people in Italy (tourist or local) that obeys “no photography” signs, you’ll just have to visit it yourself. But here’s a hint – the illustrations on the cover of Norwich’s history, shown above, come from there.

Update: In July 2024 we revisited Palermo and I was delighted to find that the “no photography” rule in King Roger’s room no longer applied. You can find a post with photographs of it, and updated photographs of other places mentioned above, here: A Return to Palermo.

March 28, 2019April 8, 2024

The Wild West of Sicily

Sicily has a “Wild West”, or at least it seems like it.

The landscape – especially in the nature reserve of Lo Zingaro and the north-west corner of the island around the fishing port of San Vito Lo Capo – is dry and desert-like, with some spectacular scenery. There are places where it would not feel all that surprising to see Terence Hill and Bud Spencer¹ride over the hill to the accompaniment of an Ennio Morricone score.

The light is harsher, the colours are brighter and it has an edgier feel than does the softer, more pastel-coloured southeast.

And of course, there is the Mafia, the malevolent roots of which penetrate more deeply here, it is said, than elsewhere in Sicily, especially in towns like Trapani.

But – and here the Wild West comparisons are best set aside – it has layer upon glorious layer of history going back to the remotest antiquity, which causes the classier sort of travel writer (ahem) to use words like “palimpsest”. Here you will find remnants of Ancient Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman and Arab, and that short-lived but wonderful hybrid of Arab, Byzantine and Norman cultures that emerged during the reign of the Hautevilles in the 12^th Century. Much less of this survives in the east and south-east of Sicily, due I suppose to earthquakes.

I described our arrival in Sicily and settling in to our accommodation near Castellammare del Golfo in “Il Miracolo di San Bagagio“.

San Vito Lo Capo

Next day, we set out from Castellammare and headed for San Vito Lo Capo. There is no direct road from Castellammare to San Vito – such a route was once mooted but would have gone through the nature reserve of Lo Zingaro and, despite being backed by companies with reputed Mafia connections, it was defeated by a local popular movement, which was a pretty big deal under the circumstances. So we headed across the peninsula to Trapani, whence we headed up the coast. There was still a howling hot wind coming in from Africa a short way to the west, and after a long hot summer the country was very stark and desert-like – a bit like Central Australia, only with steeper mountains and bright blue sea.

Looking NW from Erice — Looking Northwest from Erice towards Monte Cofano and San Vito lo Capo in the distance. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens (click to enlarge)

Why were we going there? We had established that this would be the weekend of a sagra or food festival. These are held all over Italy and generally celebrate the local speciality. In the case of San Vito lo Capo their local speciality is couscous – obviously it is a dish of North African origin, but here you are closer to Tunis than you are to Rome or even Naples, and the Sicilians have absorbed it into their own cooking traditions along with much else from the Arab world. And rather than a simple sagra, this had built itself up as a big multicultural festival and rather than simply “la sagra del couscous” it goes by the rather grandiose name of “Couscousfest”. There were two reasons why we were going. One was that we had had opportunities to go to sagre before but chickened out. The second was that our landlord had been very keen that we should and neither of us would have been game to admit that we hadn’t.

San Vito lo Capo was heaving with people, it was dreadfully hot and we had to park a kilometre or so away and walk. We finally got into town and worked out what we had to do – buy a ticket which entitled us, at one of three locations, to a bowl of couscous, a glass of local wine and a typical Sicilian sweet (while stocks lasted).

When we got to one of the venues, in a series of brightly-decorated tents set up on the beach, I decided that I liked the sound of one of the couscous on offer, and asked the person serving for some. She wasn’t sure who was serving that one, but was pretty sure it wasn’t hers, and directed me down the line. The same happened twice more until I got to the end of the line, where I was directed back to the first bowl. There was a different person serving there now, and he was certain that what he had was what I wanted, and served me some. It wasn’t. Still, it was a fish couscous which was quite representative of local cuisine, and Lou and I swopped. I ended up with Busiate alla Trapanese which is a local pasta in a local sauce which I had been intending to try, and it turned out to be delicious, so all was well. Trapanese sauce is olive oil, tomatoes, basil, garlic, pepper and parmesan.

As we left San Vito it was still desperately hot, with the tents drumming and flapping under the onslaught of the scirocco, but mercifully, that night the scirocco eased, and was replaced by weather which was still pleasantly warm, but which could surprise you with the occasional sudden thunderstorm.

Segesta

Not far from Castellammare is a place called Segesta, with a very fine Greek temple and amphitheatre. During the great period of Greek colonisation around 500 BC, Greek city-states were established along the east and south coasts of Sicily. The Carthaginians settled the west coast. Although Segesta isn’t on any of these coasts it marks the furthest extent of Greek culture in Sicily. The Greek cities showed no sense of ethnic solidarity, and fought some extraordinarily vicious wars among themselves.

We paid an initial visit to Segesta one afternoon when there were a few tourist buses in the car park, and it took a bit of artful composing to get pictures that did not include their passengers.

Segesta Amphitheatre — The amphitheatre at Segesta, with interesting meteorology in the distance. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens (click to enlarge)

We have noticed that while the Romans built their towns down in the valleys, around here the Greeks often built theirs on hilltops. Doubtless this was as a result of their perennial warfare, but it does make for some spectacular views. From the amphitheatre we could see the weather changing constantly around us – there was a warm moist wind from the west and on the lee side of a mountain a boiling mass of dark cloud was continuously forming.

Despite the crowds it was an opportunity to scout for further photographs and with the aid of a compass I established that there would be a good chance of the temple being illuminated by the rising sun, and that there was a dirt road at a suitable distance where I would be able to set up my large format camera.

A couple of days later, therefore, I got up very early and drove back to Segesta. The satnav suggested a shorter back way to get there – but I should have known not to trust it. The Italy maps don’t seem to distinguish between good metalled roads and tiny goat tracks and one must be ever on the alert for attempts to send you down the latter. Which it did, on this occasion, and before long I was making slow and very tentative progress along a “road” of a type that was almost certainly not covered in my car rental contract. Every now and then I would pass an early-rising local who would watch in amazement, presumably wondering when James May and Richard Hammond would appear.

Eventually I emerged at Segesta, found my pre-chosen spot, and set up the tripod and the camera while waiting for sunrise. A couple of farm dogs came bounding up barking furiously, but when they saw I had a large format camera they sat down and watched proceedings quietly and with interest. I often notice that a large format camera has this effect. It was a bit cloudy to the west, but the sun found a gap to shine through which illuminated the temple.

History of Sicily - Segesta Temple — The temple at Segesta. Horseman 45FA large format camera with 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon 120mm lens (click to enlarge)

In the history of Sicily, the Ancient Greek colonies of Southern Italy (“Magna Graecia”) had some genuine cultural glories – they were part of the broader Hellenic intellectual world, and being provinces did not necessarily make them “provincial”. Even quite recently art works of considerable sophistication have been found, fished up in nets from the sea bed.

That history, however, is also replete with tyrannical rulers, wars, acts of treachery and appalling cruelty. Behind the temple of Segesta is a deep ravine. When Segesta was sacked by the tyrant Agathocles of Syracuse, a reported 8,000 of the inhabitants of the town were killed by being thrown into the ravine. Segesta came under Carthaginian protection, but during the Punic Wars it treacherously murdered the Carthaginian garrison and changed allegiance to Rome. The price for Sicily of the Pax Romana was that it declined into an agricultural backwater.

I was going to make this a combined post on both the Ancient Greeks and the Normans in Sicily but there is far too much to say about the Normans, so will write on them separately in due course.

edit: I have now done so and you can find the post here.

Note¹: Terence Hill and Bud Spencer appeared in a number of so-called “Spaghetti Westerns” in the 1960s and 70s. Their real names are Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli, respectively.

Recommended further reading on the History of Sicily: Blue Guide Sicily, edited by Michael Metcalfe, Sicily, Three Thousand Years of Human History by Sandra Benjamin, and Sicily, A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to Cosa Nostra, by John Julius Norwich.

March 7, 2019November 19, 2023

On the Pleasure of Old Travel Books

Note: in June 2019 this post was republished on the excellent website TheLocal.it as a guest post. The editor, Ms Jessica Phelan, made some well-judged changes to the original post, and I have updated it to reflect those changes.

All armchair travellers and lovers of Italy surely enjoy travel writing on Italy – such books extend the pleasure of the actual journey for weeks and months beforehand, and afterwards as well.

But for the lover of travel and history, there are two particular pleasures. One is reading books by people who travelled many years ago, and whose writings about their experience are therefore descriptions both of the places they visited and the era in which they lived.

The second pleasure is reading books by more recent writers who are knowledgeable about history themselves, and who tell you interesting things while sharing the experience of the travel. The golden age of this sort of writing was probably in the 1930s to the mid-1960s, so to an extent the two categories do tend to merge into one another. Elsewhere I have written on some more modern equivalents.

So I have quite a few on my shelves. Some like Dickens are classics and still easily found; others are out of print and the result of happy discoveries in second-hand bookshops. Here is a selection.

A Traveller in Italy, by H.V. Morton, Methuen, London 1964

“One of my first impressions was that the Milanese walk twice as fast as the Romans, and, while walking, can tell a story or pass on a piece of scandal without stopping and blocking the pavement. The sound of the voices was different. The Milanese speak a more measured, less impetuous Italian; and I noticed everywhere a number of fair-haired women. Perhaps a Teutonic strain in the Milanese is responsible for those fair heads; if not, I recalled how noted Milan and Venice were during the Renaissance for hair washes, bleaches and dyes. In one of her letters, Isabella d’Este wrote to her Milanese brother-in-law, Ludovico Sforza, asking how he managed to change the colour of his hair so quickly.”

Travel writing on Italy - A Traveller in Italy by H.V.Morton — A Traveller in Italy, by H.V. Morton

Henry Vollam Morton (1892-1979) was a prolific travel writer who specialised in books about Great Britain and the Holy Land. He did however write three books on Italy – this one, A Traveller in Rome (1957) and A Traveller in Southern Italy (1969).

A Traveller in Italy would have been better titled A Traveller in Northern Italy as it is mainly about Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, with an excursion down to Tuscany and Umbria. Morton is charming and urbane, and wears his learning lightly, telling the story of the career of St Ambrose in the late Roman period in as chatty and engaging a way as he describes meeting an English typewriter salesman in Milan who is astounded by the engineering designs of Leonardo da Vinci. He has a gift for the happy phrase – observing the vegetable market in Padua being set up at daybreak, he reflects that it is “obviously joined to the Middle Ages by a continuous string of onions”. Elsewhere he remarks on how appropriate it is that St Anthony is the patron saint both of travellers and of lost property. The waiter at the (then as always) eye-wateringly expensive Florian’s cafe in Venice serves your coffee “with the air of some grandee doing it for a wager”.

Music, Men, and Manners in France and Italy 1770, the journal of Charles Burney, Folio Society, London 1969

On Florence: “This city has been longer in possession of music, if the poets and historians may be credited, than any other in Europe… Historians relate that Lorenzo il Magnifico, in Carnival time, used to go out in the evening, followed by a numerous company of persons on horseback, masked, and richly dressed, amounting sometimes to upwards of three hundred; and the same number on foot, with wax tapers burning in their hands. In this manner they marched through the city, till three or four o’clock in the morning, singing songs, ballads, madrigals, catches, or songs of humour upon subjects then in vogue, with musical harmony, in four, eight, twelve, and even fifteen parts, accompanied with various instruments; and these, from being performed in Carnival time, were called Canti Carnascialeschi.”

Travel writing on Italy - Men, Music and Manners in France and Italy by Charles Burney — Music, Men, and Manners in France and Italy 1770

Charles Burney would be known to literary history even without this book. He was part of the intellectual circle of Samuel Johnson, and therefore features in James Boswell’s classic biography of Johnson. He was one of the first scholars in the field of what we would now call musicology, and travelled through France to Italy in order to collect material, especially copies of old musical manuscripts, for a ground-breaking General History of Music. And he was the father of Fanny Burney, who became a celebrated novelist and journal-writer herself.

Burney comes across as a most likeable fellow. He puts up good-naturedly with the discomforts of travel through France to Geneva, Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples, and many historic towns in between. He writes not just of music but of art, architecture and the many people – Italian aristocrats and scholars, and English visitors – he encounters.

Travels Through France and Italy by Tobias Smollett, 1766, Folio Society, London, 1979

“Our young gentlemen who go to Rome will do well to be upon their guard against a set of sharpers, (some of them of our own country,) who deal in pictures and antiques, and very often impose upon the uninformed stranger, by selling him trash, as the productions of the most celebrated artists. The English are more than any other foreigners exposed to this imposition. They are supposed to have more money to throw away; and therefore a greater number of snares are laid for them. This opinion of their superior wealth they take a pride in confirming, by launching out into all manner of unnecessary expence: but, what is still more dangerous, the moment they set foot in Italy, they are seized with the ambition of becoming connoisseurs in painting, musick, statuary, and architecture; and the adventurers of this country do not fail to flatter this weakness for their own advantage.”

Travel writing on Italy - Travels Through France and Italy by Tobias Smollett — Travels Through France and Italy

Smollett, in contrast to Burney, was a real curmudgeon, arguing with every innkeeper on the road and usually ending up damning their eyes for rascally rogues. But he had wide interests and an eye for detail, ranging from descriptions of the food and local produce of the regions through which he travelled, to their industries and their art.

Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens, 1846. Penguin Classics, 1998, or free e-book here.

On Genoa: “It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.”

In 1844 Dickens took time off from writing novels and made an extended trip to Italy, basing himself in Genoa but visiting other principal cities. A couple of generations younger than Burney and Smollett, and moreover someone who personified the social reform movement of Victorian England, his is a very different lens through which to see Italy, but his writing is as witty and diverting as you would expect, as he describes Italy on the eve of the uprisings of 1848 which ushered in the Risorgimento.

Travel writing on Italy - And So to Rome by Cecil Roberts — And So to Rome by Cecil Roberts, London, 1950

And So to Rome by Cecil Roberts, London, 1950

I had never heard of Cecil Roberts (1892-1976) before coming across this book in a second-hand bookshop. It turns out that he was a war correspondent in World War I, and during the Second World War he worked in the British Embassy in Washington. Wikipedia is not kind to him, describing him as a name-dropping old bore, whose many novels are almost entirely and deservedly forgotten.

While all that might well be true, this account of a visit to Rome shortly after the war is erudite and quite entertaining. The gossipy nature which seems to have made Roberts a bit trying in person shows itself in some diverting accounts of historical scandals, including that of the pretty young wife of the aged and exiled Bonnie Prince Charlie and her lover, the poet and dramatist Antonio Alfieri.

Perhaps Roberts will be rediscovered one day.

February 26, 2019March 18, 2025

History in Focus: The Val d’Orcia

Sometimes it all comes together – a successful photograph of a beautiful scene with a rich history. For those few fortunate conjunctions I have decided to create posts based on a single image, and call them “History in Focus”. I will start with the image of the Val d’Orcia that I use as the header for this site. If you are looking at this on a desktop computer or tablet, please be sure to click on the image to see an enlargement – it’s worth it.

There is a spot on the strada provinciale (SP) 146 between San Quirico d’Orcia and Pienza from which a thousand calendar and coffee-table book photographs have been taken. Setting up your camera there, you are putting your tripod feet into the holes worn by hundreds of landscape photographers before you, including some of the greats like Joe Cornish, Lee Frost and Charlie Waite. It is for many foreign visitors the perfect Tuscan landscape of rolling hills, topped by picturesque farmhouses at the ends of avenues of cypresses.

The place

Val d’Orcia runs south-east from below Siena. To the west are mountains, tallest of which is Monte Amiata. To the east is a lower range of hills which divides the Val d’Orcia from the Valdichiana.

The difference between the two valleys is marked: until relatively recently the Valdichiana was full of lakes and swamps, and is now extraordinarily fertile. The Val d’Orcia, on the other hand, is more gaunt; the bones show beneath the skin, as it were. The area was heavily forested in antiquity, but denuded of its trees by the Etruscans and Romans. The resulting erosion seriously degraded the land, and by the early 20^th Century this area, which we now think of as a land of milk and honey, was in fact in the grip of dreadful poverty. Its recovery, and the creation of the landscape we see today, is due to a program of agricultural reform and partial reforestation started in the 1930s and 40s by an Italian aristocrat called Antonio Origo and his wife, Iris.

Iris Origo – Anglo-Irish-American aristocrat, landscape gardener, writer of scholarly historical biographies, and war heroine, deserves a post of her own at some stage.

Edit: here is that post.

The history

Down the western side of the Val d’Orcia runs an ancient road. In places it lies under the route of the modern SP2, and in places it wanders off by itself, a quiet unpaved road among the wheat fields, cypresses and oaks. Modern travellers on the autostrada and high-speed rail line follow the Valdichiana to the east, but in medieval times that route would have been hard to travel due to swamps and lakes, not to mention dangerously malarial. So if you were on a pilgrimage to Rome, or leading an army there, you might well have come this way. The route was generally referred to as “the road out of France”, or the Via Francigena.

The Val d’Orcia has always been a border region. It lies at the southern margin of what was republican Siena in the Middle Ages, later incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The hilltop fortress of Radicofani, visible from pretty much anywhere in the valley, marked the northern edge of the Papal territories. You can see it in the photograph as a flat-topped hill on the horizon with a tower on it.

Here, in the year 1155, the army of Frederick Barbarossa paused in its southward march, while Frederick waited for emissaries from Pope Adrian IV.

These two men were among the most forceful personalities in medieval history. Frederick was determined to assert all the historic power – and more – of the Holy Roman Empire to which he was heir. Adrian (born Nicholas Breakspear, the only English pope) was elected to replace an unworldly and vacillating predecessor at a time when both the religious and temporal authority of the Church were facing multiple threats. Frederick’s army approached the papal domains from the north. The kingdom of Sicily, under its Norman rulers, pressed from the south. The aristocratic families that ruled Rome were asserting their historic independence, both from Pope and Emperor. And the greatest challenge of all was spiritual, in the form of a monk by the name of Arnold of Brescia who preached against the worldly wealth and power of the Church.

Adrian decided that his best approach was to make common cause, at least temporarily, with Frederick. He would agree to crown Frederick as Emperor, in return for Frederick’s help dealing with his various problems. After some careful preliminary negotiations with Papal legates here in the Val d’Orcia, Frederick and his army moved south until they were just across the border into Papal territory. There, after some protracted and prickly meetings between the principals, they moved south to Rome where the Roman senators were comprehensively outmanoeuvred, and Frederick was crowned Emperor by the Pope before the senators realised it was happening.

Later, after signing a treaty with Sicily, Adrian changed sides, and united the northern Italian cities against Frederick in what would become the Lombard League.

The biggest loser in all of this was Arnold of Brescia, who, deprived of Imperial protection, was condemned by the Church and hanged, his body burnt, and his ashes thrown in the Tiber. Allowing no bodily relics to survive was intended, in the Middle Ages, to ensure that a person did not become an object of popular veneration or even a saint. Arnold’s back-to-basics message was not all that different from that of St Francis of Assisi in the next century, but Francis lived in a more politically propitious time, and was more fortunate in his Pope. Therein lies another post, one day.

Recommended reading: The Popes, A History, by John Julius Norwich, London 2011, Chapter XI.

The photograph

We were staying in the Agriturismo Cretaiole, just outside Pienza, only a few minutes’ drive away along the SP146. It was April, cool enough for morning mists, and when the sunrise is late enough that the aspiring dawn photographer does not need to get up in the middle of the night. It is also early enough in the year that a camera set up to take this view would be shooting into the sun. That would make things tricky in terms of contrast and lens flare, but on the plus side, any mist might be dramatically backlit.

I set the alarm for about 5.30am and crept out. It was still pitch dark. What’s more, I realised, there was a thick fog. I decided to put my hope on the fog clearing a bit when the sun hit it, and continued to the spot I had chosen earlier. I was going to use the Horseman 45FA large format camera, with a 6x17cm Kang Tai panoramic rollfilm back. I chose a standard focal length, which meant my Nikkor 150mm. On the assumption that the sky would be a good deal lighter than the ground, I also fitted a 0.6 neutral density graduated filter. This reduces the difference in brightness between the sky and the land to something that colour film or digital can manage without losing detail at either end of the range. As with all filters, the test of whether you have done it right is that it should not be possible to tell from the finished image.

No other filter was used. I say this because some people have seen this image and assumed that the pink colour is due to a filter. No, it is all natural.

By the time I had got all that set up, the sky was beginning to lighten and the fog had lifted enough to see the tops of the hills sticking out. I made the final adjustments to the composition on the focusing screen, then removed it and replaced it with the panoramic film back, loaded with ISO 50 Fuji Velvia. Then I waited. The sun rose, and very quickly the mist started to thin. I removed the dark slide, cocked the shutter, and got ready to take the picture. Just at the last minute I realised that the filter had completely fogged up with condensation from the mist. After quickly removing it, wiping it dry and replacing it, I shielded the lens from the direct sunlight and took the shot.

Time to set up: about 15 minutes. Time waiting for the light to be right: about 40 minutes. Length of exposure: 1 second.

The resulting 6x17cm positive image was then scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner. Post–processing in Photoshop was limited to making the scanned image as close to the original as possible. I have printed this image at a width of 86cm and it is completely sharp.

I took several more photographs after this one, which I have made the subject of a separate post here. And you can find more pictures of the Val d’Orcia, taken from Pienza, here.

Nuraghi

Colonies and Empire

A Roman Coastal Town

After Rome

Postscript: Flamingos

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The Legend of the Eagle

Umbrians, not Etruscans

Sources

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First Impressions of Sardinia

Cagliari

The Festa di Sant’Efisio

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Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Maria in Trastevere

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Tiberius (42 BC – 37 AD)

Axel Munthe (1857 – 1949)

Norman Douglas (1868 – 1952)

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The Name’s Piccolomini, Aeneas Piccolomini

Germany and the Empire

Holy Orders

Pienza

Sources

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Which Saint?

What about Charlemagne?

The Medieval Abbey

Decline and Rebirth

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Rome During the Avignon Period

Young Cola

Seizing Power

Cola in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Further Reading

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Scipione Borghese

Art, Ancient and Modern

Disreputable artists – Bernini and Caravaggio

Scandals

Pauline Bonaparte

Further Reading

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The Nemi Ships

The Frescoes and Mosaics

Greek stuff

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Catherine of Siena

Cardinal Gil Albornoz

Sir John Hawkwood

Odds and ends

Further Reading

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The “Ideal City”

The Flagellation of Christ

The Studiolo

The Art of War

The End of the Story

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The Photography

Cefalù

Monreale

The Benedictine Cloisters

Cola in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries