Photography Archives - The Patroclus

January 8, 2024February 10, 2024

Wine and Truffles in the Langhe

In late September 2023 we visited the region of the Langhe, southeast of Turin, famous for its wine, truffles and other produce, but also in large part for its beauty. We had planned this trip for a few years, but various obstacles – including COVID – got in the way. I took a large number of photographs, from which I have selected a few taken in and around the towns of La Morra and Barolo.

It was a trip of several hours by car from Umbria, made longer by heavy traffic around Genoa, as often happens. After crossing the mountains behind Genoa we found ourselves in the flat lands of the upper Po Valley – nothing like the hilly country we had been expecting, but in due course the hills of Langhe popped up quite abruptly near Asti, and it started to look a lot more like the brochures.

Piedmont

We were in the Region of Piedmont (Italian Piemonte) – meaning literally “at the foot of the mountains”. Before Italian unification it was part of the “Kingdom of Sardinia” – but despite the name the seat of the ruling House of Savoy was not in Sardinia but in Turin. The history of Savoy is a long one, and originally not particularly Italian. It was a county, and then a duchy, centred in what is now southeastern France, and the general culture of the court, including the language, was more French than Italian. You can still see the influence in the place-names, especially in the mountains on the French border, but the French language does not have special status as it does in the officially-bilingual Valle d’Aosta next door, and with the decline of regional dialects most Piemontese these days speak standard Italian.

The map below shows the area south of Turin, with the Langhe rather approximately indicated.

Piedmont and the Langhe (source: Google Maps, click to open in Google Maps).

As we approached our destination the slopes began to be covered in vines – harvest was just starting and the black grapes were hanging heavily. Since we were staying near the town of Barolo, I assumed that most of these grapes were the Nebbiolo variety, which goes into the famous – and expensive – Barolo wine, and a bit further north, its softer cousin Barbaresco.

Nebbiolo grapes near La Morra. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

It is strange that such a dark-coloured grape produces a comparatively light-coloured red wine, but there is a lot of acid and tannin and the flavour is intense. Because of its colour I’ve seen Barolo compared to Pinot Noir, but it doesn’t taste or smell anything like Pinot to me. A related variety called Freisa produces similar but simpler wines which are a bit cheaper.

There were also plantations of lots of rather scrubby-looking trees. These turned out to be hazelnut trees. It seems that many of the hazelnuts for Nutella, as well as for the fancier gianduia, come from around here. There isn’t much you can do to make these trees very photogenic, except to take them at first light on a misty Autumn morning, which would make almost anything look good.

Dawn at La Morra. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 100-400mm lens (click to enlarge).

Looking about, one sees a landscape of rolling hills covered in vines and plantations of hazelnut trees. On the hilltops are little towns, and a few castles, showing that being part of a unitary Savoyard state didn’t mean everything was necessarily peaceful. But some of the towns are in the valleys, which suggests that defensive situations were not as critically important as they were further south. And of course this far north there would not have been the risk of malaria that drove people to higher ground in central and southern parts of Italy.

Diano d'Alba — The town of Diano d’Alba taken from near La Morra, surrounded by vines and hazelnut trees. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

The town of Roddi, taken from near La Morra. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

Away to the west on the horizon is the line of the Alps, where they curve down from the north and mark the modern boundary between France and Italy (in France the mountains are called the Alpes-Maritimes). It would be very beautiful here in spring, when the vines were starting to leaf and the snow was still on the mountains.

The Alps from La Morra — Looking west from La Morra towards the distant Alps. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

Looking south-west from near La Morra, with the mountains dimly visible. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

These days the area makes much of its reputation for wine and gastronomy and it no doubt attracts a lot of day trippers from Turin, which must generate a fair bit of income on top of that from primary production. Most of the promotional material tends to speak of the antiquity of the food and wine traditions of the Langhe, but while that may be so, I have read that the area was quite impoverished up to the 1960s.

La Morra

La Morra is quite a small town, on a hilltop and with wonderful views.

Not surprisingly, most of the shops in the historic centre are restaurants or sell wine and food. But La Morra hasn’t lost its living soul – right on the top of the hill is a school from which children spill noisily between classes, and the locals stop and chat in the streets.

La Morra school — The school in La Morra. The sign above the door says “classi maschili”, dating from the days when boys and girls went to school in different buildings. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

While in the restaurant in the photograph above, I decided that, despite the expense, it would be a missed opportunity to be in the Langhe during white truffle season, and not try some. The white truffle is rarer, more delicately-flavoured, and more expensive than the black truffle, and around here, especially near the town of Alba, they are famous. So I ordered a soft-boiled egg with fresh white truffle. There was a bit of theatre associated with it – I was presented with a glass bowl containing several truffles which looked a bit like things that might have been surgically removed from someone. I chose the smallest, which they weighed on a miniature set of scales which had a readout in grams to two decimal places. That was then put in a smaller bowl and left on my table, presumably to avoid substitution.

When the egg arrived, the waiter produced a special shaver and shaved the truffle over it with some ceremony. I wouldn’t say that it was the most memorable gustatory experience of my life, but it was certainly very nice, and I can at least say that I have had it.

Truffle and egg — The truffle and the egg. Google Pixel phone camera (click to enlarge).

Barolo

Near to La Morra is the town of Barolo, no larger but more famous because it gave its name to the wine variety.

While La Morra is on a hilltop, Barolo is lower down the side of the valley, but still on a bit of a defensible outcrop on which a castle has stood since the 10th Century.

The castle was rebuilt in the 16th Century but these days it looks nothing like anything from either the 10th or the 16th centuries, despite there no doubt being remants of the original somewhere beneath. Instead the exterior looks distinctly Victorian, like something imagined by a Pre-Raphaelite painter. This is because it was heavily renovated from 1864 in the course of passing from private ownership to being the home of a charitable institution.

Even more so than La Morra, Barolo is now dedicated to wine and gastronomy. The winery of one of the major producers – Borgogno – is in the middle of town, and there are many enoteche, cantine and restaurants. Some enterprising, or optimistic, individual has even established a museum of corkscrews.

Barolo corkscrew museum — Barolo, Museo dei Cavatappi. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

Like many such places in Italy, there are regular food festivals celebrating typical local dishes. Missing out on the tripe festival later in the month was a disappointment we could live with, though.

July 5, 2023November 19, 2023

Night Photography in Bologna

Earlier this year we visited Bologna and I published a short post of street photography – people and shops. Recently we went there again and I was able to get in some evening and night photography. Again, these were taken on my Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera which is assuming a similar place in my affections to my old Contax G1 35mm film camera.

Bologna Via Altabella — Bologna, Via Altabella. The lady was making pasta in the front window, and although she looks a bit disapproving in this shot, a moment later she rewarded me with a dazzling smile (which I wish I had taken). Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

In terms of image quality the X-Pro3 cannot match my medium-format Fujifilm GFX 50R camera with its much larger sensor, but it has its advantages. It is small and unobtrusive compared to the larger camera, and much lighter – where the GFX 50R has brass and steel, the X-Pro3 has magnesium and titanium. And the lenses for larger cameras need more glass, which adds weight. As a result the X-Pro3 with a 16mm lens weighs a bit over 700 grams, while the GFX 50R with its 32-64mm lens weighs in at over 1.7 kilograms.

Fujifilm GFX 50R and X-Pro3 comparison (click to enlarge).

Of course night photography has challenges – as the light in the sky fades, shadows become darker and you need to boost the ISO, which makes the resulting images noisier, which is to say more grainy. Modern software can help a lot with noise reduction – I use something called Topaz DeNoise AI.

Bologna Evening — Evening in a back street, Bologna. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

One of the best times is when the light in the sky is at about the same level as that illuminating the objects you are photographing. This period is quite short, although it lasts a bit longer in summer. Digital post-processing does allow you to extend that period by adjusting highlights and shadows, but if overdone it will look artificial.

I was using a wide-angle lens, which has some disadvantages – objects and people appear smaller. But it has some advantages for street photography. The wide angle allows you to point the camera past people rather than at them, while still getting them in the composition.

Wide-angle lenses can also give you a lot of foreground in the shot, which is not a good thing if the foreground is boring. On the other hand if you can make the foreground interesting, for example by looking for people casting long shadows, it can add to the mood, or even become one of the subjects of the composition.

Bologna night photography — In this case, the shadows cast by the backs of the seats are what first caught my eye. *Gelateria*, Bologna. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

By the time we got to the main piazza, the sky was getting a lot darker, but was still bright enough to create silhouettes. Silhouettes in night photography can be overrated, but when they are instantly recognisable like the Statue of Neptune, they can be worth it.

Statue of Neptune, Bologna. The shape of his trident was borrowed by the Maserati brothers as a badge for their cars. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Eventually it got to the point where the only source of light was street lights and shop windows.

Not long ago, most of the shop interiors would have been lit by fluorescent tubes. The light produced by these would come out on film and digital sensors as a ghastly blue-green. And incandescent light bulbs came out as very yellow, so when both sources were present, it was almost impossible to balance them without some advanced post-processing techniques. These days people mostly light their shops with LEDs, which produce light that looks a lot more natural to a camera. A win for night photography as well as for the environment.

Lighting coming from odd directions can help the street photographer to pick out a subject and try and tell a story. As someone who mostly did landscape photography for many years I will admit that I am still coming to grips with this, but it is fun when it works out.

June 30, 2023April 1, 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 its 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.

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, 2023November 19, 2023

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 14, 2023March 3, 2024

Street Photography in Bologna

Bologna is one of the best places in Italy for street photography, of the candid sort but also of some beautifully presented shopfronts and window displays. We recently spent a couple of days in Bologna with friends, and here is a short photo essay. All these were taken on my new Fujifilm X-Pro3 which is a small, discreet rangefinder-style digital camera.

The historic centre of Bologna is a good place for street photography, for a few reasons. One is that there are enough tourists that the guy with the camera doesn’t stand out, but enough locals that your picture is not going to be full of tourists.

Bologna Via Oberdan. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Another is that even when a shopkeeper does see you taking a photograph, he or she is probably used to it. A third is that the elegant shopfronts and food displays in the market quarter deserve to be photographed – when the proprietor has spent that much trouble making it look nice, it is a fitting compliment to take a picture of it.

Bologna Cheese Shop — Bologna, cheese shop. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

In any case, in shops I often ask first. “Posso?” (may I?) I ask, pointing at the camera. No-one has ever said no, but it makes me feel more comfortable knowing that I have been given permission. In the picture above, the man in the cheese shop said “certo” (of course) and carried on cleaning his counter.

Bologna Salumeria — Bologna, salumeria. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

If I haven’t asked, and get busted, I will touch my cap and nod thanks, which often seems to suffice.

Bologna Greengrocer — Greengrocer’s shop, Bologna. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna florist — Florist, Bologna. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge)

Immediately to the east of the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna is a small area of narrow streets and many shops, mainly butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, wine merchants and the like. This is the historic market area, and the best time to go there is in the morning, when all the produce is fresh, and in any case some shops like the fishmongers close for the day at lunchtime.

Bologna Fishmongers — Bologna fishmonger. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna is home to the world’s oldest university (founded in 1088) and it has the energy and edginess that one associates with student towns. But it is also a prosperous place – productive agriculture and high-tech industry clearly bring in a lot of wealth, and have done for a while. In the centre the shopfronts can therefore be very elegant – sometimes retaining their original antique signage when the actual shop has been taken over by something more modern.

Bologna shopfront near the Piazza Maggiore. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

But one of the special things about Bologna is that the Bolognese take food very, very seriously indeed, even by Italian standards. The food shops are therefore temples to gastronomy, places of wonder, delight and not inconsiderable expense.

Bologna La Baita — Bologna, *salumeria*. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Simoni — Bologna, *salumeria* Simoni. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Paneficio Priori — Bologna, *Paneficio* Armando Priori. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Gilberto — Bologna, Enoteca Gilberto. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

One of the classiest shops in this area is “Atti & Figli”. You can walk away from there somewhat lighter in the pocket, but clutching a couple of hundred grams of tortellini in very elegant packaging and the feeling that somehow you have temporarily been admitted to an exclusive club.

Bologna Atti — Bologna, Atti & Figli. Note the exquisite packaging, and the “English jams for refined palates”. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Ottica Paoletti — Even the camera shops look elegant in Bologna. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Melega — Bologna, Via Clavature. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Via Clavature — Bologna, Via Clavature. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Via Pescherie Vecchie — Bologna, Via Pescherie Vecchie. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Bologna Vicolo Ranocchi — Bologna, Vicolo Ranocchi. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

A note on the photography – black and white conversion

I was very pleased with the photograph above of the man in the cheese shop – the simplicity of the scene and the rich colours required little in the way of post-processing. But nonetheless I was interested to see if I could make it more dramatic by converting it to back and white. Most cameras (and smartphones) have a monochrome option, and sometimes this does little more than convert each pixel in the red, green and blue channels to the same intensity in greyscale.

But have you ever seen a black and white photograph and wondered why it seems more dramatic than its colour equivalent would have been?

The answer may be that the colours have not been given equal priority in conversion to greyscale. This was something that the old film photographers understood well; when I was a child learning to take black and white pictures, my father showed me how to attach a yellow filter in sunny weather. This had the effect of blocking much of the blue light, and darkening skies while leaving clouds white, making it much more dramatic.

You can do the same with a digital photograph. In the image below, I boosted the red and yellow while reducing the blue, using Affinity Photo 2 software. This made the orange colours of the cheeses seem to glow, while reducing white and blue – see how the man’s white coat has become dark. Is it an “accurate” photograph? Not in some ways, but that’s not always the point.

Cheese shop B&W — Man in a cheese shop: monochrome conversion with reds and yellows enhanced and blues suppressed. Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera, Fujifilm XF 16mm lens (click to enlarge).

Screen grab from Affinity Photo 2 software, showing relative proportions of colours converted to greyscale (click to enlarge).

Note: we made a second visit to Bologna a couple of months later. On that occasion I took quite a few evening shots, which you can see here.

April 3, 2023March 30, 2024

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.

March 7, 2023January 10, 2024

Street Life in Naples

Here is a short photographic essay on street photography in Naples, with thoughts on the genre as a whole.

I feel a bit diffident about taking candid photographs of strangers – I talked about this before in my post on Street Photography. There are a few ways around this – apart from sticking exclusively to landscapes, of course.

One is to include people as anonymous distant or abstract objects in a composition.

Naples, Piazza del Plebiscito. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, two images stitched in Affinity Photo software (click to enlarge).

Another is to choose occasions when implied consent may reasonably be assumed – such as street performers or people taking part in historical pageants. People doing both are even better, although it seems only fair to toss a euro in the hat if you take their photographs.

If in doubt you can always ask – pointing at the camera and raising your eyebrows will get the point across fairly well. People in professional environments – shopkeepers or craftsmen – often respond positively.

And it is really hard to define, but there are certain places when you just feel that people are less self-conscious, more exuberant and outgoing, and less likely to be bothered by the presence of a camera. Such a place is Naples.

Naples, Montesanto Market. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Naples Lungomare. Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Naples, Piazza Giulio Rodinò. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Naples: Via Chiaia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

These things are admittedly subjective and I am quite likely to be projecting my own responses to the city onto others, but both times we have visited Naples I have taken a great many pictures of people and I’ve never felt that my doing so was unwelcome.

Naples, Spaccanapoli. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon C 50mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujifilm Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Naples, Via Chiaia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

A lot of the time, the attraction of photographing people just going about their daily lives is that it helps you capture a sense of what it is like living there. Of course there is plenty of scope for being selective – if you just chose happy people, you could make a city seem like a wonderful place to live, and if you just chose down-and-outs, it could seem horrible. You see this sort of tendentious selection quite a lot in journalism. I’m not saying that it is necessarily dishonest, but if you are illustrating a story that is making a particular point, then obviously your choice of illustrations will be consistent with that.

But I am not a journalist, and I don’t really have any agenda. So for me the point is to try and illustrate the impression a place makes on me, as honestly as possible. Yes, that means I am going to be selective, but with the the best of motives. So for Naples I try and take pictures of happy people, because that how Naples makes me feel. Then again, people in Naples really do look happier.

Castel dell'Ovo — Naples, Castel dell’Ovo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Some of the best street photographs, for me, are those that seem to tell a story. In the picture below, is the girl on the shore dreaming that one day it will be her turn to be drinking champagne on a superyacht?

And in some cases the attraction of the photograph is just the sheer oddness of it – what on earth is going on here?

Three bears — Naples: Goldilocks hung the three bears out to dry. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

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.

November 15, 2022September 21, 2023

A Return to the Val d’Orcia

The Val d’Orcia is something of a sacred place for photography. As I have said elsewhere, there are spots where you are placing your tripod feet in the grooves worn by some of the great professional landscape photographers. And the reason is not difficult to see – it is one of the most visually inspiring landscapes in Italy.

I have posted before on the Val d’Orcia. Here, I wrote a bit about the history of the place, around a large format panoramic photograph of the valley at dawn. I followed that with some of the other photographs I took on the same morning. Then I posted some photographs of the valley just before an early summer thunderstorm. But I keep coming back, and the valley seldom disappoints.

A Hot Summer

We visited the Val d’Orcia twice in 2022. The first time was in late June, during a very hot summer with temperatures regularly over 40˚C. Our main objective was to find a place with air conditioning.

The weather wasn’t tremendous for photography – the sky was hazy and the light was harsh. On the plus side the wheat had recently been harvested and the fields of stubble showed the undulations of the terrain. Eventually we found ourselves in an area below the walls of Pienza. At some time in the last few years, someone has decided to call this the “Elysian Fields” as a way of marketing it to walkers and cyclists. On a blistering hot afternoon it felt rather more Hadean than Elysian.

If you are going to try and capture the mood of an exhausted baking landscape, it helps a lot to include the sun in the composition, but this brings its own challenges. If the sun is in the picture it means that it is shining directly into the lens, which will cause lens flare, or internal reflections, visible in the photograph below as light-coloured blobs. A good quality lens with anti-reflective coating on the internal elements will reduce this a bit.

Outside Pienza — Late afternoon in summer, outside Pienza. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the end I decided not to try and edit the lens flare out in post-processing. People are used to seeing it in photographs and so it doesn’t seem too unnatural. Indeed some photo editing software suites actually allow you to add fake lens flare to images where there is none, which seems rather strange to me.

In my film photography days I would have needed to use a neutral-density graduated filter to reduce the brightness of the sky compared to the land, but a medium format digital camera like the Fuji GFX 50R captures enough detail at the bright and dark extremes to allow you to achieve the same effect in post-processing, with greater control.

The Valley in Autumn

Our second visit to the Val d’Orcia in 2022 was in September when the fields had been ploughed and the landscape was gradually taking on its autumn colours. This time we had guests with us and watching their reactions to a first visit to the area was most enjoyable – it took us back to how we felt the first time, twenty-three years earlier.

It was also an opportunity for me to try out a new lens – a 100-200mm zoom with optical image stabilisation. My two Fuji zoom lenses really are remarkably good – the first zooms I have used which can really stand comparison with prime (ie fixed focal length) lenses. The image stabilisation means that you are less reliant on a tripod.

On this visit we were staying in Pienza itself, with easy access to the town walls from which you get wonderful views over the valley. My plan was to take advantage of the low angle of the sun at sunset and sunrise to find more undulating patterns in the terrain.

The photograph below was taken shortly before sunset. Using the 100-200mm zoom at its long end meant that I could zoom in on sections of the view for effect. The 50 megapixel sensor in the GFX 50R has loads of detail to spare, so I could, in effect, zoom in further by cropping during post-processing, without losing much quality.

Val d'Orcia at sunset — The Val d’Orcia at sunset, from the walls of Pienza. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

Next morning I set out in search of the very first light on the valley floor. It being around the autumn equinox, getting up before dawn did not require setting a very early alarm.

Val d'Orcia at Dawn — The Val d’Orcia at dawn. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

As the sun crept over the hills in the east, the light started to touch the higher points in the valley below, casting long shadows across the fields.

The iconic winding roads lined by cypress trees were often the first to appear, and the folds of the land were accentuated by the shadows, like muscles beneath skin.

All these pictures show the starkness of the Val d’Orcia, and it used to be a lot less fertile than it is now. If you want to find out a bit about how it got this way, and learn about a very remarkable woman, I recommend my post on Iris Origo, La Foce and the Val d’Orcia.

Later that day we stopped beside the road from San Quirico d’Orcia to Pienza, to photograph the famous Cappella della Vitaleta. I have taken many pictures of this little church over the years, but there is always room in the catalogue for one or two more.

October 9, 2022November 19, 2023

A Nation of Shopkeepers II – another celebration of Italian shops.

Here is another instalment of photographs of Italian shops. In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and all shops were closed in Italy, I published an elegaic photo essay celebrating the shopfronts and the shopkeepers of Italy. It was a worrying time and I published it as much to cheer myself up as for anyone else, although I hope it may have cheered others up as well.

Now, two and a half years later, the pandemic has eased, although the hoofbeats of another horseman of the apocalypse can be heard to the northeast. So in slightly happier but still nervous times, here is another chapter.

As I said in the earlier post, Italians have a flair for design and presentation which in the case of shops manifests itself both in the design of the shopfront and in the care which goes into the displays of merchandise.

Let us start with a very elegant butcher’s shop in Arezzo, a Norcineria (delicatessen) in Orvieto, and a Gastronomia in the Naples suburb of Vomero.

Italian shops: Macelleria ALfredo — Macelleria Alfredo, Arezzo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Italian shops: Norcineria Roticiani — Norcineria Roticiani, Orvieto. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Italian shops: Gastronomia San Martino — Gastronomia San Martino, Vomero, Naples. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Still on the subject of food – a very important subject in Italy – here are a gastronomia from the town of Bevagna with an impressive delivery bike outside, and an osteria in Todi, the interior of which promises a warm welcome as the evening draws in.

Italian shops: Alimentari, Bevagna — Alimentari, Bevagna. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Osteria Valle, Todi. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Bars occupy a special place in Italian life. In the mornings they serve coffee and pastries for breakfast – often eaten standing up at the counter by people on their way to work. This is the only time of day when milky coffees like cappucini are ordered by Italians. A strong black espresso is of course acceptable at any hour of the day or night. Then in late morning people stop ordering cappucini and it becomes acceptable to order a pre-lunch aperitivo – a glass of wine or a spritz, or a beer if it is hot. Snacks, often quite substantial, may be offered – and outside the main tourist areas may even be included in the price of the drinks. Bars may double as pasticcerie and gelaterie, and many cheaper restaurants and trattorie double as bars before mealtimes.

In the warmer months a bar’s tables and chairs may spill out into sunny piazzas, and in winter a bar offers a bright, warm and steamy refuge on a dark and cold morning.

Bars can be huge and swanky with uniformed waiters, or tiny and utilitarian with a single person serving. An example of the former is Caffè Paszkowski in Florence, and there are literally thousands of examples of the latter. Below the picture of Caffè Paszkowski is one of a tiny and anonymous bar in Corso Cavour in Todi.

Caffe Paszkowski — Caffè Paszkowski, Florence. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Anonymous bar, Corso Cavour, Todi. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

But Italians all have their favourite, and are faithful to them. There is a phrase – di fiducia, literally “of trust” – which tells you a lot about Italian behaviour. Your bar – or greengrocer’s, or butcher’s – di fiducia is the one you are faithful to, where they recognise you and greet you. And if the proprietor saw you going into another establishment they would feel slighted. As people who are obviously not Italian and are therefore usually assumed to be tourists, it means a lot to us to have a bar and shops di fiducia in our adopted town.

Here are two more examples of neighbourhood bars – the Bar Viviani in Arezzo and the Bar Loreti in the little town of Acquasparta in Umbria.

Of course where else but in Rome could you actually find shops that specialise in liturgical vestments?

Arredamento Liturgico, Rome. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The gritty streets of downtown Naples must be one of the most challenging environments for the proud shopkeeper. Theft and vandalism are equal threats, and the response is armoured steel doors that when closed look as if they would withstand anything short of assault with an anti-tank weapon. But when they are opened they reveal display windows and shelves on the insides of the doors, whether for the beautifully boxed chocolates of Gay-Odin, or the books of the d’Ambrosio bookshop, both below.

Gay-Odin Chocolate Shop, Naples. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Libreria d'Ambrosia — Libreria d’Ambrosio, Naples. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

After hours, when the doors are closed again, you would walk past them without a second look, unaware of the treasures within.

I will finish with what must be one of the most elegant barbershops anywhere. Mr Bertini’s establishment in Todi is rightly famous for its ornately carved shopfront, which has been seen in many online travelogues and even featured in a television advertisement for Moretti Beer. Mr Bertini is also a real artist with scissors and razor.

Barbiere Bertini, Todi. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

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!

June 23, 2020March 9, 2024

Evening Photography: Rome, Venice and Tuscany

Evening photography can produce dramatic results, although it has its challenges. Here are some examples from Venice, Rome and Tuscany.

Earlier I promised some evening shots to complement my early morning photographs of Venice. Evening photography has the same main benefit as dawn, which is to say warmer light and lower contrast. In fact, sometimes the atmospheric haze at the end of a long day (natural or from pollution) can produce more pleasing colours than in the clarity of dawn.

Evening in Venice — Venice at sunset from the bridge over the Rio de la Tana. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-M 300mm lens, Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Another advantage over dawn photography is not having to set the alarm clock. The disadvantage, of course, is that there will usually be many more people about. So bridges and waterfronts are good places to be to try and avoid having people wander through your shot.

Getting the exposure right can be tricky – even if your camera has the very latest algorithms to calculate exposure, it won’t always get it right. For much of my photography life, I did not use cameras with automatic exposure, but found that a good result could usually be obtained by using a hand-held spot meter on a point just to the side of the setting sun. For the photograph above I metered on a point about halfway between the sun and the belltower in Piazza San Marco. For the photograph below I metered from the clouds in the centre, just above the trees.

San Pietro — Rome: the dome of St Peter’s silhouetted by the setting sun, from Ponte Umberto I. Hasselblad 500 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The picture above was taken with a “standard” focal length which roughly approximates what the eye sees. But if I had used a telephoto lens just to zoom in on the bright area, the result would have been less realistic but more dramatic. The photograph of the Val d’Orcia below shows how, with a long telephoto lens, you can take that to extremes – if that is the sort of thing you like.

The picture below of St Peter’s in Rome demonstrates a similar effect, although this time with some foreground detail. The “starburst” effect on the streetlights is not the result of a filter, but of the type of aperture used in large format lenses. The long exposure has smoothed the surface of the Tiber.

From memory, that photograph needed an exposure of almost ten minutes, given the slow film and the very small aperture I was using. Onlookers on either side took quite an interest, so I had to do my best to avoid anyone knocking the tripod. Halfway through the exposure, one of Rome’s ubiquitous hawkers tried to sell me a selfie stick but I explained to him that my camera was too big and heavy for that.

Venice: the lagoon in front of Giudecca, from the temporary pontoon bridge erected for the Festa del Redentore each year. Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

When you have a distant silhouetted skyline, as in the photograph above, it is important that it be sharp. But to focus at infinity, while giving you that sharpness in the distance, would throw the foreground out of focus. The solution is to focus on the “hyperfocal distance”. The exact calculation of hyperfocal distance, and why it is important, is explained here, but a rule of thumb is to focus about a third of the way into the area you wish to be in focus, and use focus guides on your lens, if it has them, to give you an indication of the closest and furthest points that will be acceptably sharp at your chosen aperture. Some modern cameras will give you an indication of the range of sharp focus on the display, but I always like to see focus guides on a lens.

After sunset, as the light fades, there will come a point where everything is lost in shadow. But before that there will be a brief period, perhaps only a couple of minutes, when the intensity of both sky and ground is similar enough to capture detail and colour in both. Exactly when that is will depend on various things, including how bright it is in the areas you want to capture. In the photograph below I wanted to roughly balance the sky, the lights strung between the lamp posts, and the interior of the shop. Although it was still quite crowded, the people walking along the quayside are largely lost in the shadows, giving a sense of peace.

Giudecca Evening — Venice: the Giudecca after sunset, with festive lights put out for the Festa del Redentore. Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

If you are not sure, a hand-held spot meter reading from all areas you wish to capture will help. My meter even has an function which allows you to take spot readings from multiple sources and then gives you an average exposure value. High-end modern SLRs can do the same thing in-camera. But I have to admit that in this picture I guessed – the more experience you have, the more likely you are to guess right. And if you are using digital, it costs you nothing to try various settings.

This final photograph in the set was quite challenging to take. I was set up on the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, which is one of the busiest areas, just near the Doge’s Palace. It was around 8pm, so there were still many people about, but I couldn’t leave it any later without the sky fading to black. My calculated exposure was around 10 minutes, and there was no way that I could go that long without other people wandering into the shot, or, even if they were out of shot, taking flash photographs which would have reflected off the nearer objects.

So I set the camera up, and started the exposure, timed with a stopwatch. Whenever it looked as if someone was about to wander in front of me, or was getting ready to take a flash photograph, I closed the shutter and stopped the stopwatch. When the coast was clear, I re-opened the shutter and restarted the stopwatch. All up, my ten-minute exposure took more than half an hour.

Venice: the Basino and San Giorgio Maggiore from the Riva degli Schiavoni. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The long exposure necessarily produced some artefacts. Obviously, the rocking of the gondolas blurred their outlines. The faint white blur about a third of the way over from the left is the shirt of a gondolier who climbed onto his boat and rowed away. Various bright horizontal streaks mark the passage of the lights on vaporetti and other craft. And the wavy bright line to the right of the centre is made by the light on the back of a gondola that was being rowed along.

Is it a “realistic” photograph? Probably not in any technical sense of the word. But to me it does bring back the mood of that evening rather powerfully. And I really only make photographs to please myself, so I guess that makes it a success.

May 20, 2020November 19, 2023

Street Photography in Italy

“Street Photography” is a term that actually means “candid photography of people in the street” as in the famous photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. So that usually requires that you are doing it without those people’s consent. That makes it a bit tricky, but it is legal in Italy if it is not for commercial purposes, as this article explains.

Candid means not staged, although there are degrees of candidness. The very famous 1951 photograph An American Girl in Italy (actually one of a series) was planned by the photographer and the subject, who even did a second pass through the group of men to try and get better reactions. Despite her apparent distress, the subject, Ninalee Allen, claimed to have enjoyed herself thoroughly, imagining herself as Beatrice in a famous Victorian painting of Dante and Beatrice, as explained in her 2018 obituary in The Economist. Afterwards she went for a ride on the back of the scooter on the right.

And of course there are some good although much less famous examples from Francis Sandwith here.

My approach tends towards the opportunistic, and I do worry about the privacy aspect. That being said, the group of jolly gondolieri below, sauntering along the Riva degli Schiavoni in their traditional costumes looking for business can probably be assumed not to be seeking privacy. Similarly, people dressing up in historical costume and parading in the streets are not doing it for privacy either.

Children make good subjects, thanks to their lack of self-consciousness, however – sadly – taking candid pictures of children can be thought a bit creepy in these nervous times, so it is a good idea to make sure that they are anonymous.

Via Garibaldi, Venice. Contax G1 35mm rangefinder camera, Zeiss Planar 45mm lens. Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

A good example of street photography won’t just be a picture of people milling about aimlessly. There should be something special about it – it might tell a story, like Ninalee being ogled in Florence, or it might make the viewer speculate about what is happening. Sometimes there might be an element of drama, or you might catch someone in a serendipitous artistic pose, or in a position which adds to the composition.

Souvenir seller, Burano, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

My favourite camera for street photography was my beloved Contax G1 35mm film camera(1). It was small, quiet and unobtrusive, and its quick autofocus and large-aperture Zeiss lenses meant that you could quickly grab a sharp image. In comparison, the medium-format Hasselblad V-series is pretty large, needs to be focussed manually, and makes a terrifically loud agricultural-sounding clonk when you trip the shutter, so it isn’t particularly subtle. That being said, you can always fit a longer lens and take from further away. And although I usually use an eye-level prism viewfinder on the Hasselblad, if you fit the traditional looking-down-from-above waist-level viewfinder, you can be a bit sneaky about composing the shot.

Rio S Anna — Rio Sant’Anna, Venice. Contax G1 35mm rangefinder camera, Zeiss Planar 45mm lens. Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Sometimes you can add the drama yourself through photographic artefacts. In the picture below, I was looking down on St Mark’s Square and realised that with some people moving quickly and some standing still, a slow-ish exposure through a long lens might show some people blurred and some sharp. I had to steady the camera on the balustrade of the St Mark’s Basilica portico, but the result was acceptable.

Tourists in Piazza San Marco, Venice. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

If children make great unselfconscious subjects, dogs are even better (to the best of my knowledge, no-one has yet deemed it creepy to take pictures of dogs).

S Margherita — A stand-off at high noon, Campo Santa Margherita, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

An enthusiastic customer, Bellagio, Lake Como. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Sometimes a picture with a group of unrelated people can achieve a sort of balletic unity. In the picture below, there is a family group in the centre, one of whom is in a wheelchair. The child at the left rear looking at his phone seems almost posed, and at the right rear a young woman is working on a painting. All are positioned against an architecturally regular background, as if a theatre director had thought carefully about where each should go.

Giudecca, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The next picture looks to me a bit like one of those scenes of frantic activity before the first act of an opera, where the cast bustle about the stage doing various bits of business while the orchestra gets stuck into the overture. Here a waiter approaches from the left holding a handful of bills, while nearby a father and daughter attend to their ice cream cones. And the little boy in the centre, hanging on to his mother’s hand, was clearly posed by someone who studied at the Louvre.

Castello district, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Because of the influence of photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ruth Orkin, black and white photographs tend to evoke their brand of “reportage” photography.

On the Ponte Santi Apostoli in Venice, a pair of gondolieri scan the passing crowd for likely customers. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Ilford 200 B&W film (click to enlarge).

Street scene in Florence. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Ilford 200 B&W film (click to enlarge).

The group of young buskers below were playing in one of the back streets in Naples, raising the price of their morning coffees and pastries, or maybe a lunchtime aperitivo. I like various things about this, including the dog lying in front of the guitarist, and the way that the natty red costume of the gentleman on the left is balanced by the scooter of the same colour on the right.

Buskers in Via Tribunali, Naples. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The next picture was taken in Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo. It was evening, at the time of the passeggiata when people put on their nice clothes and head out into the street for a stroll and a chat. The setting sun was shining straight along the Via del Corso, and illuminated this very elegantly dressed old gentleman, who is talking to an equally elegant young carabiniere, standing very respectfully as he listens. And the red stripe on his trousers gives the picture a bit of life.

Piazza del Poplo — Piazza del Popolo, Rome. Hasselblad 500C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6×6 rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The final two photographs were taken on fast (and therefore grainy) black-and-white film on a dull rainy day in the Ghetto area of Venice. “Ghetto” is an old Venetian word for foundry, and it was the area given to the Jews to live in. It is still a place of Jewish culture, and like “lido” and “arsenal”, it is another word that Venice gave the world. The first picture is of a shopkeeper who has stepped out into the street for a quick cigarette.

Shortly the light drizzle turned into proper rain, and a couple of deliverymen halted their boat under the Ponte delle Guglie to shelter until it passed.

Note (1) February 2023: After many years of looking for a digital equivalent of the Contax G1 I have recently bought a Fujifilm X-Pro3 which promises to be just that. I will report separately when I have had a chance to come to grips with it.

Note (2) March 2023: I have posted again on street photography, this time in Naples, here.

And again in Bologna, here.

May 9, 2020November 19, 2023

Dawn in Venice

The large format photographer is no stranger to the early morning alarm clock, and this is particularly the case when the subject is a city like Venice. Firstly, you need to get up early to capture the special light before, during and immediately after sunrise. Secondly, you don’t normally want a seething mass of people in your shot. And of course if there is a seething mass of people, you may be unable, or not permitted, to erect a substantial tripod with a heavy camera on it. Look at the photograph below, taken at around 6am, and imagine what it would look like at 11am when all the cruise ships and tour buses have emptied their passengers into St Mark’s Square.

Doge's Palace — The Doge’s Palace, Venice. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, rising front standard to correct perspective. 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

A good many Venice photographs naturally involve water, and the very early morning is a good time to find it at its most still.

My Horseman 45FA in Venice, in this case with the 6x12cm rollfilm back fitted, and the Fujinon-W 210mm lens, with slight rising front (click to enlarge)

As I pointed out in my post on Urbino, early morning photography is an exercise that benefits from prior planning and reconnaissance. There is no point turning up to take a classic view, and finding that what you want is deep in shadow. This is particularly important in somewhere like Venice where you are unlikely to have too many choices of angles from which to compose your picture. So you need to work out where the sun will be coming from at the time, and on the date, you have in mind. I used to do this with paper maps, a compass, and tables of sunrise times and azimuths for the appropriate time of year. These days you can get apps that do it for you, and overlay the information on a map.

A screenshot from a smartphone app called Sunphos. The yellow line is the azimuth of sunrise, the red line that of sunset, and the black line the direction of the sun at the moment the screenshot was taken. The concentric circles indicate the elevation of the sun.

Fortunately in Venice the vaporetti start running pretty early, and even on foot you can get to places quite quickly. So for this next picture I was able to take the vaporetto across to Giudecca and be in position well before sunrise to take a photograph looking back across the Basino, with Palladio’s church of San Giorgio Maggiore silhouetted on the right and the main island in the distance. I used a neutral density graduated filter to balance the sky and the sea, and in low light conditions and using slow (ISO 50) film, I needed a long exposure which smoothed out the movements of the water. To the left, the Renaissance church on the other side of the lagoon, with the classical-style façade under an older campanile, is the Pietà, the institution for orphan girls where Vivaldi was the music master.

San Giorgio sunrise — San Giorgio Maggiore from Guidecca before sunrise. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Of course in Venice, particularly in the cooler months, all your plans to catch the breathtaking dawn sunlight can be frustrated by morning fog. This need not be a disaster, as the muted light can produce low contrast and some attractive pastel colours, as in this picture of Rio Sant’Anna.

Rio Sant'Anna — Rio Sant’Anna. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

If you are still not happy that the muted colours give enough drama to your photograph, it is always worth trying converting it to black and white. I find that boosting the contrast, and sometimes the graininess, can add a bit of atmosphere.

Sometimes one finds oneself choosing a spot simply for the fact that you can expect the dawn light to be particularly good there. This row of houses on the Rio San Pietro in the Castello district is a case in point. It faces east, into the rising sun, and on the other side of the canal is an open area so that the houses are fully illuminated even when the sun is still very low.

Rio Sant’Anna is a canal that once ran all the way from Rio San Pietro back down to the Basino. During the period of Napoleonic rule, the lower part of the canal was filled in to form what is now called the Via Garibaldi, and an adjacent canal was filled in to form the public gardens, a name familiar to many tourists due to the nearby “Giardini” vaporetto stop (the “Giardini Biennale” stop is a bit further down). Right at the point where the Rio Sant’Anna ends and the Via Garibaldi begins, a greengrocer’s boat is permanently moored. I determined that I would take a photograph of it in the pre-dawn light, with the tripod placed on an elevated point on a small bridge, looking back down the Via Garibaldi where, in the distance and illuminated by the dawn, you can see the church of Santa Maria della Salute at the entrance of the Grand Canal. This was a challenging photograph in several respects. Large format cameras do not generally have built-in light meters or other electronics; everything is manual. With slow (ISO 50) film, a narrow aperture to give maximum depth of focus, and very low levels of light, my hand-held light meter suggested an exposure of about 30 minutes. To that I added another 15 minutes to compensate for what is called “reciprocity failure” where the sensitivity of film decreases with extended exposure times. However I then had to take into account the fact that while the exposure was happening, everything would be getting brighter as sunrise approached. So to accommodate that I mentally subtracted 10 minutes again. Not an exact science.

About halfway through the exposure, the damn greengrocer had the nerve to climb onto his boat to rearrange some fruit. This set the boat rocking and ripples going on the canal. As soon as I realised what was happening I closed the shutter and paused the timer on my watch. That avoided some of the worst effects, but the mirror-stillness of the water was lost, and the front of the greengrocer’s boat is a bit blurred from movement. The boat in the foreground became very blurred, but I didn’t really mind that as it wasn’t a key element of the composition. The greengrocer got back on dry land, and eventually the movement of the boat subsided to the point where I felt I could reopen the shutter and restart the timer. The total time to take the photograph ended up being around 50 minutes, and in addition to the increasing light, more and more early risers were appearing in Via Garibaldi on their way to work. This didn’t affect the photograph too badly, as due to the very long exposure they tended not to register on the image. A few people paused to chat long enough to show up as “ghosts”, which you can see if you zoom in on the photograph. (This by the way, is why many early 19^th-Century photographs show apparently deserted scenes. It wasn’t that there was nobody there, but that people didn’t stay still long enough to be captured on the very slow photographic emulsions of the day.)

Rio Sant'Anna Greengrocer — Greengrocer’s boat in Rio Sant’Anna. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

I was pretty chilly when I finally finished, but fortunately there is a bakery just on the right in the photograph, where I was able to buy some warm fresh pastries before heading back to our accommodation.

I will finish with three iconic views of the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute (Our Lady of Health). This was a relatively late addition to the Venice skyline, being commissioned in 1631 as an act of public thanksgiving for the end of a particularly deadly outbreak of the plague. The first photograph was taken at water level, at the end of one of the little lanes that run down to the Grand Canal. It was on a cloudy morning when, during the brief moments when the sun broke through, the clouds turned red. The second was taken from the Accademia Bridge (again, I had to interrupt the exposure a few times, this time when joggers came bouncing over the bridge behind me, shaking the tripod). You can tell that the second picture was taken in high summer, because the sun is further north (and out of the picture on the left, illuminating the houses on the right of the Grand Canal). In the first photograph, taken in autumn, the sun is further south and rising behind the church, making the buildings into silhouettes.

The third picture of Santa Maria della Salute is from near the San Marco (Giardinetti) vaporetto stop, with the morning light illuminating the front of the building, this time in spring.

Evening is another special time for photography. I will do another post of evening photographs in due course.

Edit: here it is.

April 26, 2020November 19, 2023

Taormina – In the Shadow of the Volcano

Taormina sits on its craggy outcrop looking out over the Strait of Messina, in the shadow of Mount Etna, with implausibly beautiful views. The food there is good too.

This is the final post based on material from a tour of Sicily a few years ago, at least until we are able to return. This post will be a bit more of a travelogue and a bit less didactic than some of my recent posts. You can find the earlier instalments here:

We had been basing ourselves near the town of Ragusa – one of several Baroque gems in southeast Sicily and in the heart of Montalbano country. Apart from our return to Palermo and its terrifying traffic, our last stop was to be Taormina on the east coast.

The drive to Taormina was pretty easy. We took a main road northeast from Ragusa until we hit the east coast near Catania, and then took the coastal motorway north. And from about halfway into the trip, Etna was there, first dominating the horizon to our north, then a huge presence on our left as we headed up the coast. The atmospheric conditions around the top change constantly – one moment it will be covered in cloud, and ten minutes later it will be clear. But even at its clearest there is always a plume of smoke and vapour around the crater.

We had a 2pm rendezvous arranged with the parents of the lady who owns the flat we would be renting for three days, and we arrived in Taormina at about 12.30, so with an hour and a half to kill we stopped for lunch at the first restaurant we saw after leaving the motorway. Not much on the menu was available at lunchtime in the off season, and what there was was only OK, but any shortcomings were amply compensated by the view. We were looking northeast up the coast and across the straits of Messina. It was sunny and clear enough to see the mountains of Calabria on the other side.

The Strait of Messina, with the mountains of Calabria on the other side, from the town of Castelmola near Taormina. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The rendezvous went fine. The front door of the flat opened straight onto a street (not even a front doorstep) and the street itself was too narrow for a sane Australian to attempt to park. But I’d been in Italy long enough by then to know what to do – park as close as possible to the wall on the opposite side, put the hazard flashers on and let the traffic find its way around me as best it might while I unloaded the car.

Then the proper thing to do would have been to drive to the multi-storey municipal paid car park from which it would have been a twenty-minute walk back up innumerable steep flights of steps. Everywhere else is strictly residents parking only. Of course no right-thinking southern Italian would pay for parking if an alternative were available, and I sought our landlady’s dad’s advice. He recommended a piazza about five minutes walk away where they always parked (they were from out of town themselves) and where he claimed they never got booked. Time would tell whether this applied to us but after 24 hours of a guilty Anglo-Saxon conscience I had yet to be booked, clamped or towed away. I was encouraged by the memory of the time near Amalfi where on the recommendation of our landlord I parked for a week in a two-hour car park without any problems. There is no substitute for local knowledge.

After settling in we headed down into the main part of town. Taormina (ancient Greek Tauromenion) being of Greek origin is of course on top of a steep hill, in this case jutting out from the steeper slopes that come down from the mountains to the sea along here. Apparently this particular hill is composed of especially solid rock, which is why despite so many centuries of seismological and vulcanological excitement there are still Greek, Roman and medieval buildings, including a particularly fine amphitheatre which we were yet to visit. From Taormina’s crag, you can look south down the coast towards Catania, and immediately below you is a picture-perfect horseshoe-shaped bay in which is a pretty island called appropriately if unimaginatively Isola Bella (Pretty Island).

Being for much of the early 20th Century both spectacularly beautiful and cheap, Taormina housed a succession of northern European artists, bohemians and pederasts escaping creditors and the authorities back at home, and soaking up the sun, wine and local youth. One German minor aristocrat specialised in taking photographs of the local shepherd boys in “classical” poses that would get him arrested today. But such is the cult of even peripheral celebrity that you can buy editions of his photographs (sealed in plastic) in the souvenir shops, and the piazza in which I was illegally parked was named after him.

D.H. Lawrence wrote Sea and Sardinia here but then he also wrote Kangaroo near Wollongong so I’m not sure what that proves.

Being steep meant that for us to get down to the main drag we needed to go down a hundred or two stairs, or along a considerably longer road with a dozen switchback bends (and with no footpath). Once down there one was in no doubt that Taormina is a real tourist town. At least half the shops were open during the afternoon when no self-respecting Sicilian would go shopping. And what was on offer was mostly souvenirs, crafts, and local wine, sweets and gastronomia. The most expensive cafe in town with the best view (much appreciated by Winston Churchill, we are told) was called the Café Wunderbar and like any decent tourist town anywhere, there was a fake Irish pub. Blokes in fancy dress armed with mandolins and accordions would go up to those tourists who had unwisely chosen the tables nearest the street and play O Sole Mio non-stop until bribed to go away.

The main piazza in Taormina, with Cafe Wunderbar on the other side, and Etna in the distance. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Many of the tourists came from cruise ships docked in Catania. From about 9.30 in the morning till the last tour bus departed in the evening the main street was shoulder to shoulder with them, many in tour groups led by guides holding aloft their totems, often a half-opened umbrella. Indeed Lou and I were speculating that I should try half-opening my umbrella, holding it aloft, marching the length of the main street and seeing how many foreigners I had picked up along the way.

But as we have noted before, the thing about tourist traps is that they attract tourists for good reasons, the principal one being that they are in very beautiful places. Even one afternoon, as the weather deteriorated, some rain fell, thunder rolled and lightning played around the upper slopes of Etna, we were very happy sitting at our roadside cafe (in a side street where the risk of busker attack was lower). After a big plate of pasta each at lunch neither of us felt like a full meal and so in the evening we sat outside an enoteca and just had a glass of wine each and shared a plate of antipasto. By the time we were back up to the main street the passegiata was under way, when every Italian puts on nice clothes and wanders up and down the street chatting to friends. In places like Taormina they are joined by sunburnt Brits in shorts and sandals, loud Americans and Germans, Japanese (and increasingly Chinese) in expensively branded Italian stuff they have paid too much for, and of course us.

Just to make it all a bit more memorable, the Targa Florio classic car rally was in town that night, and the main street which is normally closed to traffic was periodically host to modern Ferraris driven by very rich Japanese living out their life’s fantasies, and a range of vintage sports cars including, to my delight, a number of Alfa Romeos from the 1950s and 60s.

The next day we spent in Taormina again. The weather was patchy for photography in the morning, and overcast in the afternoon and evening. Very early we went down to the municipal gardens which have a great view south to Etna and along the coast, but which are also very nice in their own right. The light was pretty transient but I only needed it to be good for 1/4 of a second at f.32 and I took a few large format shots. It turned out that the gardens were established by an aristocratic English lady who had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria but who got her marching orders after a dalliance with the Prince of Wales. She then decamped to Sicily, married a respectable local doctor, and laid out the public gardens, as one does in such circumstances.

Etna from the public gardens in Taormina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

After that I hiked back up to the flat to divest myself of 25 kilos or so of camera gear while Lou stayed in town. I returned to meet up with Lou and we had a late roadside breakfast outside a pastry and sweet shop. We caught the cable car down to sea level and wandered along beside the coast where we had some excellent views of Isola Bella. On the way back we stopped at a bar overlooking the bay and had very nice granitas – lemon for me, mandarin for Lou. Back up in town again we decided that we would go home for lunch, and bought some prosciutto and bread in the little supermarket in the piazza of the German pederast where I was illegally parked (but still without retribution).

Next morning dawned fine and completely cloudless so we sprinted off back down into town, or at least made as rapid progress as one can with 25 kg of large format camera gear, in order to be at the entrance to the Greek theatre for when it opened at 8am. We were, it wasn’t. Which is to say that the advertised 8am opening time only applies in summer. In October it opens at 9. No matter, I headed back to the municipal gardens to retake the previous day’s photos in much better light. Eventually we made it back to the theatre, getting in with the first crowds of the morning but before the first tour buses arrived.

The so-called Greek theatre was actually extensively remodelled by the Romans, which the classier sort of guide book rather sniffs at, suggesting that this sort of modernisation is a terrible thing. Well, it may be, but actually the Roman bits didn’t look all that bad to our debased tastes and on a high headland, on a sunny morning, with Etna obligingly smoking away in the background it was great.

Taormina Teatro Greco — The Greek Theatre, Taormina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

I got some good large format photos, although we had to deal with something that one tends to encounter in Italy – a couple of officials spotted that I was using a tripod and struggled up the steps of the theatre like worried cinema usherettes to tell us that this wasn’t allowed. I always observe bans on tripods when they are shown, but in this case there were no such signs. I suspect that there is actually a ban on professional photography without permits, and the officials assume that tripod means professional. Needless to say I had chosen a spot well away from anyone else so the tripod wasn’t impeding anyone.

Anyway, it took them a couple of minutes to struggle up to where we were, by which time I had taken all the photographs I wanted, and had largely finished packing up. The conversation went along these lines: Them: “professional photography isn’t allowed”. Me: “That’s OK then, I’m not a professional. This is my hobby.” Them: “It still isn’t allowed.” Lou: “Why?”. Them: “Because of the regulations.” Lou laughs. Them: “A camera by itself is OK, but not this thing – what’s it called?” Me: “In Italian it’s called a treppiedi. In English it’s called a tripod.” Them: “Ah, TRIPOD, thanks.” After which they left. It’s tiresome but people write to photography magazines about it all the time – petty officialdom everywhere equates tripods with professionals, and assumes it must not be allowed. Anyway, the outcome was that I got my photographs. I once had a conversation like that in Rome, where I actually triggered the shutter while talking to the policeman. He was asserting that tripods were a threat to public safety – I was suggesting that at 6am when he and I were the only ones in the piazza, the threat was probably manageable.

After our successful encounter with Sicilian bureaucracy we came back to the flat and headed to the car (still unbooked) for what we had planned to be a driving day, where we would go all the way around Etna. But first we thought we would follow our road all the way up to a village called Castelmola which is perched on a crag several hundred feet higher than Taormina. When we got there I had the agreeable experience of parking legally and then walking past the village policeman with a clear conscience. More importantly, when we emerged from the municipal car park we realised that we were in a very beautiful place, high up, on a clear sunny day, with spectacular views in every direction, not least to Etna to the south, but also with very clear views across the Strait of Messina to Reggio Calabria (the “toe” of Italy) on the other side.

Castelmola — Looking south towards Catania in the distance, from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

So we decided to go no further. After spending some time at the castle at the very top of the mountain, we came back down to the village and found a bar with a rooftop terrace, with a view of – yes – Etna. The bar was run by a delightful old chap – I asked him for a glass of local white wine and it arrived in a large beer tankard which pretty much put paid to any residual idea that I might go for a long drive afterwards. For almost an hour we sat on the terrace, nursed our drinks and watched Etna.

Etna from Castelmola — Mount Etna from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

It changes constantly. At first there was no cloud apart from the plume of smoke and vapour coming from the crater. Then as the day warmed up clouds would form downwind of the summit. They would build up and hide the summit. Then, just when we had decided that was it for the day, suddenly it would clear. But always there was the plume of smoke.

Mount Etna from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Then we went down the road a bit to a restaurant with a view of a certain large volcano, and where the lunch was adequate but the view was fantastic.

After our drink we came back down, parked the car illegally again, dropped the large format camera gear at the flat, then went down to the belvedere with my Hasselblad where I took a couple of shots of Isola Bella from a different angle. Then – via the internet bar where Lou had a raspberry granita with cream, and a shop which sold takeaway arancini in many varieties – back home to start packing for the trip to Palermo the next day.

March 14, 2020February 12, 2024

A Nation of Shopkeepers

This is an affectionate photographic tribute to the shopkeepers of italy, most of whom were forced to close this week because of COVID-19.

So there I was, unable to get back to Italy for the foreseeable future and worried about the people we know there. Then I saw the news about most shops being closed, which depressed me further, but then I realised it had given me an idea about something else to celebrate about Italy. It might cheer me up a bit, and I hope it cheers you up too.

The Italian genius for design manifests itself in various celebrated ways. The fashion houses of Milan. Alfa Romeo and Ferrari. The classic Vespa. The Piaggio P.180 aircraft. It isn’t enough merely to be fit for purpose. – it must be beautiful. (In fact thinking back to my much-loved Alfa 159, sometimes form clearly had taken precedence over function). But it isn’t just the highly-paid designers. Deep down, every Italian is a stylist. You can tell by the way they dress for the evening passegiata. And in every market and every shopping street, you can tell by the care with which they arrange the displays of merchandise for maximum effect on stalls and in shop windows.

The architecture can be a delight too – especially the way that a vintage shopfront is carefully maintained for decades.

Italians are famously individualists. Not always a good thing, when it comes to following public health directives. But the pride that people take in themselves and their own enterprise really comes out in their shops. I’ve already posted a photo essay on the market at Padua, which you can look at to see the displays of fruit, fish and meat.

So here is an affectionate tribute to shopfronts and shop window displays, dedicated to all of their proprietors, and what they are going through right now. Things may not always be done in the most refined taste, indeed sometimes they are positively idiosyncratic, but in every case they have been done carefully.

We start in the town of Norcia. Apart from being the birthplace of St Benedict, it is famous for its smallgoods manufacturers. So much so that salumerie throughout Italy often refer to themselves as Norcinerie.

The first three of those pictures were taken with my favourite 35mm camera of all the many I have owned. The Contax brand originally referred to cameras made by the branch of Zeiss that stayed in the old East Germany. The brand was bought by the Japanese Kyocera company, and they produced a couple of absolutely beautiful little rangefinder cameras, with superb genuine Zeiss lenses. If they would bring out a digital version I would buy it like a shot. Being small and light, the Contax G1 is great for candid street photography, such as the following two taken in Via Garibaldi in the Arsenale quarter of Venice.

This next is also from Venice, and is of course a shop in a Venetian context. Not a candid street snap, as it was taken on a large format camera on a tripod.

Rio S Barnaba — Greengrocer’s “shop”, Rio San Barnabà, Venice. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, 4×5″ film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The island of Burano, in the Venetian lagoon, is famous for its brightly coloured buildings. Here is a butcher’s shop.

The town of Sulmona is in the rugged region of Abruzzo, surrounded by high mountains. It is famous in Italy for the production of confetti for weddings and other celebrations. Now in Italy confetti are not bits of coloured paper to throw at the happy couple. They were originally hard sugared almonds – not the sort of thing you would throw at anyone. These days “confetti” include all sorts of hard candies, many garishly coloured. The maker pictured below specialises in making sunflowers out of them.

In Naples, the colour and glow of shops, especially a baker like this, make a particular contrast to the gritty streets outside.

Napoli Via Tribunali — Baker’s shop in Via Tribunali, Naples. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6c6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The picture below is from Bologna, which is generally thought of of a gastronomic centre. Needless to say, it has several excellent (and expensive) food shops, which clearly feel obliged to have window displays that match the reputation.

Here are four very elegant shop fronts. A cafe and tobacconist in Urbino, another confetti outlet in Sulmona, a butcher’s in Spoleto, and an electrical parts shop in Bologna.

Bologna Caffetteria — Caffetteria Fratelli Boni, Urbino. Hasselblad 500C/M Camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lanes, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Sulmona confetti — Confetti Rapone Panfilo, Sulmona. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Spoleto Macelleria — Macelleria Giovanni Luna, Spoleto. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Bottega della Luce, Bologna. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Here are two very traditional shops. Another salumeria, from Verona, and “Everything for the Home” from San Quirico d’Orcia in Tuscany.

Salumeria Albertini — Salumeria G. Albertini, Verona. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

Tutto per la Casa, San Quirico d’Orcia. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, 28-135 IS lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

And I will finish with two of my favourites. The first is from the town of San Zeno in Montagna, high up above Lake Garda. The second is the town of Castiglione del Lago, a fortified town sticking out into Lake Trasimeno in Umbria. They are my favourites because they include the proprietors. Bless them, and all the shopkeepers of Italy.

Castiglione del Lago. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Note, added 2024: I said earlier that I wished I could find a digital equivalent of the Contax G1 35mm camera. A year ago I bought a Fujifilm X-Pro 3 and I must say that does give me much of the same kind of feeling when using it.

March 8, 2020November 19, 2023

The Val d’Orcia at Dawn – II

Just over a year ago I posted this “History in Focus” article, about the large-format panoramic photograph I took at dawn one morning in early spring 2006, with the rising sun illuminating the mist in the valleys of the Val d’Orcia, and the history associated with the area. A crop from that photograph is the banner image for this blog.

It was quite a productive early morning shoot; not only did I have my Horseman 45FA large format camera with me, I also had a Hasselblad 500C/M medium-format camera and a Canon EOS-3 35mm SLR (I travel lighter these days; carrying a 25kg backpack onto an aircraft is harder to get away with, and harder on my back).

The aim of that post last year was to concentrate on a single photograph, which meant that several other fairly decent pictures did not get published. So here they are. If you haven’t read the original article, I recommend you take a quick look at it before proceeding.

I set up in the dark and waited for the sun to rise. When it did, at first the colours were soft, muted and pink-tinged, and the contrast was very low.

The picture above was taken in exactly the same position and in the same direction as the photograph in the original article, so showing the low contrast and pastel colours. The difference is that I used a 4×5 inch sheet film back rather than a 6x17cm panoramic rollfilm back. Interestingly, I am looking at this on a 15-inch laptop screen and the size of the image is only slightly greater than the original sheet-film transparency. That is why large format photography captures such an extraordinary amount of detail.

The photograph above was taken immediately after that shown in the original article. I simply rotated the camera on the tripod about 45 degrees to the left. Since the sun was now in shot I had to reduce the exposure time, and the shadow areas were much darker, and the contrast much greater. But it makes it quite dramatic. As with the photograph in the original article, I used a 2-stop neutral density graduated filter to balance the sky and the land, but no coloured filter. In the distance, right below the sun, you can make out the silhouette of the town of Pienza.

The photograph above was taken only a few minutes later, but in the time it took me to change the lens and film back, the sun had climbed a little way into the sky and the warm pink colours were fading. Photographers talk about the “golden hour” around dawn and sunset when the light is at its best, but the colours when the sun is only just above the horizon are very ephemeral. It is more like a “golden ten minutes”. For this photograph I changed from the slightly wider than standard 125mm lens to a slight telephoto 180mm. By the way, this is a very famous view: you see it in lots of calendars and advertisements.

As the sun rose higher, the contrast in the scene increased, especially looking further round to the east where the mist was backlit by the sun. I switched to the Hasselblad. Using a telephoto lens foreshortened the perspective of the series of hills.

Then something unexpected happened: it started to get darker. Although it was a cloudless day the mist around me grew briefly thicker and partly blotted out the sun. The scene became almost monochrome. Since I already had my “classic” dawn light shots in the bag, I spent a few minutes with telephoto lenses on the medium format and 35mm cameras picking out interesting shots. In just the minute or two that it took me to take them, the mist thinned out again and it got lighter.

February 29, 2020November 19, 2023

Camera and Chianti – The Italian Photography of Francis Sandwith

A few weeks ago I was browsing a second-hand bookshop in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton, when my eye fell on a slim book with the title Camera and Chianti. Now one of the reasons I write about photography and Italy is that these are subjects I like to read about myself. So naturally I took it down from the shelf, and for the vast sum of $6.25 Australian I became its new owner and was soon heading to a nearby pub to celebrate my find with a glass of wine at an outdoor table.

The book turned out to be an account of a journey around Italy, with photographs by the author, a chap called Francis Sandwith. It was published in 1955 but in the text there are references to the forthcoming coronation, and the photographs appear to show spring foliage, so my guess is that the actual trip was in the first half of 1952. In those days of post-war austerity, the costs needed to be offset by assistance from the Italian State Railways, and Ilford film. Also doubtless a sign of those times, the book is cheaply printed on poor quality paper, and the reproductions of photographs are not the best.

I was mildly surprised, looking at the contents page, to see that despite the title, he did not go anywhere near Chianti or even Tuscany. As I read, though, it became clear that he used the term “Chianti” to refer to any locally-produced Italian wine in a straw-covered flask, red or white, just as people might once have referred to any dry red wine in a straight bottle as “claret”, whether or not it came from Bordeaux. In fact, his trip started in Milan, then continued to Padua and Ferrara, then went south via San Marino to Puglia and Calabria, and ended in Naples via the Amalfi Coast.

“A Good Joke, Ferrara”by Francis Sandwith. (click to enlarge)

Francis does not seem to have left much of a mark on literary history – he has no Wikipedia entry – but I did find a website here which appears to have been set up as an online repository of works by Francis and his daughter Noelle, an artist, photographer and ethnographer who worked extensively in Australia and the South Pacific. The website gives his year of birth as 1899, but not a year of death. According to the website, he was educated at Oxford, and went on to hold editorial positions on several newspapers in England and the Dominions, including Ceylon and South Africa. As a photographer he did advertising work and photography for Country Life and the Morning Post, and ran the photography department of a major advertising agency.

Unfortunately the website appears not to have been completed – sections titled “Library” and “Gallery” are not linked to any content. And there is no apparent way to contact the creator of the site, who is presumably a descendant of Francis Sandwith. So, not having been able to seek permission, I hope that the few reproductions of Francis’s photographs in this post – scanned from the book – can be considered fair dealing for review purposes.

Francis comes across as a nice chap. He was a journalist and photographer, not a writer of books. In fact he only seems to have produced two books – this one, and one in the 1930s of night photographs of London, called London by Night. That one seems to be a bit of a classic, no doubt using what would now be called large format cameras using sheet film or even glass photographic plates.

I was pleased to see that like H.V. Morton h ere, Francis thought the market in Padua was a wonderful timeless place. And like me here, he thought it a good place for photography.

Padua Market, early 1950s, by Francis Sandwith. (click to enlarge)

We made our way to the market in the Piazza delle Erbe. It was a gay scene. Pigeons flew over the stalls covered with huge red umbrellas and coloured awnings. As in London, children eagerly bought peanuts for the birds, which clustered on the cobbles, and there was also a colleague reaping his harvest with a miniature camera. Italians love children. It was a delight to watch hard-bitten business men stop to watch a scene, which they must have looked at hundreds of times, and the tides of pleasure that suffused their faces.

The market was very tidy. Everything was spick and span, orderly and quiet. The stall-keepers, mostly women, sat at the back of their stalls, on which the goods were displayed with an eye to colour and design, with an apparent air of indifference. They did not bother to glance at a foreigner, for they had seen many foreigners come and go in recent years. About them there was an eternal quality, like the ancient stone bronzed with the sun of centuries, a timelessness, so that whether a sale was made to-day or to-morrow did not matter greatly.

OK, so he might have used a few clichés, but he was a journalist after all. And we should remember that he was writing for a generation whose opportunities for travel had been severely limited by the Depression, the war and the subsequent period of austerity. What might seem a bit hackneyed to our more fortunate and blasé generation might well have come across as fresh and new to them.

“Calabrian Signorine in Fiesta Costume” by Francis Sandwith. (click to enlarge)

He has a dry and rather self-deprecating humour as well. In Taranto he was being shown around by the Director of the tourist office, a prominent local photographer, and an interpreter.

In southern Italy the traveller is overwhelmed with hospitality. Your host will see that every moment of the day is occupied and is reluctant that your night should be spent in solitude and without suitable entertainment. So I was not surprised, for I had been warned about these old southern customs, when the interpreter inquired with a gay and confidential air whether I would like a young and beautiful signorina to share the midnight hours. The interpreter and the photographer, both delightful young men, gazed at me with warm understanding and sympathy. The Director hummed a little tune. I was a little embarrassed, for I did not like to let down the reputation of British photographers for enterprise, but I am in the middle fifties and was tired with the heat and travelling. So I excused myself by saying that I was too old.

“Trinity”by Francis Sandwith. (click to enlarge)

Cameras and technique

A particular highlight for me is that throughout the book he also describes the process of taking his photographs, and at the end he lists the cameras and film that he used. Although he describes his cameras as “miniature”, only one of them, an Ilford Advocate II, used 35mm film. The other three were all what would now be called medium format, using 6cm-wide 120 roll film. One was a twin-lens reflex Microcord, a British version of the Rolleicord. He also used two Zeiss Ikonta folding cameras. This was a pleasure to read because I have a couple of these in my collection:

Zeiss Ikonta Cameras — My two Zeiss Ikonta cameras. The one on the left is an Ikonta 521 (6×4.5cm format) manufactured in the 1940s. On the right is an Ikonta 521/2 (6x7cm format) made in the 1950s. Behind is an original leather case for the 521/2. (click to enlarge)

The smaller one dates from the 1940s, and the larger from the 50s. With relatively little work I have restored both of these to working order and I have taken pictures with them. The lenses are very sharp, all things considered.

Photograph of Gundaroo, New South Wales, taken with the Zeiss Ikonta 521 camera and Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. The camera was about 70 years old when I took the picture. (click to enlarge)

The only two things wrong with them is firstly that the lenses are very contrasty, and secondly that the colour balance isn’t quite right on modern (Fujichrome Velvia) film – there is a bit of a blue cast. For lenses designed before colour film was really a thing that isn’t too surprising. Given the sharpness of my results, I’m not sure how to explain the poor quality of the reproductions in the book. It could be the how the book itself was printed, or it could be that by his own account Francis was mainly using fast black and white film, which would have produced quite grainy results. Film emulsion technology still had some way to go in the 1950s.

Francis also took some colour photographs on his trip. Alas none are reproduced in the book. Images in online bookshops show that the original dustcover was a colour version of the “Calabrian maidens” but unfortunately my copy has lost its cover. However it is nevertheless interesting to read Francis’s descriptions of the limitations of colour film in those days. The postscript in the book says he was using a colour negative film called “Pakolor” which according to my online searches was an English film based on an Agfa chemistry. A description here suggests that the film had an effective speed of ISO 10 which is very slow indeed by modern standards – requiring much longer exposures for a given light and aperture. So a tripod, or bright sunlight, would have been necessary. However Francis also explains that the high contrasts and harsh light encountered in the middle of the day were also unsuitable for colour film and that he could therefore only use it in limited circumstances. On one occasion in Taranto he took some pictures having forgotten that he had colour film in the camera, and the results were too badly underexposed to be used.

As I said, after buying the book I went to the pub, or as Francis would doubtless have put it, I repaired to a nearby hostelry, and enjoyed making his acquaintance over a glass of wine. From memory it was a Barolo, which is probably close enough, given his somewhat elastic definition of Chianti. Cheers, Francis.

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.

Castelluccio and the Piano Grande

Nestled among some of the highest parts of the Apennines in eastern Umbria is the Piano Grande. Not a grand piano, but a “great plain”, surrounded by the peaks of the Monti Sibillini, in the national park of the same name. At the northern end of the plain is the little town of Castelluccio (literally “little castle”), perched in a very picturesque way on a small conical hill, dwarfed by the massive slopes around it. We love this place.

I had been meaning to write a post on this area for a while, because although it has no momentous historical associations that I know of, it is very beautiful and I have taken many photographs of it over the years. But it took me a while to bring myself to do so, because the act of writing it was going to be tinged with sadness. In 2016 the town was so badly damaged by an earthquake that 60% of the buildings were rendered uninhabitable, the population was evacuated and access prohibited for several months.

However some cafes and restaurants have now reopened in temporary accommodation, and although this is not really a tourism blog, I urge you to visit. Visit in late spring or early summer to see the beautiful wildflowers that carpet the floor of the plain, and spend some money there, because they need it.

When you are there, be sure to try the local speciality, a stew of lentils from Castelluccio and pork sausages from nearby Norcia (also, alas, damaged in the earthquake). It is the lentils that made me finally decide to get around to doing a post on Castelluccio, because as I write it is the 30^th of December. A traditional new year’s eve good-luck dish in Italy is lentils, and the lentils of Castelluccio are the most highly prized in Italy. So it seemed appropriate, somehow.

They must in any case have been hardy folk who lived here. Winters are hard at this altitude, and trees only grow on a few sheltered slopes. In winter the roads can be closed by snow.

In late spring, when poppies have already appeared in the lower Umbrian valleys, up here there is still snow on the peaks, and crocuses are only just appearing. In high summer though, when the lower altitudes are sweltering, you can drive up here and see flowers that disappeared weeks ago down below.

There are only three roads into the piano grande. If you come from the north, you pass a series of fortified villages that pour down steep valley sides, often with a fortress at the topmost point, forming a typical teardrop shape. The road winds upwards and then you finally crest a ridge and see the plain before you, with Castelluccio in the middle distance.

If you approach from the east, you will leave the town of Ascoli Piceno on the coastal plain, but not before trying their famous stuffed and fried olives (gosh, this really is a tourism post). When we took this route it was in summer and the slopes were covered with poppies and wild cornflowers.

(By the way – if you look closely you will see that the copse of trees in the distance on the left is planted in the shape of a map of Italy. I didn’t notice it myself for a while, either.)

But the best way to approach is from the south. That will take you through the Valnerina (the valley of the little Nera River) and the town of Norcia. I will stick my neck out and say that this is one of the prettiest places in Italy – a big call, I know. I have some good photographs of the Valnerina that I will save for a separate post. Also for Norcia.

Edit: you can now find the post on the Valnerina here.

After leaving Norcia, you will drive up winding roads on the side of steep hills and enter the Piano Grande through a pass at its southern end. For us, since it is where we first saw it, this is the classic view.

November 17, 2019November 19, 2023

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 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.

July 18, 2019March 29, 2024

Montalbano Country

This is a piece I had been working on in spare moments for future publication, but with the death of Andrea Camilleri yesterday, it seemed appropriate to complete and publish it, with more emphasis on “Il Commissario Montalbano” than I originally intended.

Ragusa Ibla. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film. Three shots, digitally merged in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

The southeastern corner of Sicily feels quite unlike the northwestern. There are a few reasons for this. The first thing you notice as you get into the area is that the roads are in much better condition, which I put down to healthier local government finances, but also less maintenance money lost to mafia corruption. Then there is the landscape. As you saw in my post on The Wild West of Sicily, in the northwest it is gaunt and spectacular. In the southeast it is softer, with rolling hills running down to the sea, cut by deep valleys. Drystone walls separate the fields, and large carob trees provide shade.

Countryside near Ragusa. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon 120mm lens, 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

But the biggest difference is the architecture. While the northwest is a glorious jumble of styles and ages, the southeast is curiously homogenous. Everything is baroque.

The reason is that in 1693 a huge earthquake destroyed pretty much everything in a lot of towns, and the subsequent rebuilding was necessarily in a similar style. What is more, the local sandstone is soft and easily carved, so the decorative tastes of the rococo era were easily indulged, even on relatively humble buildings. The effect of all this is anything but boring, and despite a general prejudice against Italian baroque architecture, I found it rather fetching.

Baroque architecture in the town of Noto. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Probably my main complaint about Italian baroque architecture is the number of times lovely medieval churches with historic artworks were tastelessly “modernised” after the Council of Trent, especially in the Papal States. In this part of Sicily, that charge of vandalism cannot be sustained, because the destruction wrought by the earthquake meant that there was very little left to preserve.

We were staying just outside a town called Ragusa, which we had chosen because it features in one of our favourite Italian television programs – “Il Commissario Montalbano” (Inspector Montalbano). This is based on the crime writing of the author Andrea Camilleri[1], and stars an actor called Luca Zingaretti. (Edit: at the time of writing, the current leader of the main centre-left political party, the PDI, was Zingaretti’s brother Nicola, who looks a lot like him, making political reports on the news a bit disconcerting.)

If you haven’t made the acquaintance of Commissario Montalbano on screen, I recommend it. The stories are good, the acting of the principal characters is excellent, and that of the minor characters (recruited from Sicilian amateur dramatic societies, we suspect) is engagingly hammy. The stories are set in the fictional town of Vigata, which, due to the magic of editing, is made up of the most scenic bits of Ragusa and half a dozen towns around it, with occasional visits elsewhere in Sicily. Many of the indoor scenes were apparently shot in Rome during the winter months. You can get DVDs with English subtitles, at least in Australia.

The town hall in Scicli – Montalbano’s police station in the early series. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The region has been understandably quick to cash in on the popularity of the TV show. You can buy tourist brochures with guides (or take guided tours) to the major locations, and when you get there, restaurants tend to have photos on the walls recording the time when a scene was filmed there, or the cast ate there.

Montalbano's House — “Montalbano’s house” in the real-life port of Punta Secca. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

We were staying in an agriturismo between Ragusa and the coast, and when I mentioned our Montalbano enthusiasm to the proprietor he took me to see an old farm building on the property which had been used as a location. It is one of the more distant buildings in the picture below.

South of Ragusa — Looking down to the coast from south of Ragusa. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon 150mm lens, 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The country roads are rather narrow and winding here so photo opportunities tend to be dictated as much by whether it is possible to stop anywhere close as by what there is to see. Early one morning I was pottering about beside the road contemplating a picture of an old ruined farmhouse when a little old Fiat stopped beside me, and out got a little old Sicilian couple. They politely enquired whether I was hunting (it was hunting season and you occasionally heard shots in the mornings). My camera gear was still packed away so it could conceivably have been weapons of some kind. I replied that I was hunting for good photographs – it is never a wise thing to attempt jokes with an imperfect command of the language but on this occasion I appeared to have got away with it. It turned out that the old gentleman was the proprietor of the farm, and he and his wife had spotted me (or maybe a passing driver had tipped them off) and they had come out to see what I was up to, in case I was planning to hunt on their land, or even worse, might have been a tax inspector. I explained that I was an Australian tourist and my hobby was taking photographs. Once that was established, all was well.

Near Ragusa is a town called Modica, sitting in a deep valley spanned by a modern road bridge, which features in the opening credits of the show, as does the town’s cathedral. The main reason we went there, however, was to try its famous chocolate. But this is not just any old chocolate. This is chocolate as it was made hundreds of years ago when cocoa was first brought back from the new world. Sicily then was under Spanish rule so it is not particularly surprising that things that were happening in Spain also happened here. And it is a bit Sicilian too that once they started doing it they saw no reason to change anything.

So off we went to “L’Antica Dolceria Bonaiuto” which claims to be the oldest chocolate maker in Sicily, where in a lovely old shop they put out samples to taste. And what is it like? Well, nothing like Cadbury’s. It’s grainier – not quite like chocolate fudge but with something of that consistency. It comes in various flavours, including very chocolatey and extremely chocolatey, but also things like cinnamon, chili, orange, cardamom and salty. I liked the vanilla.

They also sell Sicilian cakes and pastries, and we decided that this was the place to try the fabled Sicilian cannoli. These are a sort of large cylindrical sweet pastry casing which can be filled with various things. Lou asked for chocolate cream, I decided to be traditional and stick with sweet ricotta. In the Antica Dolceria Bonaiuto, they don’t have the pastries out in a display case going soggy. Instead, you place your order, the lady behind the counter repeats it back into the kitchen, and they fill the cannoli cases there and then, dunking the ends in crushed pistachios. They were truly amazing. I have tried cannoli many times since, elsewhere in Italy and indeed in Australia, but never have I had any like these. There is a scene in the TV series where Montalbano is waiting to see the coroner and notices a tray of fresh cannoli that has just been delivered. Eventually he is unable to resist, steals one and eats it. If they came from Modica then I can forgive him.

The one place you don’t see featured in the Montalbano TV series is a place a bit further west called Porto Empedocle, which is a bit tough because it was Camilleri’s home town, on which he based the fictional town of Vigata. So Porto Empedocle has rather missed out on the Montalbano tourism boom. In a somewhat passive-aggressive gesture at being overlooked, the comune of Porto Empedocle erected a statue to commemorate Montalbano. Their imagined Montalbano looks nothing like Luca Zingaretti, and the rest of Italy seems to have ignored it.

[1] On the 17^th of June 2019, Camilleri, in his nineties, was admitted to hospital in Rome in a serious condition after a heart attack. Such is his popularity that it was headline news, with TV reporters doing live crosses from outside the hospital. He died a month later, on the 17^th of July 2019.

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, 2019December 17, 2023

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.

Sant'Antimo — Sant’Antimo (click to enlarge)

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 better than you would expect from the former, and 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, 2019November 19, 2023

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.

Monreale Duomo, Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

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.

March 30, 2019November 19, 2023

A Storm in the Val d’Orcia

Some of the most dramatic photographs can be made when there is a combination of sunlight on your subject and dark stormy clouds behind. Under those conditions the light can take on a particular intensity and clarity. I have encountered this in central Italy at several different times of year. In spring and early summer the effect on the young vegetation can produce some extremely vivid greens, while in late summer or autumn you will often get some very warm and rich browns.

These four photographs were all taken in early June from the belvedere outside the walls of the town of Pienza, overlooking the Val d’Orcia. On the other side of the valley, from San Quirico d’Orcia to Monte Amiata, a thunderstorm was building, and for a brief period the closer part of the valley remained in sunlight while the distant part got darker and darker. The film I used – Fuji Velvia 50 – is sometimes criticised for the intensity of its green colours, but in this case it only served to heighten the drama.

I recall that I only just made it back to the car before the storm hit (Hasselblads are not particularly waterproof) and we drove back to Umbria in heavy rain.

I posted another photograph of one of the iconic Val d’Orcia views as part of the History in Focus series of posts.

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.

February 26, 2019November 19, 2023

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 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.

February 22, 2019November 19, 2023

Crocodile Dundee Shoots Large Format

Since this is supposed to be a blog about photography as well as history and travel, I suppose I ought to talk a bit about cameras, in particular large format photography. It’s a bit geeky so feel free to skip it if you are just here for the travel and history posts.

Small format is where the image size on film or on a digital sensor is 35mm or smaller (the so-called 35mm format is actually around 36x24mm in size).

Medium format comes in standard sizes of 6×4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, and 6x9cm.

Large format is anything larger. Standard sizes for sheet film are 4×5 inches (approximately 10x13cm) 5×7 inches and 8×10 inches. 6x12cm and 6x17cm (using roll film) are also considered large format.

The vast majority of digital sensors are small format – some are called “full frame” which equates to the same size as 35mm film, and some use the even smaller APS-C format. Note that while there is a relationship between the number of megapixels and the physical size of the sensor, they are not the same thing.

There are a small number of cameras which use medium format digital sensors. Anything which approached large format would be colossally expensive and limited to military or scientific (including astronomical) applications.

I got into large format photography about a dozen years ago. The Royal Australian Air Force School of Photography had gone digital and was selling off its analogue equipment. I bought a Horseman 45FA camera with a Nikon 150mm lens (in large format, 150mm is considered a “standard” lens, equivalent to 50mm in small format). It is what is often called a “view camera” or “field camera”. Although it looks very old, the 45FA was introduced in 1984, and stayed in production until at least the 1990s.

Large format photography - Horseman 45FA — Horseman 45FA camera with Fujinon 210mm lens and 6x12cm rollfilm back. It was about to take the picture of the Temple at Segesta shown in this post.

This picture of my Horseman shows the design principles for most large format cameras. The lens is attached to the front bit, which is attached to the back bit by light-proof bellows. You move the front bit forward and backwards to focus the image. The front and back move independently of each other. If you move them up and down or from side to side while keeping them parallel, that can alter perspective and is often used in architectural photography to correct the converging verticals or “leaning back” effect when you photograph a building from ground level. If you change the angle by tilting either the lens or the back plane away from the vertical or horizontal, it does funky things to the depth of focus, according to a rule of optics called Scheimpflug’s Principle after its discoverer, an artillery officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who was investigating the use of photography for reconnaissance from balloons. If you tilt the front standard forward, you can increase the depth of focus considerably. If you tilt it backward, you decrease it considerably, which has the effect of fooling your brain into seeing objects as much smaller than they really are. The latter effect can be simulated digitally, and is often referred to as “tilt and shift”, after the physical movements which originally created it.

I have several large format lenses in a range of focal lengths. Some are made by companies like Nikon and Fuji. Others, like Zeiss, Schneider-Kreuznach and Rodenstock, are more associated with the fields of medical and technical imaging.

To take a large format photograph on sheet film, you do the following:

Decide what lens to use, take the front and rear caps off, and clip it to the front standard. The aperture and shutter mechanisms are attached to the lens, not the camera.
Open the shutter. Focus by moving the front standard backwards or forwards while observing the image (upside down and back to front) on the ground-glass screen on the rear standard. Make any alterations to the geometry in accordance with the Scheimpflug principle. For accuracy you will probably want to use a magnifying loupe. If it is a bright day you might need to use a dark cloth over your head.
Set the aperture and exposure, manually, on the shutter. You will have established this either by using a hand-held light meter, or by calculating it in your head (which is not as hard as it sounds, when you know how).
Close the shutter. This is really important and forgetting it is one reason why novices ruin their shots.
Insert a film magazine between the rear standard and the ground glass screen. The magazine might hold one or several sheets of film, but you will have pre-loaded it earlier, either in a completely dark room, or using a changing bag.
Remove the dark slide which protects the film from the light. Forgetting to do so is reason number two for novices ruining their shots.
Make the exposure by cocking the spring-loaded shutter and pressing the shutter release cable.
Put the dark slide back (yes, reason number three…).

All the processes described above are totally mechanical. A large format camera contains no electronic components because there is nothing for them to do. Assuming that the light is cooperating, I would say that it typically takes about 15-20 minutes to set up and take one large format photograph. So it is not something you can do on the spur of the moment; I tend to select my spots in advance and then come back, usually early in the morning or late in the evening when the light is at its best. Originally I used to carry a compass so I could estimate where the sun would be at sunrise and sunset, but these days you can get some clever smartphone apps to do that part for you.

So what is the attraction of large format photography? The first reason is that size does matter. For a given density of silver grains in the film emulsion, or pixels on a digital sensor, the larger the size of the image, the more of them you will have. Moreover, the larger the image, the less magnification you are asking the lens to do, and the less you will be pushing the limits of the resolving power of focused light – limits which show themselves in things like chromatic aberration. All this means sharper images for a given enlargement size.

The second reason is that being forced to slow down and think about what you are doing is no bad thing when it comes to photography. It makes each image more of an individual artefact, and the taking of such an image into an act of craftsmanship.

There is a third, far less noble reason to enjoy large format photography. It’s fun turning up to a famous beauty spot and setting up your large-format camera next to some hotshot with the latest Canon or Nikon and a lens the size of a bazooka. “That’s not a camera, son. This is a camera…”

Update: 18 March 2022: Yesterday I took a big step and traded in all my large format gear for a Fujifilm GFX 50R mirrorless medium format digital camera and 32-64mm zoom lens. So this post is now of somewhat historical interest. But for my current life, travelling style (and age), large format gear is just too bulky and heavy.

February 22, 2019November 19, 2023

Il Miracolo di San Bagagio

Approaching northern Sicily by air is spectacular. No photographs or TV programs about travel in Sicily will prepare you for the landscape of big rugged mountains right beside very blue sea.

At Palermo airport there was the usual Italian muddle, where it took about three quarters of an hour for our bags to appear. There were a lot of teenage girls waiting for their bags and the warning buzzers kept sounding on alternate belts, whereupon the girls would all shriek and run to that belt. While they shrieked and ran I just stayed put by the original one and eventually the miracle of the baggage occurred. Having had a couple of bad but not catastrophic luggage experiences in Italian airports, we always regard it as slightly miraculous when the bags do arrive. We have taken to calling it Il Miracolo di San Bagagio.

After finding our way to the off-airport car hire depot, we drove west for about forty minutes along the coast to the town of Castellammare del Golfo, where we met our host, whom I shall call Candido (I don’t have his permission to use his real name, and I wouldn’t want to annoy him; being Sicilian he might have influential friends).

Candido was actually charming and urbane, and while we were getting shown around the house I asked him where the nearest supermarket was. He not only gave me detailed instructions on how to get there but rang the owner to see if it was open, because he had “two Australian tourists who needed supplies”. The owner – one Franco – apparently replied that he was closed and having his lunch but that he would reopen at 4pm. This did not surprise us as outside big cities (and even in them, to an extent) Italian businesses tend to close in the middle of the day so the owners and employees can go home for lunch.

So we did a bit of unpacking then when 4pm came we headed out. We weren’t too surprised to find that at about a quarter past four the supermarket wasn’t yet open, because we were pretty sure that the owner would be running on Sicilian time, so we went for a bit of a drive in the immediate area which has a famous scenic attraction in the form of a disused Tuna factory (yes, really) in a village called Scopello. The Mediterranean tuna stocks are almost all fished out now, by Spanish and even Japanese fishing fleets, but until the 1960s the migrating tuna would be caught off western Sicily by blokes in small boats. The tuna factories are now mostly ruins, or like this one have been converted into picturesque restaurants and B&Bs.

Scopello – Horseman 45FA large format camera with 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon-W 125mm lens (click to enlarge)

On return we found the supermarket open. It was a pretty small place with the sort of limited stock that you would find in an Australian holiday resort, except that it had quite a good bottle shop stocked with obscure (to me) local wines and a delicatessen filled with most interesting things. Apart from various essentials we also bought some olives and some magnificent pecorino stagionato (aged sheeps’ milk cheese). As we queued at the checkout the proprietor was quizzing the two German (or Dutch or Danish) girls in front of us about whether they had far to travel in the heat with their cold goods and whether they needed an insulated bag. They spoke no Italian and he spoke nothing else so there was no mutual comprehension going on, and I stepped in and translated into English for them.

I’m not sure I helped much but that formed a bit of a bond with the proprietor, and so I said in Italian “excuse me, are you Signor Franco?”. Yes, he said, cautiously. I explained that we were staying with Candido. Light dawned. “Candido, yes, he telephoned.” More light. “AAAH! AUSTRALIANI!” he bellowed. There was a brief shocked silence in the supermarket, as heads turned. It turned out that Franco has an uncle in Sydney. Or possibly four uncles, we were having a bit of trouble following him at that point. Anyway, on the strength of that indissoluble link between us he suddenly ducked off as we packed our groceries, and reappeared with a bottle of fortified white wine which he pressed on us as his welcoming gift. Sicily is that sort of place, we think. We tried the wine later and it was an excellent dessert wine, a bit like an Australian liqueur muscat but lighter.

We were closer to North Africa than to the Italian mainland, and that fact was clearly shown that night when the Scirocco started blowing. That is the hot wind from the Sahara, and it is very hot, and it is a very strong wind. It fairly whistled round the eaves all night. I don’t think it got much below 35 degrees all night.

The next day we visited Castellammare. The town itself is built around a pretty little port of considerable antiquity. The fort on the headland is originally Arab, with Norman accretions, but doubtless there would have been something there before the Arabs arrived.

Castellammare del Golfo – Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss 80mm Planar lens (click to enlarge)

Castellammare del Golfo in the evening – Horseman 45FA large format camera with 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon-W 125mm lens (click to enlarge)

We ate a memorable meal – not very expensive, and for me at least, the second most enjoyable dish I have ever eaten in Italy (the best was an octopus stew in a coastal trattoria south of Otranto). “Spaghetti in Sicilian sauce” may not sound like much, especially when Sicilian sauce turns out to be just tomatoes, garlic, parsley, olive oil, roasted almonds, pepper and salt, but it was intensely flavoured and really delicious. Lou had a very typical Sicilian dish – Busiate (a kind of curly pasta) con Sarde e Finnocchi – pasta with sardines, wild fennel, pine nuts, currants and tomato. The currants are very much an Arab influence.

June 6, 2017February 22, 2024

History and Photography in Italy

Welcome to a site specialising in the things that interest me – travel, history and photography in Italy.

About twenty years ago, while posted to England for two years by my Australian employer, I started a website to share my photographs with family and friends. The website was first created in hand-rolled HTML on a text editor (on an Amiga computer!) and although I later used various website authoring tools, it retained a fairly basic “Web 1.0” look.

On return to Australia, I migrated the website to my new ISP, but work got busier and busier and after a few years I stopped updating the website. Eventually I changed my ISP plan, the free web hosting stopped, and the website disappeared.

In more recent years, while travelling for work or pleasure, I would send e-mails, often with pictures attached, to my late parents, to whom were then added my wife’s parents, then our respective siblings, and so on.

I have now entered a phase of life where I will be working much less, and only on things that interest me. I have therefore decided to start again, combining the two aims of sharing my photography and my writing about travel and history, this time using more contemporary web technology to create a site about history and photography in Italy.

My photography has evolved over time as well. The earliest pictures I posted were taken on a Minolta X-300 35mm SLR film camera. That was replaced by a Canon EOS-50e, then by a Canon EOS-3. Then, at about the time when digital was really starting to take off, I had a long think about my photography, and decided to go in the other direction – back to basics. I bought a Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, with no electronics or built-in metering, and started learning to take photographs without artificial assistance.

But I was on a slippery slope, and as more and more professionals got out of film, like many amateurs I was tempted by the newly-affordable second-hand professional film gear that was coming on the market. A series of medium-format rangefinder cameras complemented the Hasselblad, and then I saw an advertisement for a Horseman 45FA large-format camera that took 4×5 inch sheet film images. For several years after that I was of the view that the only real cameras were ones with bellows on the front, and on which one composed upside-down and back-to-front on a ground glass screen. In bright light, one had the additional pleasure of doing it under a cloth, to the embarrassment of one’s wife.

Recently, and ironically just as film started its resurgence, I finally used my impending retirement as an excuse to indulge myself with a 50 MP digital back for my Hasselblad system.

My current (active) photographic gear consists of:

Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera, with A12 and A24 film backs, a CFV-50c digital back, and 40, 60, 80, 150 and 250mm lenses.
Horseman 45FA large format camera, with 4×5-inch sheet film back, and 6x12cm and 6x17cm roll film backs, and 90, 125, 150, 180 and 210mm lenses by Schneider-Kreuznach, Rodenstock, Fuji and Nikon..
Nikon Coolscan 9000 and Imacon Flextight II film scanners.

Update: 18 March 2022: Yesterday I took a big step and traded in all my large format gear for a Fujifilm GFX 50R mirrorless medium format digital camera and 32-64mm zoom lens.

Update: March 2023: I found myself using the Fujifilm GFX 50R far more than I did the Hasselblad, so I sold the Hasselblad gear after almost 20 years and bought a Fujifilm X-Pro3 rangefinder and several lenses.

You can find a post about my large format system here.

And the blog name? It isn’t a direct reference to the Homeric hero. The Patroclus was a ship of the Blue Funnel Line that made the run between Liverpool and Hong Kong in the early 1960s. I travelled on it as a small child.

Piedmont

La Morra

Barolo

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Photography Stuff (feel free to skip)

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

The Basilica of San Vitale

Sant’Apollinare Nuovo

The Neonian (Orthodox) Baptistery

The Chapel of Sant’Andrea

Share this:

Like this:

Geology

Stresa

Lago d’Orta

The Borromean Islands

Isola Bella

Isola dei Pescatori

Santa Caterina del Sasso

A Note on the Photography

Share this:

Like this:

A note on the photography – black and white conversion

Share this:

Like this:

Federico Gonzaga

The New Palace

The Interior

The Sala dei Giganti

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

A Brief History

Procida Now

Getting There

On Procida

Share this:

Like this:

A Hot Summer

The Valley in Autumn

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

The Context

Mantua

So what about the paintings?

Mantegna and the Camera degli Sposi

Historical Sources

A note on the Photography

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Cameras and technique

Share this:

Like this:

The Place

Capital of a Declining Empire

Goths and Arians

Justinian and Theodora and the Exarchate

Classe

A note on the photography

Further reading

Share this:

Like this: