In this post I will put the history part of the blog aside for a moment, and talk instead about landscape photography in Italy. This is after all supposed to be a blog about history AND photography, but I do feel a bit diffident whenever it sounds as if I am offering advice on photographic technique. The reason is simple – there are many very talented photographers publishing their work on the internet and offering technical advice and it feels a bit presumptuous to be comparing myself to them, if only implicitly.
But recently I was looking at the work of a photographer who specialises in the man-made landscape, in particular scenes of urban decay, and accidental geometric shapes and patterns. You can find his YouTube videos here. The results are not always my cup of tea, but I found myself watching partly because he uses the same medium format camera as me (Fujifilm GFX 50R) and partly because I was fascinated by the amount of care he puts into composition. That got me thinking about one aspect of my photography that I do enjoy very much, which is looking for patterns, not in derelict industrial sites, but in the landscape.
And by a fortunate coincidence, it turns out that I have quite a few photographs of Italy that could illustrate this, taken on a range of film and digital cameras over the course of about twenty years. So here we go.
Shapes
The natural landscape is not orderly as a rule, or at least that’s not how we think of it. Of course agriculture can alter that, but occasionally nature does it by itself. Either way, your eye is drawn to apparent shapes, whether they are tricks of perspective, the result of human action, or just sheer chance.
This picture and the next were both taken in the foothills of the Apennines, in Emilia-Romagna south of Bologna. The contrast between the mown wheat or barley and the green crop (which I think might be rapeseed) combined with the swooping curves of the hills to create a pleasing series of shapes. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).The same location. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).Near the village of Montetortore in Emilia-Romagna. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film, scanned on a Nikon LS-9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).In this photograph of the Val d’Orcia, taken from the walls of Pienza in Tuscany, a newly-harvested field contrasts with the green crops around it, while a huge thunderstorm brews in the background. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film scanned on a Nikon LS-9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).Sometimes nature provides the shapes itself. Taken near Misurina in the Dolomites. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).Here, near La Morra in Piemonte, the dawn light has reduced what would otherwise be a rather cluttered scene to something like a cardboard silhouette. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 100-400mm lens (click to enlarge).In this photograph taken near Pagliare in Abruzzo, the strong diagonals of the mountainside are offset by the farmer’s tiny shed. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film scanned on a Nikon LS-9000ED film scanner (click to enlarge).
Repetition
Repetition is something that the brain responds to at a fairly basic level – you don’t need to think about it, because neurologically you’ve already noticed it before the higher levels of cognition have been engaged. Clearly something this fundamental must have evolved because it conferred a survival advantage, but I don’t profess to understand quite why.
Agriculture, whether ploughing or harvesting, is a great source of repetition in landscape photographs. Here the regular lines left after the harvest serve to accentuate the undulations of the land. Taken in the Val d’Orcia outside Pienza. Fujifilm GFX 50R medium-format digital camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).And here is a similar effect left by the plough, also in the Val d’Orcia. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfim back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film, scanned on a Flextight Precision II film scanner (click to enlarge).You can’t beat vineyards for repetition. These are near the town of Barbarano Vicentino, near Vicenza. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).Again at La Morra in Piemonte, the rising sun has created the repetition, as the trees cast long shadows through the mist. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 100-400mm lens (click to enlarge).Sometimes morning mist can do even more, filling the valleys so that the higher ground is sculpted into a series of retreating silhouettes. Taken in the Val d’Orcia on the road between Pienza and San Quirico d’Orcia. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss sonnar C 250mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film, scanned on a Nikon LS-9000ED film scanner.A similar effect in the Monti Martani near Todi in Umbria. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 100-400mm lens (click to enlarge).A similar shot of the Monti Martani. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).Morning mist again, in the Val d’Orcia. Canon EOS-3 35mm film camera, 100-400mm IS L lens (click to enlarge).
Leading the Eye
As a photographer, you want to be able to guide the viewer’s eye into a picture. Something that leads the eye (a road, a river, whatever) really helps a composition, giving it a feeling of depth, and turning what might have been an ordinary photograph into something a bit more special – perhaps something that poses questions. Where does the road (or river) lead? What is around the corner?
A country road in Le Marche, not far from Urbino. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film, scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).Another country road, this one near the town of Amelia in Umbria. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).Near the village of Pesciano in Umbria. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 100-400mm lens (click to enlarge). This much photographed farmhouse (now inevitably used for tourist accommodation) is just outside Pienza in Tuscany. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 120 film scanned on an Imacon Flextight II film scanner (click to enlarge).The “Sentiero del Furioso”, a walking track that follows part of the course of the River Tiber in Umbria. Fujifilm X-Pro 3 digital camera, 16mm lens (click to enlarge).Near the town of Toara in the Veneto, an irrigation ditch, a line of trees and the edge of a field of sunflowers all draw the eye from the foreground into the distance. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 40mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).The Lago di Mis, in the Dolomites. The lake curves around to the right out of sight, but the receding mountains on either side continue to draw the eye into the distance. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).
And that’s it. I hope you liked the photographs. Next post will be a bit more about history, I think.
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 Val d’Orcia at dawn. Horseman 45FA camera, 125mm Fujinon-W lens, Horseman 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia film, 0.6 ND graduated filter (click to enlarge).
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 Val d’Orcia at dawn. Horseman 45FA camera, 125mm Fujinon-W lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film, 0.6 ND graduated filter (click to enlarge).
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 Val d’Orcia at dawn. Horseman 45FA camera, Rodenstock Sironar-N 180mm lens , Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film, 0.6 ND graduated filter (click to enlarge).
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.
Val d’Orcia at sunrise. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon 150mm lens, 6×6 rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).
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.
Val d’Orcia before sunrise. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, 0.6 neutral density graduated filter, 6×6 rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge). Val d’Orcia in the early morning. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, Canon 100-400 IS L lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge). Val d’Orcia in the early morning. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, Canon 100-400 IS L lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge). Val d’Orcia in the early morning. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, Canon 100-400 IS L lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).
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.
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 – 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.
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 13th 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.
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.)
Bevagna, church of San Silvestro. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).
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.
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 17th or the 18th 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.
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 11th and 12th 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 12th 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.
King William the Good presents the Monreale Duomo to the Virgin, Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).A carving of Norman knights, Monreale cloisters. HTC phone camera (click to enlarge).
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.
Exterior of the cathedral in Cefalù , Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge). Cefalù interior, Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).
There are two places in Palermo of which I wish I had photos to show you. One is a church called the Martorana, which was closed for restoration when we were there. The other is an absolute jewel box in the Palazzi Normanni called “King Roger II’s room”, which we did visit, but since I seem to be one of the only people in Italy (tourist or local) that obeys “no photography” signs, you’ll just have to visit it yourself. But here’s a hint – the illustrations on the cover of Norwich’s history, shown above, come from there.
Update: In July 2024 we revisited Palermo and I was delighted to find that the “no photography” rule in King Roger’s room no longer applied. You can find a post with photographs of it, and updated photographs of other places mentioned above, here: A Return to Palermo.
