1001 Ways to Die – (7) Cy Twombly, American, Painter and Sculptor

Cy Twombly, one of my favourite modern artists, has died on Tuesday, 5th July 2011 in Rome, Italy, losing a long battle to cancer.

His work “The Rose” was the object of a previous article. In another article on this blog I presented his sculpture “Thermopylae” in relation to C. Cavafy’s poem. Today I want to travel with Twombly in the Sea.

I have somehow visualized Death, more precisely the departure from this life, to embarking, to getting on a boat and sailing in the sea. This is no crossing of Acheron, the river of Hades. This is becoming one with the Sea, taking his boat out to the sea, and then sinking with it.

In order to do this, I will use his “Poems to the Sea”, a series of 24 works done in 1959, a photograph of the Sea that the artist took, and his monumental work “Lepanto”.

Twombly in 1958, the year after he moved to Italy from the US. Photograph: David Lees/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Poems to the Sea

‘As Twombly told the critic David Sylvester, “the Mediterranean is always just white, white, white”: in the 24 drawings called Poems to the Sea the colour blue barely appears, and yet the cursory lines and spots create a sea of the mind’s eye – hours of contemplation transformed into a few cryptic marks. With their textured, creamy backgrounds, the paintings inspired by Procida are also extremely evocative: parched cliff-tops in the Bay of Naples; crumbling plaster; the heat – it’s all there if you look for it, though without that act of the imagination the charm quickly fades.’ (source: Christopher Masters, the Guardian).

Poems to the Sea, 1959, Collection Dia Art foundation, New York

‘What order of poems, punctuated with numerals and question marks, are these? The sea is reduced to horizon line and word, scribblings and veils of paint against the stark white of paper. A persistent compulsion is invoked in the viewer, the desire to read what is there, but not fully manifest in the artist’s scrawled script. Two words in these drawings emerge into legibility, “time”and “Sappho”, as if washed up on the beach alongside sudden, subtle gem-flashes of colour – blue, orange-yellow, pink – gleaming all the more because of their discretion. In these pages, meaning is endlessly frustrated and pursued. It settles only in the distance, figured perhaps by the horizon lines that move across the top of each of the drawings – in fact, simply grey or blue lines made with a straight edge, but suggesting seascapes at the vanishing point. The flat planes of sea and page have been collapsed. Writing comes in waves, rolling funnels of cursive script, crossed out, erased, enfoamed in satiny greyish-white paint. The signs are given as nascent forms, as gestural indications of “the hand’s becoming”, as Roland Barthes so aptly phrased it.’ (source: Claire Daigle on Cy Twombly, Tate Gallery, London).

Cy Twombly: Miramare 2005

Miramare

‘Cy Twombly photographs the subjects that he encounters in his studio in Gaeta, in Bassano, Rome or in Lexington, on the beach at Miramare or in botanical gardens, using an instant camera. By means of a special pigmenting process that involves dryprint, these one-offs are enlarged and printed in limited editions. Not only the special saturation of color, but also the fact that the shots are strikingly out of focus account for their unmistakable nature and extraordinary appeal. The consistent lack of focus is reminiscent of the photographs of the late 19th-century Pictorialists. Hubertus Von Amelunxen, however, discerns photo-historical references to the early days of photography, namely to early calotypes, first paper photographs permeated in “light and emulsion”. Indeed, with their aesthetic effect, Twombly’s photographic images exhibit a sense of both astonishment and entrancement with the (new) technology. The unusual and the new is of a quite singular beauty.

Using his particular technique, Cy Twombly manages to concentrate on the textures of surfaces which, removed from the flow of time, generate visual orders of an over-arching world of perception. Hubertus Von Amelunxen calls them “musical, rhythmical positions in an ineffable syntax” – as the focus is not on representation but on the unmistakable nature of things or the clarity of motifs. Finding the invisible in the visible, retaining the purportedly excluded in the image and at the same time sensing the intangible dimensions of time and space, that is what constitutes the great appeal of Twombly’s photographs. The eye is always very close to things, the direct view suggests an almost intimate proximity – of tender tulip blooms, of everyday objects such as glasses and bottles, of the artist’s slippers, his brushes and painting utensils, and not least his paintings themselves.’

(Source: La Lettre de la Photographie)

Cy Twombly: Lepanto

Lepanto

The work consists of 12 large canvases that looks back to one of the most important naval battles of early modern history. Lepanto was shown in September 2008 in the Museo del Prado prior to its permanent installation in the Brandhorst Museum in Munich in October of the same year. I saw the work in Brandhorst in 2010 and was deeply moved by it.

‘When Cy Twombly was offered a gallery dedicated to his work at the 2001 Venice Biennale, he chose to create a new work especially for the space, a work that he describes as one painting in twelve parts. For his concept of the project, Twombly turned to the genre of history painting. Before the advent of Modernism in the late 19th century, history painting, which encompassed images from mythology, the bible, and the lives of the saints, as well as scenes from ancient to contemporary history, was considered the highest achievement of the painter´s art. Responding to the exhibition´s locale adjoining the Arsenale shipyard, Twombly chose of his subject the famous 1571 naval battle of Lepanto.

Cy Twombly in front one of the "Lepanto" panels in the Venice Biennale of 2001

Venice, then an immensely powerful city-state, instigated the formation of an alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which had been attacking its colonies in the eastern Mediterranean and defiling their churches. Brokered by Pope Pius V, the western European alliance consisted of Venice, the Papal States, and Spain, three major Catholic powers of the post-Reformation period. The battle of Lepanto has always been viewed as a turning point in the history of Europe. The Ottoman Empire had heretofore seemed invincible and its fleet was far larger than the alliance´s armada. With more manageable Venetian-designed ships and superior deployment of artillery, the alliance vanquished and burned the Ottoman fleet. Lepanto was the last major sea battle that involved ramming and hand-to-hand fighting on deck. It was the first triumph of Christian Europe over the seemingly all-powerful Islamic Ottoman Empire. It also marked the end of the Mediterranean as the locus of shipping and trade; henceforth, the Atlantic routes to the riches of the American colonies dominated naval activity.

Twombly arranged Lepanto in a way that is at once symphonic and cinematic with four images of flames and falling leaves presaging, interrupting, and concluding his highly abstract narrative of the battle. The maritime scenes, with their stick-figure images of fighting galleys, become increasingly dense with the final triad drenched in the colors of his rich, limited palette. The lushness of the reds and yellows counterpoints their depiction of flames and blood.’

(Source: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA)

As the ship disappears in the horizon, where sky and sea merge, I quote from Roland Barthes (The Wisdom of Art by Roland Barthes 3):

‘If we wished to locate this ethic, we would have to seek very far, outside painting, outside the West, outside history, at the very limit of meaning, and say, with the Tao Te King:

He produces without appropriating anything,
He acts without expecting anything,
His work accomplished, he does not get attached to it,
And since he is not attached to it,
His work will remain.’

Farewell Cy Twombly

 

Alberto Moravia – Italian Novelist

“My life, as, I believe, everybody else’s, is chaos. The only continuous line is one of literary work,” Moravia said in the autobiography he completed shortly before his death.

Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) was one the great novelists of the 20th century. Born in Rome as Alberto Pincherle, Moravia’s father was a Jewish architect and painter born in Venice; his mother was a Catholic from Ancona, on the Adriatic Sea.

Tahara Keiichi: Portrait of Alberto Moravia

In an interview conducted a few months before he died in 1990, Alberto Moravia said, “In persons of genius you can’t talk of heredity or determinism. It would be like saying Leopardi was a pessimist because he was a hunchback.” Yet Moravia, who considered the gloomy Leopardi his literary forebear, often began his life story, as in the 1954 Paris Review interview, by underscoring the osteo-tuberculosis that left him with a lifelong limp: “I spent, altogether, five years in bed with it, between the ages of nine and seventeen, until 1924.” Most of the characters of his novels and stories also arrive stunted at the source: compromised, submissive, alienated, failed. The anguish of living became his subject, and he earned recognition as Italy’s great existentialist novelist with titles like La Noia (ennui, boredom). He once said any of his books could have been so titled.

Moravia and Morante on the island of Capri

In 1941 Moravia married Elsa Morante, a novelist. They remained together until 1961.

In December 1960, joined by Alberto Moravia and later by Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini left for India. The pretext was an international conference on the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in Bombay, but the three writers took the time to visit other Indian sites: New Delhi, Agra, Benares, Calcutta, Tanjore and Cochin. On their way back to Europe, they stopped in Kenya and Zanzibar for several days. Pasolini recorded his impressions in articles written weekly for Il Giorno (published between February 26 and March 26, 1961), later the same year gathered in a book, L’odore dell’India(Milano: Longanesi, 1961). Moravia, too, wrote several chronicles of India, published in the Corriere della sera(beginning February 19, 1961), and then gathered in Un’idea dell’India in 1962.

Moravia and Pasolini

Moravia befriended many artists, among them Laura Betti, the singer. She recalls:

“When I arrived in Rome to make a name as a jazz singer, I started hunting for texts for my songs, and this awakened the interest of writers. I hung out in intellectual circles. One evening Alberto Moravia brought Pier Paolo Pasolini to see me. He at once aroused my interest: he just sat there in a corner watching me through his dark glasses. I went right up to him and in my best Marlene Dietrich voice asked him: “Are you afraid of me?” It was love at first sight.”

”Nowadays,” he told a French interviewer in 1988, ”I only love Rome because I used to love her, just as one loves a woman for the sake of the love that one used to bear her.”

Boredom

In 1960 Moravia published “Boredom”. I borrow from Lee Rourke’s top ten books on boredom, as published in the Guardian:

“Boredom has always fascinated me. I suppose it is the Heideggerian sense of ‘profound boredom’ that intrigues me the most. What he called a ‘muffling fog’ that swathes everything – including boredom itself – in apathy. Revealing ‘being as a whole’: that moment when we realise everything is truly meaningless, when everything is pared down and all we are confronted with is a prolonged, agonising nothingness. Obviously, we cannot handle this conclusion; it suspends us in constant dread. In my fictions I am concerned with two archetypes only, both of them suspended in this same dread: those who embrace boredom and those who try to fight it. The quotidian tension, the violence that this suspension and friction creates naturally filters itself into my work.”

“If boredom in its purest form is immanence, its antidote must be one of transcendence. But with immanence comes nothingness. How can we transcend from nothing? All we have is impulse to fall back on and such impulses are invariably of a sexual nature. Most people who seek some kind of meaning through sexual encounter often become quickly disillusioned, it being an ephemeral solution, and they hastily return to their own initial immanent state of boredom. Alberto Moravia’s terse novel expertly outlines this re-circulation of boredom and transcendence via the exploits of a protagonist who fails to connect with the impossibilities of his life.”

An excerpt from the short story “The Ashtray”

The Ashtray tells the story of a woman of indeterminate age, but who, it appears, is not young any more. The story in the first person narrative begins with the woman standing in front of the mirror, her hand poised in the air, a wad of cotton-wool smeared with cleansing cream between two fingers. She has cleaned one half of her face, the left side, but is not able to make up her mind about cleaning the other half. Her brain tells her she should, but her instincts are not to finish the cleaning. She stands there looking at herself, irresolute and motionless, and through her mind pass thoughts about what she had done through the day that is about to end.

She has done a great number of things, she recalls, but brought none of them to a conclusion. She realizes her day has been like an ashtray which a neurotic smoker has filled, during many hours, with a quantity of cigarette-ends, some of them long, some of them short, some of them barely scorched. Her day has been filled with acts that she had left half, or only a quarter accomplished; and like the cigarette-ends, these acts, now that she comes to think of them, seems to her to be dead, cold, evil-smelling.

“I began the morning when the maid deposited my breakfast tray on my bed. I had intended: 1] to arrange the menu for the two meals of the day; 2] to read the newspaper; 3] to drink a cup of tea; 4] to eat a slice of bread with butter and honey; 5] to telephone to Clarice, a friend of mine, and ask her for a certain address. Instead of which, after starting a discussion about the first dish for lunch, I dismissed the cook impatiently and told her she must think about it herself. Then I poured out the tea and buttered the bread, but I drank only a sip of the first and ate only a morsel of the second because, in the meantime, I had opened the paper and had dipped – nay, had positively become immersed – in the account of a particularly strange crime.”

“Finally I also abandoned the newspaper halfway through because the telephone call came to mind. But, as I was dialling Clarice’s number, my eye fell on the alarm clock on the bedside table, and I saw it was late and that, as usual, I hadn’t time. Leaving the tea, the bread, the butter, the honey, the paper and the telephone on the bed, I rushed into the bathroom. But alas, the bathwater was now cold, it was positively icy. So I went under the shower. Suddenly the telephone rang; wet and half covered with soap I ran to it; too late, the telephone had stopped ringing. I dried myself as best as I could, made up my face and hurriedly dressed. Once I was in the taxi, however, I discovered that I had forgotten to put on any lipstick.”

Since we began by talking about completing things, let’s go back to Moravia’s woman and see what she had done with the rest of her day. Remember she had gotten into a taxi in a hurry because she was late and in the taxi realized she had forgotten to put on any lipstick. Well, she goes to a bookstore and comes out irritated, without choosing what she wants to buy, then goes to a boutique and comes out from there too irritated without making a purchase because the salesmen in both places are too solicitous of her. She then goes to a bar and after ordering a drink, suddenly rushes out of the place without drinking it and without paying for it, because she sees a young man she would love to be with passing by outside in the street. She misses him, of course. She later has appointments with two lovers, two “incomplete” affairs again, and then she comes back home. That’s where she was standing unable to gather the will required to remove makeup from the other half of her face too as the story began.

When she goes to bed, her makeup is still there on the right side of her face. Her husband to whom she tries to warm up in bed, kissing his hand passionately, points this out to her.

(my thanks to Inner Traditions for the short story.)

An existential writer?

Moravia is considered by many to be an existential writer. Those of you who wish to explore this attribute, are invited to read the thesis “An Existential interpretation of four novels by Alberto Moravia”. Enjoy it.

La Dolce Vita – Fellini’s Masterpiece

“The film first impinged on the world at large in February 1960 when foreign journalists reported back to their readers, listeners and viewers on the controversial reception in Italy, where it divided audiences, critics and clerics, and led to Fellini being both spat on and cheered at the Milan premiere.” (Source: Philip French’s film review in the Guardian)

“Jesus Christ swings over Rome in a breathtaking opening sequence; a statue suspended from a helicopter where Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) beckons to a gaggle of sunbathing beauties below. He’s a spiritually bankrupt man who pushes girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) to the brink of suicide with his incessant philandering. Nonetheless he cannot resist ‘the sweet life’ of sex and partying, seductively embodied by Hollywood movie star Sylvia – a voluptuous Anita Ekberg framed like a goddess as she cavorts in the Trevi Fountain.” (Source: Stella Papamichael’s film review in the BBC)

The Fontana di Trevi scene.

And the unforgettable music of Nino Rota.

“It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around”. (Anita Ekberg)

Ekberg is quoted (in a TV interview) as saying “Mrcello was zero when I met him, I made him famous!”.

No matter what the real case is, both Marcello and Anita are beautiful and doomed in this movie.

“La Dolce Vita”  is actually a bittersweet life, with the bitter taste ever present, not letting the sweet enjoy a victory. Marcello never really gets around to the sweet comfort of victory or pleasure. He is always chasing, something elusive, without being able to actually experience something, as the object of experience is continuously fragmented and disjointed.

Fellini has described La Dolce Vita as “a journey through the inauthentic” (in Federico Fellini’s Autobiography, a documentary by Paquito del Bosco available on the Criterion Collection DVD, La Strada). The film displays an almost palpable anxiety over the question of distinguishing the authentic from the inauthentic, the real from the simulated; and it is because of Marcello’s inability to make reliable distinctions between these categories that the film steadily moves towards a sense of chaos and disorder. The pervasive superficiality and artificiality of the characters Marcello encounters suggest a psychology in which identity is always concealed behind a social mask, and masquerade and performance have become the key elements of self. Such a view of human psychology inevitably forces us to confront the irreducible distance between self and other, a distance that is most often represented by Fellini as a breakdown of human communication. …. La Dolce Vita is a dense, complex portrait of modern life; a scathing critique of media culture, of its artificiality and sensationalism, its squandering of social energy in pursuit of the trivial, its insatiable appetite for scandal and the thrill of “the new. And it is equally an analysis of the “modern” self, of the narcissism and vanity that underlie sexual desire and which inhibit any meaningful communication between human beings. La Dolce Vita is about the emotional and spiritual cost of embracing such values. And it is also an expression of Fellini’s own anxieties as an artist, his concern that as a filmmaker he is like Marcello, a chronicler of the trivial and the unimportant. The crisis in Fellini’s conception of himself as an artist and filmmaker would find its fullest fictional treatment in his next solo film, 8 1/2. (Source:  Fellini’s Roman Circus)

At the end, he encounters again the beautiful young girl from a little cafe he met earlier.  A profile like an angel.  She beckons to him, but he can’t hear her across the waves.  He goes back to his degenerate orgiasts who are leaving the beach where they were gawking at an enormous “sea monster” the fishermen brought in.  Might there be a shred of hope left for him? (Source: Journey to perplexity)

Marcello cannot hear what the angel figure across the beach of Fregena is telling him He knows very well that he is not going to stay there, that he is going to go. He will walk away from his only chance to redeem himself. Redemption appeared before him and he turns it away. Marcello actually watches his redemption ticket being burned.

La Dolce Vita is a big puzzle with a simple end, that there is an end, sooner or later, and there are only limited choices that appear in front of us.  The choices we make and the end are intertwined.

We talk a lot about the end. The personal end, as I cannot foretell or describe the end of the world or the universe, should there ever be such an event. What is the personal end? I do not know, I have not experienced it yet. But I have a picture of it in my mind, it is the circus characters’ band walking on the beach at sunset, when the daylight gives its place to the darkness of the night. (the photo is from Fellini’s 8 1/2).

Artichokes Jewish Style – Carciofi alla Giudea

This is a classic dish, and a very tasty one!

I was in Rome for one day and had the chance to grab “carciofi alla Giudea” for a bite!

It all begins with an excellent product. The roman artichoke. Look at it! Nice, round, plumb, a sphere full of flavors!

The artichoke is fried twice, once as a round object with a bit of the stem sticking out, then it is flattened so that the leaves become like an umbrella and then fried again, until the leaves become crispy. These crispy leaves, partnered with the sweet tender flesh is an unforgettable combination.

Imago Restaurant, Rome, Italy

In my last trip to Rome I had the pleasure of dining in one of the best restaurants in town, Imago, on the top floor of Hotel Hassler, with fantastic views of the eternal city.

Hotel Hassler

I quote from Times Travel:

“Grace Kelly honeymooned at this turn-of-the-century palace at the top of the Spanish Steps, and it’s still the hotel of choice for many of today’s celebs and stylish tastemakers in search of old-world elegance (Gwyneth, TomKat, and Victoria Beckham are all regulars). Renowned for its personalized service, the Hassler is a family affair — a place where guest relations are taken very seriously. The 95 stately rooms are a checklist of classic good taste, with elaborate moldings, gilded furniture, French silks, 16th-century antiques, Limoges porcelain, playful frescoes, and marble, marble, marble, plus mod cons like flat-screen TV’s. Imàgo, its modern Italian restaurant, has heart-stopping views of St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome’s terracotta-tiled roofs. And the concierges can accommodate just about any request, including mapping out routes through the Villa Borghese gardens, near the hotel.”

I was staying at a nearby hotel and walked the distance, passing through Via Veneto. It is a beautiful part of Rome, and I highly recommend staying in this area.

The view from inside the Imago rooftop is amazing.To the extent than when I saw it, I started having second thoughts about the food, as one of the golden rules of the restaurant business is that when the view is stunning, the food sucks. Thankfully, I was proven wrong.

View of Rome from Imago

With determination I moved on and got a table. The clients of the restaurant are varied. You have the visitors who come for the views and the ones who come for the food and the elegant atmosphere. In one of the tables there was a family with two kids, with both grandparents, celebrating the birthday of one of the kids. Wonderful “tableau vivant”, with the grandmother reminding me of one of the powerful female figures in the black and white Fellini movies.

Lets move to the food now, and the gastronomic menu the chef prepared. The menu overall is structured in three stages. Stage I is the “delicate” one, with two appetizer dishes, both of them seafood based.  Stage II is the “taste explosion” set of two half-portions of first courses. Both are strong in taste and flavor. Stage III is a combination of two half-portions of main dishes.

The first starter was raw fish of the day. I do not recall the name of the fish, but it was quite tender, moist and tasty. The high point of the dish was the combination of the raw fish with pears infused with grappa. Personally I do not understand the foamy bits, in my eyes they are like aesthetic pollution, but lets ignore them, everyone these days seems to put a little foam here and there!

The next dish was an imaginative preparation of scallops, as they they were stuffed with mozzarella and then fried.The chef added a touch of black truffle to the finished dish, which was extremely subtle in taste and texture, a true delight. The dish is extremely delicate, and the frying must be very quick and swift, otherwise the scallop is destroyed.

The continuation was more intense in flavors and powerful, as the chef prepared pheasant ravioli with cauliflower puree and truffle-flavored honey. Full-bodied, intense flavor, and meaty texture were the characteristics of the dish.

The dish that followed was the star of the menu. Capellini pasta with smoked eel. A divine dish, one that I would include in the Italian Gastronomic All – Time Menu, if there was ever one. A magic of textures and flavors emanates from the dish. The chef came by and had a chat with me after the dinner was over, and he more or less agreed that this dish is his masterpiece. It is quite interesting, that of all the dishes in the restaurant of one of the most expensive hotels in the world, the best is one based on the humble eel of the Lazio region and capellini pasta, which you can find everywhere in Italy. The other golden rule of gastronomy, that is to use the materials of the terroir is yet again proven 100% correct! The chef had at his disposal the most expensive materials in some of the dishes. Yet his signature dish is the one that serves humbly the tradition of the Lazio region. To be correct, I belive that the dish is also traditional fare in the central regions of Italy, like Umbria.

The next dish was a fish and shrimp combination, that left me untouched, as it was rather faceless.

The last dish of the menu was excellent! Roast pigeonwith all the game flavor of the world! Nothing beats that! And it was roasted to perfection.

I found the serving of artichokes with the pigeon an excellent idea!

To conclude the excellent dinner, the chef offered a sweet tray, where the pistacchio canolo stole the show!

Chef Francesco Apreda has a bright future ahead of him, all we need to do is follow him as he evolves and grows as a chef. The one Michelin star he has been awarded is fully justified. And there will be more!

Ristorante Il Pagliaccio, Roma, Italia

Today I want to share with you the impressions from my visit to the restaurant “Il Pagliaccio” in the historical center of Rome.  I went to Rome for professional meetings, and decided to stay overnight so that I could enjoy a good meal and visit the Vatican the next day.  I found this restaurant in the Michelin Guide, which has awarded two stars to it.

Let me start by saying that the service was impeccable. Polite, not overbearing, as restaurant service should be. I selected a menu based on meats, the chef’s menu was something like 7 dishes, which after a very long day is not exactly easy to have.

The first item on the table was a Millefoglie (Mille-Feuille) with ricotta.

Millefoglie

The pastry was divine, light and crunchy, and it went very well with the noble taste of the cheese. A good start.

A snack based on squid followed.

Squid

The squid was tender and tasty, the broth even more!

What came next was a dish based on suckling pig’s meat. The full name of the dish is:

“Maialino da latte, prugne caramelllate, sorbetto al latte di cocco e salsa di arachidi”

Suckling pig

The meat was melting in the mouth and was full of flavours. The darkness in the color is due to the wine where it was marinated. The caramelised prune was tasty, but the sorbet had no place at all! Talking to the head waiter, he explained ot me that the chef wants to emphasize the contrast between hot and cold. Not very convincing in terms of taste.

The next dish was a light one, a risotto, whose full name is:

“Riso, fico, mandorla, capicollo calabrese”

Risotto

The center of the circle is occupied by a fig, while the ring is the risotto. The red spots are dried pulverised “capicollo”, a cross between salami and ham from the region of Calabria. Very light taste, I enjoyed the fig and the rise that had mandorla in it, and the capicollo was top. The chef though seems to have a fixation with cold things, so he put a dollop of another frozen concoction on top of the fig, which destroyed the unity of taste of the dish, turning it into a lukewarm mass.

Last dish was lamb, the full name is:

“Kebab di agnello, pomodori secchi e mozzarella”

Lamb

This dish was trully delicious, even though it did not look at all like a kebab!

The two cubes on the left were tender pink to rare lamb’s meat, wrapped in delicious thin pastry, on the right you had a couple of pieces of the skin, accompanied by a mozzarella slice, tomato, and parsley sauce. The little gondola like dish on the side was cous cous, without any interest.

The head waiter suggested to accompany the meal with a selection of Italian wines, and he was right. The wines were excellent, coming primarily from small wineries unknown to the large markets, never exported to other countries. What a delight!

Michelangelo’s Pieta: Rome and Florence

Today I would like to share with you some thoughts on two Michelangelo sculptures with the same subject: Pieta.

There is a third Michelangelo Pieta in Milan, Italy, but I will not include it in this post.

Lets begin with the definition of Pieta:

“Mary with Jesus Christ’s body: a painting or sculpture of the Virgin Mary mourning over Jesus Christ’s dead body” (source: encarta)

Michelangelo: Pieta, Rome, St Peters Basilica

Rome Pieta

The first and more famous is the Pieta in Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica, Pieta Chapel.

Michelangelo sculpted the Rome Pieta when he was 24 years old, in 1499. Supposedly, this is the most famous sculpture in the world, and bears the signature of Michelangelo. It must be noted that Michelangelo has not signed any other of his works.

The form of the sculpture is the most common in Christianity in and after the Medieval Ages, while the style is typical of High Renaissance. Beauty to the extreme and shining marble surfaces. 

The overall feeling from the sculpture is serenity, and the controlled emotion. It is as if either the dead Christ will wake up anuy moment, so we are waiting for this to happen, or that Death is inevitable and we must find a way to cope with it without wasting a lot of energy.

The face of Jesus

The face of Jesus which we cannot see easily when we visit the chapel, more or less confirms this transient state between life and death, as if a negotiation is in progress, and Jesus takes a nap until they agree on what will happen. And what a perfect face! There is no wrinkle, not a scratch, not a single hair sticking out, only the closed eyes give an indication that this face may not be alive after all.

Mary's face

Mary is so young that she created a lot of comments when the Pieta was shown to the public of Rome. Michelangelo claimed that pure women never age, a statement that can be attributed to his “political” rather than artistic spirit.

She does not seem to be mourning, but coping with a difficult situation, she is almost detached from the drama, a sympathetic observer rather than the Mother of the Dead Jesus.

There is more drama in the folds of Mary’s dress than in her face.

Florence Pieta

The Florence Pieta (it is also called deposition, or the Bandini Pieta) was never finished. Michelangelo in a rage after ten years of work tried to destroy it in 1555, but he did not manage to do so. The sculpture was saved by a servant named Antonio, then bought by the Florentine Banker Bandini and repaired by one of Michelangelo’s  assistants (Cacagni). 

Michelangelo: Pieta, Florence, Museo Duomo

The form in the Florence Pieta is not the ordinary one. There are four figures, in a complex arrangement of twisted bodies and spread arms and legs.

Mary is on her knees trying to support the body of Jesus, but she cannot manage this on her own. The bearded man (Nicodemus?) is helping her, and at the same time is becoming the tip of the pyramid of the composition.

It is clear that Mary belongs ot the “unfinished-damaged” part of the sculpture, but it does not matter a single bit! I think that the power of the sculpture is to a large extent due to this unique and moving combination of the “finished” and the “unfinished” parts. 

Jesus and Mary

There is no distance between the two faces, of Jesus and Mary. They touch and blend into a powerful pair that is full of the Drama and the Despair and the Loss.

Bearded Man

The bearded man is said to be Michelangelo himself, as according to Giorgio Vasari, the artist intended to place the sculpture on his tomb. His poweful figure is providing shelter to Mary and is also supporting the body of Jesus. His face is the epitomy of sorrow and contemplation of the Drama of Death.

Michelangelo: Pieta, Florence, Museo Duomo

From this angle we can see that the bearded man’s head is also at an angle, along with his shoulders and arms that provide to the sculpture a sense of motion that contrasts the lifeless body of Jesus. 

Jesus and Mary

There has been a lot of research on the events surrounding this sculpture. Even IBM have been involved, in an effort to reproduce the original before it was mutilated by Michelangelo. I leave all of this to the experts. As far as I am concerned, the Florence Pieta is one of the most powerful sculptures I have seen and I consider it as a must for every visitor of Florence.

Wine Bar dei Frescobaldi – Aeroporto di Roma, Fiumicino, Italy

 

Genuinely polite service

I believe that civilization is an everyday affair. Of course saying is not practicing. One of the occasions when I felt that practicing is not that difficult, was when I by chance visited the Frescobaldi Wine Bar at Fiumicino.

I had a couple of hours to kill before catching my flight back to Athens. This time is usually spent shopping things I do not need, or being bored to death.

This time I got lucky. I opened my eyes and there it was: an oasis of civilization.

I has the seafood crudo misto and felt that I was by the sea. I accompanied it with a full bodied glass of chardonnay to establish some balance with the strong raw seafood flavours.

 

 

Crudo Misto

The very nice lady serving me offered me at the end some nice biscottini (cookies) and I washed them down with a divine glass of Grappa di Brunello. There is no better way to prepare yourself for a flight!