A Taste of Tuscany

(Orbetello, Tuscany)

About a week after I arrived in Rome, I received a phone call from Lorri Whiting (nee Fraser), the widow of Bertie Whiting (both benefactors of the studio) and sister of Malcolm Fraser. (Yes, that Malcolm Fraser, PM of Australia during the first five or so years of my life.)

When Lorri discovered I was from Queensland she asked whether I was into sailing, or more specifically, whether I’d had any sailing experience. I wish I could’ve answered in the affirmative: it turned out she was looking for someone to add to her crew, to help her shift her yacht from Portugal to Spain (though Gibraltar)! As my answer was negative, we arranged instead for me to visit her upon her return in March.

So yesterday I caught the train to southern Tuscany, a seaside town called Orbetello, where Lorri moved from the studio after Bertie’s passing. She met me at the station, and we headed to the Porto’Ercole (Port of Hercules) for lunch. The seaside village was a welcome change from the bustle of the capital, with only a handful of locals about, sanding hulls, repairing nets etc (though Lorrie assured me the place is swarming with visitors in summer).

(Porto'Ercole 1)

(Porto'Ercole 2)

We had lunch on the seaside, at a dog-friendly place, on account of Lorrie’s bulldog. Lorrie is a visual artist, trained in Melbourne, and has exhibited all over the world. One of her works is hung in the living room of the studio. We talked art, poetry, politics, and her favourite topic, sailing. On a few occasions, she mentioned ‘her brother’, and it took a great deal of restraint on my part to not disclose my awareness of his identity, or to press her with questions regarding him! Unfortunately, Lorrie has recently had eye-surgery, and the long recovery is causing her some discomfort.

After lunch we drove to the top of the hill overlooking Orbetello and went for a lazy amble with the bulldog, the late afternoon light dancing through the ubiquitous silvery-khaki leaves of the olive trees. The air was brisk; a cool change has swept through Italy in the last week, and temperatures have plunged back to almost winter lows, four or five degrees the evening.

(Orbetello 2)

(Olive leaves)

We then returned to Lorrie’s place for coffee. The maid that helped nurse Bertie still lives with Lorrie, a dramatic Austrian woman whom Lorrie describes as ‘Wagnerian’. Lorrie mentioned that, on account of an imminent visit from her brother, she was trying to spruce up her garden (apparently Malcolm is a keen gardener). We then went on a tour of her studio in the basement, where she still has many of her works.

(Lorri's front yard)

After a couple of hours, Lorri drove me back to the train station. I’ve had some difficulty recently navigating my way around some of the stations, and would you believe, when my train came, I failed to realize it was the intended one, and it left without me. So to kill the two hours wait before the next one, I went to a bar around the corner, and started a poem about the day.

After a couple of drinks, I became plucky and tried to explain to the bartender – who thought at first that I was South American – why I was here, in Orbetello. Sono Australiano. Il mio treno ha partita senza me. E fredo, e vorrei essere caldo (pointing to the drink). Purtroppo, non parlo bene l'italiano. Which I hoped meant: ‘I am Australian. My train has left without me. It is cold, and I want to be warm. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Italian well.’

Piazza San Pietro

From the Ponte Sant'Angelo (post below) it’s a brief walk to the Vatican. I had a quick coffee on the grand street that leads to St. Peter's, and would you believe, a crowd was forming and starting to get excited. My trip had turned out to be a fortuitous piece of timing. Before long, a very large convoy, beginning with emergency vehicles, police motorcycles, cars, vans, then limousines of all sizes, came blaring around the corner, and the masses began cheering and taking photos. I think it was the pope.

(Piazza San Pietro 1)

As it was dusk, I decided to stay in the Piazza San Pietro, leaving my visit to St. Peter’s and the museums for a later date, rather than attempt to cram the experience. (I’ve been building up to this, you might say, and studying up also, to prepare for what is apparently one of the most rewarding, but also most exhausting museum experiences in the world. Apparently there is even a specific medical diagnosis for exhaustion in the face of the Vatican museums, called ‘Stendhal syndrome’, after the novelist, who collapsed and had to be taken to hospital!)

(Piazza San Pietro 2)

The piazza is really the first that has had a physical effect on me, and I’m in no way overstating this. The massive columns, which I forgot to photograph really, embrace the space in a god-like group hug – it is impossible not to feel ‘included’ you might say. As Dickens wrote: ‘The beauty of the Piazza… with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing fountains – so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful – nothing can exaggerate.’

(Piazza San Pietro 3)

Ponte Sant’Angelo to Piazza San Pietro

(Angel 1)

The bridge across the Tiber to the Castel Sant’Angelo is perhaps the most wonderful I’ve ever crossed, though not because of the architectural characteristics of the bridge itself; rather, the thrill lies in the ten angels lining the way, carved by none other than Bernini (and his assistants).

(Angel 2)

(Angel 3)

Their poses and expressions are nothing if not dramatic, and are particularly effecting against a clear blue sky; you can’t help feeling spiritually elevated at the scene, despite the hordes of black-market stalls at the base of each.

(Angel 4)

(Prada Angel)

(Sunset Angel)

On the north side of the Tiber stands the Castel Sant’Angelo, a castle designed for strategic defensive reasons, where popes lived and enemies were imprisoned and tortured. It is an imposing structure, a fortress really, named after an apparent sighting of St Michael – I’ve been wondering ever since: why is it that no-one seems to see visions of angels any more? I left the visit for another time.

(View of Ponte Sant'Angelo, St. Peter's)

(Walk to Ponte Sant'Angelo)

(Me, Ponte Sant'Angelo, St. Peter's)

Pasquino

The Piazza Navona is a symmetrical, narrow piazza with a large central fountain, and two smaller ones flanking it at either end. The former, Bernini’s Fonatana dei Quattro Fiumi ('Fountain of the Four Rivers'), is currently undergoing renovation, so the grandeur of the place is at present, unfortunately, somewhat diminished. Which is a shame; the American poet Henry Wadsorth Longfellow, who once lived in an apartment overlooking the square, relished its refreshing vibe, and the usually cynical Tobias Smollett was forced to concede that it is “perhaps the most magnificent in Europe.” Some wrap, but I unfortunately couldn’t see it for all the scaffolding. Instead, I sat by the Fontana del Moro, a smaller work by Bernini, while a three-piece gypsy outfit busted a lazy afternoon groove.

(‘Pasquino’ the talking statue)

Around the corner stands the most famous of Rome’s so-called ‘talking statues’. That it depicts a scene from Homer’s Iliad is of only minor import. Its uniqueness stems from the fact that in 1501 a politically-minded cobbler (Pasquino) decided he’d had enough of papal Rome’s excessive censorship, and started attaching to the statue satirical remarks concerning current events. The trend caught on, and Romans from all over began attaching their own comments. Soon, other statues in Rome began to ‘talk’ and respond to each other. The practice has continued ever since, even during the brutal censorship of Mussolini’s reign. Even now, the statue is covered in bits of paper, with writings of both a political, and romantic nature.

(My new friend)

For something more contemporary, I thought I’d check out a restaurant nearby that I’ll probably take Liam to when he visits, knowing his passion for all things to do with both William Faulkner (a favourite writer of mine also) and Humphrey Bogart.

(Passetto, closed for siesta)

According to my invaluable ‘Literary Companion to Rome’ (from which nearly all literary allusions in this blog stem – see ‘reading list’) one of Faulkner’s biographies recounts how he dined at the then fashionable ‘Passetto’ restaurant with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in 1954, when in Rome on movie business. Bacall asked the recently crowned Nobel Laureate:

‘Bill, why do you drink?’ Liking the slim, green-eyed girl, he answered. ‘When I have one martini,’ he said, ‘I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there’s no holding me.’

Well, I know how he feels, but I’m trying to cut my drinking down a bit myself, and so am resisting the temptation make a role-model out of him… even in terms of prose style.

(On my way to the Ponte Sant'Angelo - see above)

26 Piazza di Spagna

(View from the top of the Spanish Steps)

The apartment in which the poet John Keats died after living for four months in Rome is literally on the corner of the famous Piazza di Spagna. The place itself is now a museum dedicated to the poet; of the house-museums I’ve been to (Samuel Johnson’s, Keats’ in London) this was probably the best value (3.50 euros) and also the best.

(Salon, Keats's Apartment)

This is primarily because of Keats’s bedroom. After the salon, and the dining room, all lined floor-to-ceiling with books in dark majestic bookshelves, and filled with exhibits (letters, photos, trinkets, drafts etc) you walk into a very small room with views of the piazza and of the Spanish Steps themselves.

(Keats's bedroom)

(View from Keats's bedroom 1)

(View from Keats's bedroom 2)

Entering the room is an overwhelming experience, and I came very close to choking up when I stepped in. A chill shot down my spine, that feeling of frisson which I didn’t really feel at his grave (perhaps because I was distracted; though I did, to a lesser extent, at Shelley’s). I suppose this is partly because the main parts of the room, the walls, the fireplace and the ceiling, are all exactly how they were in 1821. The bed isn’t the same (all furniture was burnt after his death), but the one that’s there is in the same spot. The room is tiny, so as soon as you see it, you see Keats lying there in your mind’s eye.

It was a draining afternoon - the most effecting of the Keats triumvirate I've now visited (his house at Hampstead, his grave in Testaccio, his Rome apartment). Two Camparis at the Café Greco helped matters, after which I wandered to the very top of the steps to take in the view (photo, top).

(On the Spanish Steps; Piazza di Spagna)

The Sopranos

On Saturday night I was invited by the embassy to a recital by two sopranos – one of them Australian, with a borsa di studio like myself – in a little church off the Piazza Baldini, in the Jewish Ghetto, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe.

Now I know you would rarely expect the words 'Australia' and 'opera' to be found in the same sentence, but the Aussie girl really did us proud... she was actually the stronger of the two, and I think others agreed. She sang arias from Mozart and Puccini, as well as some by a guy called Gounod, who I’d never heard of – unfortunately I missed her do Puccini’s Oh! mio babbino caro while I was having a cigarette, which I berated myself for.

It was such a treat to listen to these girls sing in a relatively intimate setting. Though I’m certainly no expert in opera, their voices were impressive, and on occasion went straight through me like a jolt of electricity. Not that I’d forgotten the fact, but this really made me feel as though I was in Rome.

The accompanying pianist was sublime, as those experts who were there made sure to point out during the mingling (one woman seemed to be your typical music college head). He’d apparently received the music the night before, and the 5 Ravel pieces were particularly complex: he was that picture of the perfect pianist, restrained yet not stodgy, extremely disciplined yet able to smile with his singer. All three artists had worked with major orchestras around the world, and what’s more, for me, the concert was free (though it was surely worth the 15 euros they were asking).

I left feeling uplifted, though a little lonely. This turned into an edginess, which I put down to the full moon / lunar eclipse that was occurring that night. As is my usual response, I pulled into a bar, this one looking particularly Irish, though staffed mainly by Italian party boys.

There was a fine la Liga match showing, Barcelona vs Seville, and when I left at half time, Seville were 2-1 up, having shocked Barcelona with a spectacular free kick. The Brazilian magician Ronaldinho had turned his back on the striker when forming the wall, and I wondered whether this sign of disrespect (by the master of free kicks) had incited the scorer to pull something special out of his hat, which he did.

I didn’t see the eclipse, which apparently made the moon appear red, and which could be seen perfectly from Europe (the photo above is not mine). This was partly because I didn’t know precisely when it was to happen. In hindsight, I know how to ask ‘At what time’, and the words for ‘moon’ (la luna) and ‘red’ (rosso), so I probably should’ve tried to ask (ie. 'a che ora e la luna rossa?' - 'At what time is the moon red?'!). Knowing who to ask was probably another matter.

Cafe Greco

After visiting the Palazzo Doria Pamphilij, I went for a stroll to the Piazza di Spagna to sit on the Spanish Steps. On the way, I ducked into the Café Greco on the Via Condotti (the famous shopping street I mentioned in an earlier post).

Because it was Friday night, I felt a little underdressed, flanked as I was by the Prada store, and next to it, Yves Saint Lauren, with Valentino and Armani just a few doors down. A lot, it seems, has changed since 1891, when Chekov wrote (in a letter to a Moscow friend), “neckties are amazingly cheap here, so terribly cheap that I may even take to eating them"!

Now, I remember in high-school debating the topic, ‘That clothes make the man’, and I objectively imagine myself not being fazed at all by such things, but being surrounded by fashionistas while wearing a t-shirt I picked up somewhere back home for ten bucks, coupled with being alone, made me feel as though I could do with a whiskey… or four.

And what better place to do this than Café Greco. This was the ‘local’ for countless eighteenth and nineteenth century artists; the café/bar’s regular clientele included Goethe, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Mark Twain, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nikolai Gogol, Byron, William Thackery and Hans Christian Anderson; composers, Liszt, Wagner, Bizet and Medelssohn; as well as mad King Ludwig of Bavaria (favourite subject of Australian infant terrible Michael Dransfield’s!). (Strangely enough, the café doesn’t really trade too much on this fact.)

I must’ve had three whiskeys in fifteen minutes at the bar, and was feeling quite a bit better. What’s more, they serve sandwiches and nuts with every drink – apparently it’s the law – so you get quite a meal with a few beverages. When I walked out onto the street I no longer cared a jot about the fashionistas (I suppose I wasn’t looking particularly derelict!), and felt altogether un-selfconscious.

I stopped only briefly at the Spanish Steps, wrote a few lines, then decided to leave. On my way back to the tram I took a detour and wandered into the Sant-Ignazio di Loyala, the church of the famous Jesuit saint (the first Jesuit church in Rome, the Gesu, is nearby, but I haven’t been in yet). Now I haven’t been to St. Peter’s (building up to it, you might say) but this is a remarkable church; the frescos on the ceiling, which must be ten storeys high, are very dramatic. Giant figures peer down at you as if they’re leaning over a ledge – all the more exciting, possibly, after a few whiskeys.

I spent about twenty minutes in the church with my jaw on the floor – when I left, I made the sign of the cross with some holy water on my forehead; it’s hard not to, really. As when in Westminster Abbey (see earlier post) all those years at a religious boarding school seemed to flood back; some habits are hard to break, it seems.

Palazzo Doria Pamphilij

The Palazzo Dorio Pamphilij is, well, a palace; it also happens to contain one of Rome’s largest private collections of paintings. Some rooms have no paintings at all, just very high ceilings, Venetian velvets and tapestries lining the walls, busts of important family members, priceless antique furniture etc.

The most famous work here is the Spanish master Velasquez’s portrait of the most prominent family member, Pope Innocent X Pamphilij. It shares a room with a bust of the said Pope, carved by Bernini.

(Diego Velasquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1650)

When he saw Velasquez’s portrait, the Pope exclaimed ‘E troppo vero!’ – ‘It’s too real!’ You can see why; in this portrait, the Pope isn’t portrayed as some mythical or divine figure, surrounded by trumpeting angels or saints; he looks simply like an ageing man, weighed down by the burden of his office. The red velvet upholstery, curtains etc, all accentuate the true subject, the Pope’s all-too-human gaze.

Incidentally, the 20th century English painter Francis Bacon (see London posts on the Tate Britain and Tate Modern) reinterpreted this painting for one of his most famous works – I'd hoped this piece might've been at the Tate Britain, but it turns out it's in the US.

(Frances Bacon, Study After Velasquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953)

There are also two Caravaggios, exhibited side-by-side. That the artist used the very same model (‘reformed prostitute’) for the female figures in both was the cause of major controversy, because the two figures are The Virgin Mary, and the ‘working girl’ Mary Magdalene! (And I thought the problematic ‘madonna-whore’ dichotomy was particular to twentieth century feminism.) Moreover, Caravaggio has painted the former as though she was a contemporary (16th century) prostitute, rather than a biblical one.

Other highlights include works by Titian, Raphael (which disappointed me a little), Breughel the Elder, Guercino and Lorenzo Lotto. There’s also a ‘mini-Versailles’ room, gilt with gold from floor to ceiling; oh, and full of mirrors, of course.

When I have fears... / Keats's Grave

The Protestant or “Non-Catholic” cemetery in Testaccio is a pleasant half hour’s walk from the studio, across the Tiber. Well, it would normally be pleasant, but on the day I went I happened to witness a hatchback plough flush into a motorcycle at an intersection at which I was waiting to cross. The motorcyclist seemed to do a 720 on the spot before being pinned between his vehicle and the car; he then stood up, clutching painfully at his shoulder. He was lucky not to have been killed, as I saw it; after my nerves had settled, I considered it a strangely apt prelude for my visit to the necropolis.

It’s fair to say I’d psyched myself up for this trip. The cemetery is the resting place of the two English Romantics, Keats and Shelley, as well as that of the great German poet, Wolfgang Goethe, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci and, as I discovered, the American beat poet Gregory Corso – among many others.

While it was Keats’ grave I was most interested in, it was probably Shelley’s that most moved me. I think this was because I’d placed so much importance on the former, that the latter took me somewhat by surprise.


You might recognise Ariel's lines from The Tempest. This place moved John Ruskin “to tears almost”; touched George Eliot “deeply”; Henry James considered it “a happy grave every way” and Wilde wrote a sonnet on both his and Keats’s grave.

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jeweled head.
And where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasuance of the dead.

(from Wilde’s The Grave of Shelley)

(The nearby ‘pyramid’ to which Wilde refers is the tomb of Caius Cestius, minor Roman bureaucrat who died in 12 BC; it is about six to eight storeys tall, and is the only pyramid in Rome).

A few feet away from Shelley’s is the grave of Gregory Corso, Beat Poet whom Liam introduced to me all those years ago as an undergrad; I still remember him handing me two little books, one of Corso’s (the other was Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems), from City Lights, on the bus to UQ, perhaps around 1998.


If I’m reading the Latin correctly, I think Goethe is buried with his son; the grave is, like Shelley’s, between two massive cypress trees.


After these, it was to the oldest part of the cemetery, in search of Keats. The grave is in the corner, nearest to the main road. Keats arrived in Rome in November 1820, hoping to convalesce from his tuberculosis, but died four months later at the age of 25.


Oscar Wilde (here in 1877) visited the graves of the poets Keats and Shelley on the same day he had been granted audience with the Pope. It is said he prostrated himself before Keats’ grave more humbly than he did before the Pope – he remarked later that he considered Keats’ grave to be “the holiest place in Rome”.

I’ve recorded a recitation I made of Keats's sonnet, ‘When I have fears’, while standing before his grave, and though I made two minor errors, I’ll included it below as soon as I can sync the audio on youtube.

**

At sunset I thought I’d go to my favourite hill so far in Rome, the nearby hill of Aventino (photo, top). The views of the city (St. Peter’s straight ahead, the studio to the south, the historical centre to the north) are breathtaking. Plus, the magical orange grove and gorgeous little fountains are especially charming.

(Moonrise, Aventine hill)

Top 5 at the Capitoline Museums

A few days after my visit to the Forum, I returned to the Piazza di Campidoglio to visit the Capitoline Museums, which together, in my estimation, are very close to being on par with the astonishing British Museum. Below are the five exhibits I spent the most time with on my first foray.

1. Bernini’s Medusa (Palazzo dei Conservatori)

A Hollywood actress could practice for a thousand years in front of a mirror and never for a frame achieve the cocktail of emotions present in this sculpture’s expression; nor a writer describe them. Horror, pain, bemusement, fear, anger and seductiveness – they’re all there. This is, I suppose, how she turns you to stone – the irony being that in this case, she is actually made of the stuff.

This is probably the work that held my attention the longest. What’s more, it’s helping me learn the difference between your dime-a-dozen sculptures (which are still good), and your absolute masterpieces (I haven’t yet seen Michelangelo’s Pieta at St. Peters, or Bernini’s Rape of Proserpine at the Museo Borghese, but have high expectations).

2. The Dying Galatian (Palazzo Nuovo)

Another sculpture, probably more famous than Bernini’s Medusa (above). A strong gladiator, having just received a fatal, piercing stab wound to the ribs, lies fallen, propped up on one hand as he looks to the earth, contemplating his imminent death (not my photo).

Lord Byron wrote of the statue in the fourth canto of his poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, noticing the staunch resistance to agony in the dying man’s expression, and imagining him in the ‘arena’ of the Coliseum as it ‘swims around him’:

I see before me the gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand – his manly brow
Consents to his death, but conquers agony.
And his drooped head sinks low, –
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy; and now
The arena swims around him – he is gone,
Ere ceased the human shout which hailed the wretch who won.

(from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrammage, Canto IV)

When the American writer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the statue fifteen years after Byron’s poem was published, he couldn’t get past Byron’s famous lines: ‘The Dying Gladiator is a most expressive statue, but it will always be indebted to the muse of Byron for fixing upon it forever his pathetic thought.’ Neither, of course, could I.

3. The Hall of the Emperors / The Hall of the Philosophers (Palazzo Nuovo)

There are a few rooms in the Palazzo Nuovo that contain nothing but ancient marble busts of ancient dignitaries, and two of these rooms struck me particularly forcefully. The Hall of the Emperors was the one that made me shiver… when you walk in you are suddenly surrounded by virtually every man who ever ruled Rome, from the kind gaze of Vespasian, to the moody frown of Caracalla, to the thoughtful concern of Marcus Aurelius… uurgh.

Secondly, the Hall of the Philosophers, which also includes writers (Homer, Sophocles etc.). This is similarly eerie. There are a handful of similar busts in the British Museum (first post of this blog) but there must be about forty in this room.

4. D’Arpino’s frescoes (Palazzo dei Conservatori)

This is the only one of my top five that isn’t a work of sculpture. Don’t get me wrong, there is an extensive collection of paintings in these museums, with a few of the superstars, two Carravaggios that I saw, and a Rubens, for instance. Also a massive, three-storey tall Baroque altarpiece by Guercino. But the museum is really about the plastic, so to speak.

However, the frescoes in the first room you walk into caught my imagination, and I spent some time in this room. The walls are very large, with six frescoes altogether, two on each side wall, and one at each end, all depicting the founding of Rome. Each of the frescoes is perhaps seven or eight meters in length, maybe four meters high. Death features prominently; there are some enormous battle-scenes, horses’ eyes bulging, countless men clutching spears in their chests, everyone clambering over each other, the action happening in very close proximity, and at full tilt. Think Braveheart on pause, just as the armies are clashing, so you can study the expression on each crazed individual’s face.

5. Fragments of a Colossus: Constantine the Great

In the first courtyard of the museum there is a foot, an elbow, a hand, parts of two legs and a head (photo above, not mine) – all once presumably belonging to a colossal statue of the emperor who made Christianity the official Roman religion, and shifted the capital to modern day Turkey etc. The toes on the feet are about the length of your arm, and the size of your torso. It would be nice to see the thing whole, but it’s kind of fitting that it’s all in pieces.