Ferrara

Ferrara is a beautiful city north and east of Bologna, the home of a spectacular Duomo, a stunning castle with moat, one of the first Renaissance planned districts in Italy, amazing palazzi.  But my entire visit was colored by my reading of Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.  I had already visited the Gardens of Ninfa, which inspired Bassani and where he wrote much of the book.  Ferrara is so vividly described in the novel, down to the marble cannonballs in the courtyard of the castle, bikers riding along the ancient walls above the cemetery, and the the Corso Ercole, the spine of the new Renaissance development.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a heartbreaking story, where your knowledge of the ending -- most of the Jews of Ferrara are sent to their deaths -- only heightens the drama of this slowly evolving, never-achieved romance between the narrator, who seems to be a version of the author and the brilliant, aloof, mysterious Micol Finzi-Contini.  The noose around Jewish life is steadily tightened, but up to the very last page, the holocaust is held at bay, while the dance between the narrator and Micol continues, awkwardly and disappointingly, at least to the narrator.

The visit brought me out of my lull brought on by the flutter of churches and their gorgeous decorations in Ravenna and Parma and Bologna, and reminded me of the awful history of Jews in this country.   Every city has its ghetto, following the first one, in Venice, in 1519, and every one is virtually devoid of Jews, save for the few stragglers who hid in the war, or survived the camps.  Ferrara had one of the largest Jewish communities in Italy and there are plans for a new Jewish museum here, which was a compromise with the plans of Rome for a national Shoah memorial museum, which is to be designed by my new friend Luca Zevi in the park of the Villa Torlonia.  In the meantime, an earthquake of several years ago has left the existing synagogue and museum closed.

To anchor these 17th century columns opposite the Duomo, Jewish graves were harvested for the job.  A guidebook to the city proudly claims that this shows how Jews are part of the "foundation" Ferrara.  

The Duomo

The statue of Girolamo Savonarola towers over the outdoor market

Palazzo dei Diamante

Street in the ghetto

The synagogue on Via Mazzini, the one, in the novel, the Finzi-Continis founded as virtually their private  shul.

The archways of the ghetto

The entrance to the cemetery, and the chapel (below), which serves as inspiration for the opening pages of the book, where the narrator describes the garish new crypt built by the newly wealthy Finzi-Continis, and where only one of their children is buried, the only one not to be killed in the Holocaust.

Bassani's grave, oddly placed off on its own, away from any other graves, but in the shadow of the wall, with bicyclists peddling by overhead.

Bassani on the cemetery in the prologue of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis:

"But once again, in the quiet and torpor (even Giannina had fallen asleep), I went over in my memory the years of my early youth, both in Ferrara and in the Jewish cemetery at the end of Via Montebello.  I saw once more the large fields scattered with trees, the gravestones and trunks of columns bunched up more densely along the surrounding and dividing walls, and as if again before my eyes, the monumental tomb of the Finzi-Continis.  True, it was an ugly tomb -- as I'd always heard it described from my earliest childhood -- but never less than imposing, and full of significance if for no other reason than the prestige of the family itself.

And my heartstrings tightened as never before t the thought that in that tomb, established, it seemed, to guarantee the perpetual repose of its first occupant -- of him, and his descendants -- only one of all the Finzi-Continis I had known and loved, had actually achieved this repose.  Only Alberto had been buried there, the oldest, who died in 1942 of lymphogranuloma, whilst Micol, the daughter, born second, and their Ermanno, and their mother Signora Olga, and Signora Regina, her ancient paralytic mother, were all deported to Germany in the autumn of 1943, and no one knows whether they have any grave at all."

Feet

In the Basilica of Sant'Agostino, just a few yards from Piazza Navona are two meditations -- unintentional, separated by a hundred years -- on feet.

Sansovino's Madonna and Child with St. Anne (1512) captures what I have found over and over again in museums in Rome and across Italy -- a portrait (this one in stone) of someone touching the Christ baby's feet.  It seems nothing more than -- and nothing less than -- a way to evoke attachment to the image, its sentiment and lessons.  Every parent, and anyone who has held a baby, cannot but resist to touch those soft feet and incredibly perfect wiggling toes.  It is one of the most powerful memories of being a parent, to see and feel those almost unworldly, perfectly formed feet,  beyond imagination soft. 

A few yards away in a dark chapel, is a very different notion, but equally compelling image, with feet at the heart of its power.  Caravaggio's painting of the Pilgrims visiting the Madonna (Madonna di Loreto, 1606), was controversial for its setting -- a dark, decrepit alley, with paint peeling on the brick wall -- and the presence of dirty feet.  The Madonna stands on a step, her naked feet revealed, while the pilgrims with their dirty feet sticking out of the right corner of the painting, kneel before her. The image is stunning in the ordinariness of the setting and individuals.  She is beautiful but could be any woman; the house and street could be anywhere, anywhere where normal people live.  

Ambiguity, or, Why We Love Caravaggio

I revisited the Chiesa San Luigi dei Francesi today and again found myself contemplating the The Calling of St. Matthew, by Caravaggio, one of three painting by the artist in the Contarelli Chapel.

For me the power of the image lies, first, in the figure of Christ -- hardly visible, off to the right side of the painting, disembodied, with his arm pointing toward Matthew, and below, his naked feet in the shadows.  But the eye is most powerfully drawn to Matthew, and the ambiguity of every part of his portrayal.  His right hand still grasps the money he must abandon to follow Christ.  His legs seem to be moving, but toward or away his destiny?  His eyes look both surprised and fearful.  And, finally, his finger seems to point toward his neighbor, but his curling toward himself, as if in recognition that it is he who is being called.  Or was he pointing toward himself and his finger is now unfurling toward his neighbor, as if to see, "You couldn't mean me; you must want him." The appeal of this painting, and perhaps all of Caravaggio, is the ambiguity of emotion and action, amidst all the drama of light.  We are called into the picture, and asked to consider how we would respond.

Marilyn Horne

The first event of Trustees Week was a master class taught by one of the great American opera singers of the second half of the twentieth century, Marilyn Horne.  Four young singers performed short pieces, afterwards  Marilyn Horne worked with them for a half hour, gently and not so gently demanding changes to their posture, their tone, their outlook, their whole life philosophy.  She was hilarious, but remarkably effective.  I only stayed for the first two singers, but they were noticeably better -- even for my untrained ear -- after the workout with Ms. Horne.

Here are a few choice quotes from her during the course of the afternoon:

"If you love what you're hearing, I'm going to hate it." [I think this was meant to say that the singers were singing too quietly, or inwardly, and not projecting].

"Shut your mouth!" [As in, you don't need to open wide to project]

"If we singers aren't narcissistic, then I don't know what is."

"Okay, make this beautiful."

"You're not young, but you're not too far gone."

Anna Betbeze

I am excited for my friend, Anna Betbeze, who has a coveted invitation to show her work at Art Basel in two weeks.  Her work is intriguingly about ruins and the marks and ravages of time.

Piranesi, then and now

I was walking in the glorious Doria Pamphilj Park and was, again, pleased at the thought, as I began my descent on the stairs by the Villa Doria Pamphilj that Giovanni Battista Piranesi was here just a few hundred years ago preparing one of his famous etchings of Rome.

Parma

A remarkable theater all of wood -- reconstructed after the palace was destroyed by Allied bombs -- Parma, Ravenna, and cities along that line were the Nazi's last line of defense, leading to a fair amount of destruction.

A few of the surviving sculptures from the original theater.

Parma ham, of course

The beautiful Bapitistery, opposite the Duomo