and into culture!

source http://www.italialiberty.it/mostraartdeco/

We find that in Forli there will be an interesting exhibition of art deco 'Anni Ruggenti' - the roaring years - there are links from that page to other things to see nearby.

This a city more noted (and less visited) for its rationalist architecture. Being the big town next to the small town (Forlimpopoli) where Mussolini's mum lived, substantial investments were made in the 1930s in modern urban design and technology including the flight school where Mussolini's son attended. A complex background. But a real ongoing interest in the modern.

Source http://www.simonesimone.it/forl%C3%AC-razionalismo/

This offers a glimpse of the architecture and commentary on rationalism.

And here is a whole list of places of interest in Forli. See also my earlier blog entry on Forli.

In Mantova, we arrive just as the winter chamber music season at the Teatro Sociale is ending. We have booked for the last night performance by the Mantova Chamber Orchestra, 1 April. Online booking easy, pick up tickets with ID and receipt at the box office... unlike booking for the opera house in Rome. The program was not of extreme interest and they offered only to post tickets to us for forty euros. No thank you.

The Mantova Teatro Sociale is a lovely sized theatre a 300 metre walk from our apartment.

source: http://www.teatrosocialemantova.it/

Here from youtube a nice little film from a performance in the theatre, pleasing to hear what they think of Mantova and audiences in this theatre.

----

In Rome, there seem to be a number of possible entertainments in the week before easter including Bach mass away over town from our apartment in the great Accademia di Santa Cecilia. 

We have opted for an event near our apartment, in the Great Hall (Aula Magna) of the University of Rome, a duo performance of violin and cello by two musicians, Brunello and Carmignola, whom I saw described somewhere as the Al Pacino and Robert de Niro of Italian music. They go on from Rome to perform together at a charity evening in Treviso, a rough googly translation about them and about that here. 

Violin and cello only, no orchestra, fascinating.  

For both Mantova and Rome, we booked using vivaticket as initially directed from the Teatro Sociale booking office person, Giulia, and that led us to Rome options.

In Rome, in Monti, we may well be able to follow the sound of music down the street. ... Of course we did that in Guanajuato two years ago to find our ancient front door refused to open again... a good case for ensuring you don't go out with absolutely nothing in pocket and with your basic travel info at a cloud location. We had the coins for an internet cafe, found the document with the manager's number, parked at google drive, we rang the manager, she got us a hotel room for the night and a locksmith in the morning... all was not lost.)

Here is an old photo of the Aula Magna, from the web. This is about 2km from our apartment. 

source http://www2.uniroma1.it/musa/images/index/07.jpg

Communication, syphilis, Este and culture.

Some years ago at the Porta Portese market in Rome (though not quite as long ago as the engraving here might suggest) I bought a version of Ptolemy's map of 'Southeast' Asia which had been a fold out frontispiece of the French edition of this history by the Scots historian William Robertson, name too long to type. The original published in Edinburgh in 1791, the French edition in 1792. I liked the map, for itself, but also found it intriguing that in a moment when France was busy with the guillotine and Britain and France were going to war knowledge, wisdom, academic literature moved so swiftly.
We don't hear about Robertson but "Robertson was a founder member of Edinburgh’s Select Society in 1754 along with David Hume, Adam Smith and Allan Ramsay and supported the establishment of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783." [source]

source Amazon

Now, in reading Rita Castagna Mantua, History and Art, Firenze 1979 pages 24 and 26, I read that Francisco II and his son Federico II Gonzaga, Marquesses of Mantova, both died of syphilis.

Wikipedia reports that too, alleging also that the entirely philanderous Francesco contracted it from prostitutes while the son 'inherited it from his father'. [source] [source]  Were Francesco here he would probably sue Wikipedia for suggesting he had to pay.

Lucrezia Borgia, blamed for everything in those years that could not be precisely pinned on her brother Cesare and her dad Pope Alex 6, died aged 39, also in 1519, the record showing death caused by childbirth difficulties. But the record also shows that inter alia Francesco and Lucrezia had a long term raging affair.

Come back to them in a moment. First I want to note that the dominant theory is that syphilis entered Europe with the return of Columbus in March 1493 from his first voyage to the Caribbean.

Then, quick as you can publish a French translation of a history published in Scotland three hundred years later, the armies of Charles VIII of France carried syphilis to Italy and most notoriously to Naples. But as that last link indicates he stopped along the way with quite a bit of customary rape and pillage. That link also brings into focus all the families of the period in Rome and northern Italy. There is mention in particular of the Sforza family, ruling in Milan. I wrote earlier of Caterina Sforza of Forli, bastard child of her role model the dreaded Gian Galleazo Sforza.

source wikipedia

His younger brother Ludovico Sforza was in charge by the time Charles VIII came by, ally in one direction, not in the other, check how the wind blows from Rome. Interesting how these families alternate raging monsters with cultured people with imagination. Ludovico and his sister married a brother and sister Este, from Ferrara, in a joint ceremony orchestrated by Leonardo da Vinci. Leo also splashed some fresco on the wall adjacent to Ludo's dad Francesco's tomb. Not many people go to see Frank's tomb but a crush of people go to see the Ultima Cena - Last Supper. The historical context is often lost in the tourist rush for Big Things.

Easily distracted ... my point was to draw attention to the turmoil of the times and this other dimension of the times, not only a proliferation of printing presses in Italy but also of syphilis. But it seems ridiculous to pin the rampaging, soldiering Francesco Gonzaga's syphilis on the sex industry when he was an archetype of the rape and pillage industry. Nobody of course (or that I've seen) writes about same sex lifestyles of the armies of the renaissance. Though at court there must have been a bit and one suspects that the great idealised poet Torquato Tasso, tolerated especially in Ferrara, may have been a bit queer.

For more on sex in the renaissance try this search.

source wikipedia

Francesco Gonzaga married Isabella d'Este, the Ferrara family of culture and style. I mentioned the Este court in Ferrara before as an end note to discussing the Gonzagas at Mantova. Now I realise that in both courts, the great civilising and artistic patrons were Alfonso II and his sister Isabella, the Estes. Though I earlier suggested that Alfonso's wife Lucrezia Borgia may have been influential in the shaping of Italian language, not least as while known for her affair with Frank Gonzaga, she also carried on some horizontal correspondence with the towering figure of Italian literature Pietro Bembo an owned administrator at the Este court of Ferrara.

Isabella outlived Francesco II Gonzaga by twenty years, dying the same year as her beloved, sensitive, artistic and not-very-good-at-obligatory-war-stuff son Federico. Of whose death wikipedia claims he 'inherited' syphilis from his father. It's not genetic, of course, it's sexually transmitted. Isabella showed no signs. Dad must have introduced his son to it some other ways, perhaps in shared experience, perhaps more directly? I have no background as a historian, but if people are going to leave around such nonsenses as the prostitute and inherited claims, surely I can raise questions.

I commend to you Rita Castagna's book Mantua, History and Art which led me on this expedition through the wild side of the renaissance.

Makes you realise how tame Shakespeare's take on Italy is. Perhaps he had to keep it tame to stay out of prison in fusty England. I note Anthony Burgess's speculations on Shakespeare's syphilis.

Mantova according to Edith, part 2 plus a bit more

Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua and Barbara of Brandenburg
with their children, fresco by Andrea Mantegna at San Giorgio Castle, Mantua, around 1470
source wikipedia

I had in mind drawing substantially on Edith Templeton's The Surprise of Cremona to discuss Mantova here, but have decided to be brief — and bring you a movie, albeit in Italian, but remember one picture is worth a thousand words. 

Nonetheless, Edith's book is an excellent reflective guide, though 60 years old. We will carry it to Mantova.

Descriptive of art and artists, it also dwells with some puzzlement on the Gonzaga family who seized the city in 1328 or so, built the castle to end all castles with fifteen courtyards, churches etc, etc and went bankrupt from extravagance of a wedding in 1608, whereafter most of their pictures sold to Charles I in England, more works seized and taken away by Napoleon and others. This wedding spared no expense, including one of Monteverdi's most notable operas. (The city was devastated by the Thirty Years' War, plague and sacking. It now has an elegance and charm and an integrity from being away from the main tracks of tourist tramping.)

Discussion of the Gonzaga mind, the persistent search for happiness in the art and construction, in Mantova and Sabbioneta. A fear of death on preoccupation with which she quotes Lorenzo de' Medici, another 'gangster' of the renaissance:

"Fair is youth and free of sorrow
Yet how soon its joys we bury.
Let who would be now be merry:
Sure is no-one of tomorrow."

• quoted at page 161, Readers Book Club edition (Australia) 1955

As elsewhere Edith finds a professor, this time to discuss the Gonzaga extravagance and in response to her perspective that the Gonzaga's creations were just folie de grandeur  the professor responds that this was not so, the immense wealth of the Gonzaga was acquired by plunder in war, that they had no way of sharing the wealth as in modern times building industry, their construction works and commissioning of art enabled sharing of their wealth. And against her observation that Venice, even richer, built dainty palaces compared with the Gonzaga monster, the professor points out that Venice had an entirely different and trade oriented economy. [pp183-4].

We shall go see, Templeton in hand.
-----

I wrote also in an earlier blog entry regarding those times.

The map at right in this text (link also in right column) shows the Po delta in 1570, before effects of an earthquake that year. Note the great lake in front of Bologna, Mantova in a lake and Ravenna out to sea. Chioggia is in the northeastern corner of the map. Venice off the map just north of that. 
Note Ferrara - pointer from the bottom. Ferrara a great rival of the Venetian Republic and hostile to Venetian desires to muck around with the delta and block off their lagoon from floods. 

But then the Este family who had made Ferrara great (their works are what people go to Ferrara to see) ran out of legitimate heirs—and so Pope Clem 8 in 1598, [declaring them a pack of bastards] sent in his army and grabbed the city. But then the same Clem 8 declared a Holy Year in 1600, meaning he would do no warring. The Venetians quickly upped spades and in four years diverted much of the flow away from their lagoon. And then in the south the land grew and the delta marched out to sea (continuing)

source wikipedia
Lucrezia Borgia had died
after difficult pregnancy and childbirth
in 1519

These cities on the north of Italy went through extraordinary times in the Renaissance, the arrival of the printing press, many of them in Venice in particular, altered possession of and entitlement to information (compare with the Shock of the Internet since 2000) and also altered language, enthusiasm for an 'Italian' language, a shift from Latin. The great foundation literary work of Italian language, Orlando Furioso, which draws on Arthurian legend as well as that of Rowland, was written by Ludovico Ariosto who was an administrator for the House of Este. He produced three editions of Orlando Furioso, changes reflecting the 'great argument' about how an Italian language should be, in those years.

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto,
traditionally assumed to be Lucrezia Borgia.

 Dominant figure in literary direction and music and the popularisation of the madrigal, at the time, was Pietro Bembo.

It was probably a contributing consideration Ariosto's responses to Bembo's advice on his text that Bembo was senior to him in the court of the Este family, indeed senior to the point of carrying on with the wife of the duke of Ferrara, a certain Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alex 6.

And, and, we are back to the point, just a bit, inasmuch as also Lucrezia was carrying on with her husband's sister's husband, Francisco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantova.

Herewith let me venture, if none has before, that Lucrezia Borgia was surely thus a major influence on the form of the Italian language—and the popularisation of the madrigal.

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/3746/

Look at those two, sound out the word 'popularisation'  and ask yourself...or ask Rupert Murdoch!

Alfonso deserves credit too, having brought an array of painters and musicians to Ferrara. While Alfonso 'acquired' Ariosto when he inherited Ferrara, in the shining pages of history the visual artists and musicians are way ahead.

--------

The National Gallery of Victoria claims this on the right is the only true painting of Lucrezia Borgia: "We have the only known portrait of the most famous and notorious woman in Renaissance history."

Were a man so described he could certainly be a major figure in literary history...

Hey look, what's she been writing?

To Mantova with Edith, part 1: Edith, Virgil, Aeneas, ... and Dido.

From the Guardian

.

Before this contextual diversion, I should refer the reader who would like something more practical to this piece in The Guardian.    :-)

The rest of this drawing on Edith Templeton, 

The Surprise of Cremona, 

page references to the 

[Australian] Readers Book Club edition, 1955 

In preparing for a visit to Mantova, I have been preoccupied by a history of development of the city by one family: by the extent to which the city is presented in many photos as fortress walls, moats, riches, art, beauty, complexity,  accumulated by a few for themselves — on the backs of bleeding many.
Such is tourism: Who built the pyramids, did the emperor really also bury the potters along with the terracotta warriors (well Qin Shi Huangdi buried scholars anyway)? Is this where the Red Guards marched? Don't tell me about the genocide of Aborigines, that's old, I'm here and I'm going to climb that rock because it belongs to all Australians. And after that I'll go to see the Roman Forum, where was it that Caesar was stabbed? Ah touropia, wherefore art thou touropia, let me make a selfie with you.

"Eating cheese in Mantua is a thoughtful business, 

made for pondering over Virgil."

photo from
http://www.jirny.cz/edith_templeton.htm

Edith Templeton is an excellent cicerone though not dull or dry pseudo-professorial, rather a worldly woman with a fine sense of sizing up men, art and other preposterations.
In part I enjoy her writing because she asks questions I have been asking myself, in part because she takes one on adventures in her head to unimagined places.

By Mantova she has warmed again to Dante, so scoffed at in Cremona. But here she focuses on the Roman poet, Virgil, child of the peasant soil outside Mantova, made godly in Mantova a thousand years ago, placed on pillars and posters around Mantova, forever influential in European poetry.

Edith discusses at length Virgil's Aeneid. Wikipedia tells you it is the story of Aeneas, Templeton tells you it is the measuring of Aeneas alongside Dido, queen of Carthage.

From Wikipedia.
I note that as recounted by a classical scholar
Aeneas cannot 'tell' he must 'recount'. 

"The creation of Dido is revolutionary because Dido is the first ill-used woman in literature. A woman who has loved for thirty years and not been ill-used has not lived at all. Therefore Dido is as universally important as Hamlet, Faust and Don Juan.... [T]he heart of Dido's tragedy does not lie in the fact that Aeneas left her. It lies in his unworthiness."

Pages of erudite reinterpretation and relating to the modern (pages 146-157) lead us here:

"I now put her on the scales and see what happens... I put Dido on her funeral pyre, with the sword in her breast, bleeding to death.... I see her rising again in the light of our own times... a fine beautiful woman, not very bright, not very distinguished... Although this time he has not left her for the Italian shore, she knows just as surely that his love for her has died... I see her placing her red bag beside herself and laying herself on the rails and I hear the roar of the approaching train. I have witnessed the end of Anna Karenina."

But, um, yes, Mantova is mainly about the city, the river Mincio and the Gonzagas. For part 2!
———————

From Radio Prague

Another thing that we should say at this stage is that this [quotation at link] is not a translation. Edith Templeton does write in English. How is it that she came to write in English?"She left the country and married an Englishman. In the 30s she worked in London. She worked first in the office of the US Army chief surgeon and then she became a captain of the British Army, working as an interpreter. Later on she moved to India, because her second husband was a doctor. In fact he was physician to the King of Nepal. So she lived in many different countries - later on Portugal and now she's living on the Italian Riviera, so she's a very, very cosmopolitan writer.

Mantova to Peschiera del Garda

Mantova, Peschiera and the course of the
Mincio river: the 'Parco del Mincio'
from Lake Garda to the
confluence with the larger Po River.

This little map indicates the extension of green space around Mantova, especially to the north and southwest, the course of the Mincio River from Lake Garda to where it flows into the Po. In times past this flat land was hugely productive of agriculture. Agriculture has these days contracted and much has been done to save that space to green purposes.

Discussion at TripAdvisor with a person interested in biking in Italy led me to mention that there was a lot of bike riding in Mantova, riding in the city that is... and then to discover that there is an excellent bike path all the way from Mantova to Peschiera. My health will not allow me such a venture, but the temptations of delightful villages along the way means we may take the bus/

This little film is not only a great introduction to the bike path (north to south) and the villages, but also, contrary to many little films of people in Italy, the people who ride bikes there seem to speak a clear Italian at a comprehensible pace. So it's a pleasure to watch and can be used as a language tutorial as well.

The bus [timetable for route 46 here] will not have quite as grand a path as a bike but we will research where to get off along the way.
That last link not working, start here.
For those bike-inclined, in summer months a trailer is hitched to a bus. You should book. Or perhaps parents with children too small to ride 2 x 40 km could take turns with bike and bus-child for the round trip.

History of the Po Delta inadequately described

Well, as I was writing that entry yesterday, I got kind of misty about missing Lecce. Lecce is creeping back into my draft itinerary!

And then as reported, I discovered that we could take cruises around Mantova, and with the same company around the Venice lagoon. So I wrote to the cruise people and in a weekend workday instant I got this beautifully expressed email back, in language I am so pleased to see surviving in Mantova, language of a beauty which came over my desk in Rome in 1968, in curly cursive hand, but which seems more generally out of vogue these days:

Gentilissimo Sig. Dennis, in Aprile non vengono effettuate le navigazioni Mantova –Venezia in un unico giorno. Il programma può essere effettuato solamente come da locandina allegata.Restiamo a disposizione per ulteriori necessità e La salutiamo cordialmente.Elisa/Navi Andes

In which Elisa concludes so elegantly "We remain at your disposition for any further necessity and we send you cordial salutations." Also the letter says they have a different, two day, rather grand tour in April, which I have in a document and which we will consider. Not cheap. But cop this:

Ore 12.30 Pranzo a bordo con Desinar Mantovano:Antipasto: fantasia di salumi mantovani, primo piatto: risotto alla pilota (specialità tipica), secondo piatto: Arrosto alla moda dei Gonzaga con patate al forno al profumo di rosmarino, Dolce: Torta Sbrisolona (di produzione artigianale è il dolce simbolo della pasticceria mantovana), bevande Lambrusco mantovano DOC, acqua minerale.La navigazione offre scenari d'incomparabile bellezza; bisogna percorrere il Po navigandolo per comprenderne tutta l'attrattiva, e allora ci si meraviglia di scoprire quest'oasi naturale di silenzio dove par d'essere fuori dal mondo.  [translation below] 

At 12.30, dinner on board, in Mantovanian style:  

Antipasto: a fantasia of Mantova salamis. First course: risotto a la captain (local specialty). Second course: Roast Gonzaga style, with potatoes baked with roaemary. Dessert: a brisolona (of artisanal production and a sweet symbol of Mantovan pastry). Drinking Lambrusco of Mantovan origin and mineral water. The journey offers scenes of incomparable beauty... attractive... marvellous to discover this natural oasis and its silence, all out of this world.

Day 2 the Venice lagoon...

from https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paludes1570bis.jpg

I have researched the history of the Po delta at greater length and discover that while the valley was altered by floods and calamities through the middle ages, critical things conspired to make big changes.

The map at right in this text (link also in right column) shows the delta in 1570, before effects of an earthquake that year. Note the great lake in front of Bologna, Mantova in a lake and Ravenna out to sea. Chioggia is in the northeastern corner of the map. Venice off the map just north of that.
Note Ferrara - pointer from the bottom. Ferrara a great rival of the Venetian Republic and hostile to Venetian desires to muck around with the delta and steal water. But then the Este family who had made Ferrara great (their works are what people go to Ferrara to see) ran out of legitimate heirs—and so Pope Clem 8 in 1598 sent in his army and grabbed the city. But then the same Clem 8 declared a Holy Year in 1600, meaning he would do no warring. The Venetians quickly upped spades and in four years diverted much of the flow away from their lagoon. And then in the south the land grew and the delta marched out to sea (continuing).

This growth of land creates a wonderland of low country which we can explore with a week with a car based in ....Forli? Or the delta? [more later]