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Home , Allegories (Bellini), Baldassare Longhena, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Dolomites, Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Jacopo Sansovino

TRUTH IN TRAVEL

TRUTH IN TRAVEL Best of & THE NORTH PAGES 2–9 Venice VENICE NORTHERN The Prince of Venice ITALY Viewing ’s paintings in their original basilicas and palazzi reveals a Venice of courtesans and intrigue. Pulitzer Prize—winning critic Manuela Hoelterhoff’s walking guide to the city amplifies the experience of reliving the tumultuous times of the —and finds some aesthetically pleasing hotels and restaurants along the way. TUSCANY (Trail of Glory map on page 5)

FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGES 10 –1 5 Best of ITALYCENTRAL ITALY TUSCAN COAST Tuscany by the Sea Believe it or not, Tuscany has a shoreline—145 miles of it, with ports large and small, hidden beaches, a rich wildlife preserve, and, of course, the blessings of the Italian table. Clive Irving discovers a sexy combo of coast, cuisine, and —and customizes a beach-by-beach, Capri harbor-by-harbor map for seaside fun.

SARDINIA SOUTHERN ITALY ROME & PAGES 16–2 0

ROME Treasures of the Popes You’re in Rome, but the Vatican is a city in itself. (In fact, a nation.) What should you see? John Julius Norwich picks his masterpieces, and warns of the potency of Vatican hospitality.

SICILY VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 2

Two miles long, spanned by three bridges and six gondola ferries, the is an avenue of palaces built between the fourteenth and eigh- teenth centuries.

A rich, luminous city, her beauty reflected at every turn, Venice was the perfect muse for an ambitious artist. Only if he’d lived to be 100— and he did—could Titian have hoped to enhance her glory. Manuela Hoelterhoff traces his genius Photographs by Robert Polidori

The of

Princephotographs by Michel Figuet Venice VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 3

The largest Venice had ever seen, The Pietà is the work the groundbreak- ing Assumption of of a man who knew he the Virgin was would meet his Maker unveiled in Santa N MY TRIPS TO VENICE I USUALLY STOP Maria Gloriosa Dei Frari in 1518. in at the Accademia to visit with a few friends. I like this shortly and was museum because I don’t like change very much and the Ac- filled with feelings of cademia is one museum that will not be sprouting a titanium terror and awe wing by Frank Gehry. Amen. And so I went on my little tour. When I was much Oyounger, I’d make a beeline for the Ursula paintings by Vittorio Carpaccio because I loved the story of the maidens who left for a to the Holy

Titian’s last Land only to be cut down by inWdel archers somewhere near Cologne. I wanted work, the Pietà, a like Ursula’s with a cot, an angel to talk to, and a little dog. hangs in the Acca­demia. It was done in 1576, before a I moved on to ’s handsome young man leaning on a pole plague—one of (circa 1505–06), a mysterious picture of a has turned to look toward her. Who are the worst in Venice’s histo- woman with a child sitting in a beau- they? What’s the story? Art historians ry—claimed tiful landscape threatened by a storm. A still puzzle over this picture. As an illus- the artist’s life. tration of the time-dissolving power of art, you have only to stand right here in front of this smallish canvas and ponder how a young artist can engage us centu- ries later. He was barely thirty years of age when he died, probably of the plague, which periodically savaged Venice (the word quarantine is Venetian in origin). In August 1576, another plague killed a friend of his, the most famous painter in at the time, Titian—born Tiziano Vecellio in Pieve di , a little town in the Dolomites. Like Giorgione, Titian studied in the of ; upon the older master’s death, he was appointed to his position of painter to the Vene­tian Republic, a job that came with a huge sal- ary. His earliest works in Venice included a decorating job that he split with Gior- gione, embellishing the Fondaco dei Te- deschi, the warehouse of the German VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 4

Important paintings were lost to fires in the , but the Presentation of the Virgin survives in the Titian liked Accademia as one of Titian’s greatest works. to downplay his wealth, hoping to pull at the heartstrings of patrons, who included kings and popes VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 5

merchants on the Rialto. The weathered about his domestic life. He often teamed Trail of frescoes are now barely visible in their new up with , the sculp- THE BIRTH- in the Ca’ d’Oro tor and architect, and PLACE . . . palazzo. But their his- made sure the proj- TITIAN WAS The Grand Canal is BORN IN THE tory is interesting, and ects were publicized TOWN OF we will visit them and the city’s grand by their mutual friend PIEVE DI CA- GLORY DORE, IN THE The hunt for Titian’s treasures takes you through the of the other works Titian avenue, an incompa- , a fat DOLOMITES, THE TITIAN the churches and palazzos that define Renaissance Venice painted during his long rable demonstration to gourmand and por- AND life in Venice. nographer who served MUSEUM IS the outside A NATIONAL dell’Orto Nobody seems to as his press agent and MONUMENT. Boscolo Grand world of prosperity Hotel dei Dogi know just how old secretary. (We loved Santa Lucia and power Station Titian was—maybe your gift of pickled Church of 103!—when he died in fennel and spice cakes, the Gesuiti CANNAREGIO 14 his house, a handsome mansion that had he wrote on Titian’s behalf.) Titian seems G a garden down to the lagoon where he to have lied to exaggerate his age and, no- R A N D Ca’ d’Oro Site of liked to entertain. He had several children tably avaricious, liked to down- 13 Titian’s C and many friends, but little else is known A House N A L v

The Pesaro Altarpiece, an Rialto early Titian, SANTA CROCE Bridge Fondaco dei in the church 12 of the Frari. Tedeschi CASTELLO S A N P O L O 10 11 Osteria di Scuola Grande Santa Maria Santa Marina di San Rocco Gloriosa dei Frari v v San Lio Hotel AL CAN Restaurant A N D 15 FINISH G R San Salvatore Titian site v v Vaporetto stop

Palazzo 1 Grassi START Antica Trattoria La Furatola S A N M A R C O Basilica v Doges’ 5 Loggetta Palace 9 San Sebastiano 6 0 YARDS 200 2

DORSODURO 3 Libreria v Sansoviniana v Ristorante 8 v 4 Zecca Riviera Accademia Santa Maria Hotel della Salute G I U D E C C A Galleria 7 Ca’ Pisani N Agli Alboretti v Hotel Guggenheim v Belle Arti GUIDECCA CANAL C A N A L La Calcina Locanda Ca’ del Brocchi Hotel alla Mistrà Salute da Cici (GIUDECCA) VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 6 Venice’s first In the Salute church, monastery, Titian’s image of the the Church of city’s patron, St. Mark the heartstrings of patrons, who included artistic output. In other towns you will the Gesuiti has Enthroned with . kings and duchesses, bishops and popes. Wnd the great portraits, the mythological the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. His seductive brush and opulent palette paintings, the lyrical nudes, the political could turn even a tortured runt like Phil- allegories. However, an understanding of ip II into a brooding prince of stature. Titian’s art—and the way it was intended A beloved anecdote has Philip’s father, to be seen in his time, in its original set- Charles V, bending down to retrieve a ting—is oVered only in Venice. brush that had fallen from the hand of his revered painter. Because Titian lived so much longer Trail of Glory than Giorgione, his style changed more OME TO THE PIAZZA over the decades. In the church of Santa San Marco [1] in the very Maria della Salute, the altarpiece St. Mark early morning (or very late Enthroned with Saints shows the poetic at night), before the moving young master still under the inXuence of masses of backpackers mow the precocious Giorgione and the leg- C you down and the café orchestras start endary . playing “Memory.” In the gallery of ripped large pictures in the The Assumption brought down a church at the Accademia is his last to far end because he painting, the Pietà. a new plane. Nothing like needed a , but otherwise the pi- Is it Wnished? Titian’s it had ever been attempted brushwork became azza hasn’t changed increasingly loose before—the movement dramatically since and suggestive with and light, the simple, the late sixteenth age, so perhaps it is. open wonder century, when Titian last set eyes on the It is hard to imag- of the barefoot Virgin ine how it could be basilica, the Doges’ Designed by Palace, the campani- and named for more expressive. It Titian’s friend, is the work of a man who knew he would le, and the stately library built by his friend the Libreria opened in 1560. meet his Maker shortly and was Wlled with the architect Sansovino. The basilica took feelings of terror and awe. When I recent- shape in the ninth century along with the ly stood in front of this amazing painting, bell tower. The exterior of the ducal palace I felt the clock ticking and took myself dates to the fourteenth and early Wfteenth outside. centuries. Many of the pictures Titian painted While the basilica—the doges’ private especially for the Doges’ Palace perished if capacious chapel—does not include in a Wre. And the museums of the world works by Titian, there are two contextu- are, of course, Wlled with masterpieces by ally interesting pieces in the Doges’ Pal- him (and his hardworking ). Today, ace [2]. The palazzo, which combined the Set in a trompe functions of our White House, Capitol, l’oeil in the Venice holds only a portion of his vast Libreria Sansovini- ana is the Allegory of Sapienza, God- dess of Wisdom. VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 7

and Su­preme Court, has an unusually old when he was elected doge, the oldest In 1630, a plague wiped graceful look. Unlike most other public ever in Venetian history—in The Faith of out a third of the city. of Titian’s time, it is not a for- Doge Antonio Grimani. Titian’s commem- When it was all tress to be defended, like the Palazzo Vec- orative portrait was painted long after Gri- GHOSTS ON over, Santa Maria della chio in Florence. Instead, the gracefully ar- mani expired in 1523. Such portraits are THE GRAND CANAL . . . Salute was commissioned caded structure demonstrates wealth and typically Venetian, and they Wll the formal THE YOUNG supreme conWdence. In an age of despots, of the Doges’ Palace. Venice liked to TITIAN CON- in thanksgiving TRIBUTED Venice was a constitutional republic with Xaunt its superior and quasi-democratic FRESCOES TO THE FACADE a carefully calibrated system of checks and ways to the visiting emissaries of whimsi- OF THE balances designed to keep control out of cal potentates. , NOW the hands of upstarts and megalomaniacs. The doge job did not always work out A POST OFFICE. The doge, an elected position with limited for the wearer of the One doge was FRAGMENTS cornu. SURVIVE. power, was typically an aging who hacked up for stealing, another skipped oV was expected to die in oYce. The job came in the night, and still others either begged with an exotic hat called a cornu and Wne to be relieved of their chores or lived on in robes and an apartment in the palace. You rage. Verdi’s opera I Due Foscari is based see the costume nicely modeled by Anto- on the true story of an embittered doge nio Grimani—who was eighty-seven years who was forced by the , a

Titian’s to the Virgin occupies an easel in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which is otherwise a trove of works by his contemporary .

Intentionally echo- ing the of St. Mark’s Basilica, across the Grand Canal, is that of the Church of . VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 8

ruling body as powerful as the Senate, to send meetings, especially when it was raining. Invari- demonstration to the outside world of prosperity at a later date, this room, the Sala dell’Albergo, is his ailing son into exile (there is a portrait of the ably plotting as they shuttled between the pa- and power. the way it was when Titian embellished it with the doge in the Museo Correr). It was not an easy job laz ­zo and the loggetta, they crossed an area called In 1630, a plague as virulent as the one that Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple in 1539. and often a one. With that in mind, the the Broglio and gave birth to the word imbroglio. killed Titian wiped out a third of the city. The up- The painting describes an early miracle from the strange painting of Saint Christopher in the pri- The Museo Correr [6] occupies both the ball- side, when it was all over, was Santa Maria della . The tiny child, surrounded by vate quarters of the doge becomes room wing, Wnished in the mid-nineteenth cen- Salute (Our Lady of Good Health) [7], across the a halo of light, has chosen all by herself to climb more intriguing. It was believed that viewing an tury, and the Nuove, which was also Grand Canal, commissioned by the Senate from the steep to the temple, to the astonishment image of the saint would keep you from sudden planned by Sansovino and which Napoleon used the architect in a gesture of the crowds and the high priest at the top of the death (or assassination) that day—and the doge as his . Newly renovated (air-condi- of thanksgiving. He was still adding a few more stairs. Despite a few biblical-looking costumes, would have looked at Titian’s St. Christopher ev- tioning!), it now serves as the museum of civic scrolls and when he collapsed after Wfty the scene could be taking place in Renaissance ery time he left his apartment for public duty. Even life, presenting a riveting display of boat models, years of devoted labor. The were brought Venice; indeed, the four men in the foreground— so, Gritti died one day after consuming a large maps, games, statues, coins, armor—look for a here from the abandoned church of Santo Spirito one dressed in red and the others in robes— dinner of little eels. Did he order in? key-shaped gadget designed to shoot poisoned on the island of Isola. Especially appropriate to are undoubtedly portraits of important members Before leaving the palace, see its most as- darts. The painting selection includes The Cour- the setting is the altarpiece in the Great Sacristy, of the Scuola Grande della Carità. People look tounding painting and one of the largest in the tesans, in room 38, by the artist who deWned the St. Mark Enthroned with Saints, which evokes the down from Venetian-style and world, Paradise, by Jacopo Tintoretto, in the Sala Venetian style a generation before Titian, Vittorio concerns and hopes of the faithful in a time of over a columned , a child plays with a dog, del Maggior Consiglio. Carpaccio. Note the little white dog, a typically pestilence. Saint Mark, the of Ven- the distant landscape recalls the mountains of Ti- Gritti also patronized the architect Sanso- Vene ­tian mutt. Today, there are more dogs than ice, is shown in partial shadow, accompanied by tian’s birthplace near the . In one of the most vino, naming him proto, or buildings supervi- ever and a disturbing absence of cats. Something medical doctors (Cosmas and Damian) and the notable elements of the picture, a crone huddles sor, for the Piazza San Marco. Preservation was ghastly seems to have happened to them, though two saints especially associated with the plague, beside the steps to the temple with her chicken and an issue even then, and Sansovino was respon- everyone I interrogated on the topic spoke only of and the wretched Saint Roch, who basket of eggs, wondering what’s the big deal. sible for keeping the and tiles in good a successful neutering campaign. has plague sores, called buboes, on his leg. Soaring Deeper within the museum is one of the great order. He was less fortunate with one of his Via the archaeological collection you Wnally overhead are three ceiling paintings—done some halls of Venetian painting, dominated by Paolo own buildings in the piazza. When an apse col- enter the Marciana Library, where the sons of thirty years later, in the 1540s—that show the inX- Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi. Veronese lapsed in 1545 during the construction of the Venetian nobles studied Greek and . Later, uence of : Cain and Abel, and painted it as a but understandably Libreria Sansoviniana [3], the city bosses put it held the Grimani collection of Greek and Ro- Goliath, and Abraham and Isaac. rethought the title after the Inquisition, when he him in jail. He was Wnally extricated with the help man statuary, making it arguably the Wrst public Take the vaporetto to the Accademia [8]. This was interrogated extensively about certain low-life of Titian but still had to pay for the new apse museum in Europe—and another example of the is Venice’s paintings gallery, established after the vignettes featuring unsuitably humorous dogs, despite some fairly convincing excuses (a cold Venetians’ recognition that the creation of beauti- French invasion that ended the Venetian Repub- drunks, and dwarfs. In the same room is Ti­tian’s snap, tremors, stupid workmen). The ultimately ful public spaces was a function of an enlightened lic. The museum’s collections include many works Pietà, which shows the sorrowful Virgin support- imposing library was the centerpiece of a cam- government. In the antisala (or ) is an un- from churches and other public buildings subse- ing the body of Christ in her lap, lamenting his paign to clean up the piazza and proclaim the usual work by Titian, who painted few allegories: quently lost or destroyed. The Accademia was death, attended by and a kneel- intellectual prominence of Venice with a temple Sapienza, Goddess of Wisdom, which gleams in once the grand home of one of Venice’s most im- ing Wgure of Nic­o­de­mus that may represent Titian to learning. Sansovino’s , housing the the center of the magniWcent trompe l’oeil ceiling. portant charities, the Scuola Grande della Carità. himself. The light catches a golden with an collection of the Marciana Library, replaced Draped in scarlet, she sits enthroned on a cloud Called scuole, such lay provided a image of a pelican pecking her breast to feed her the public latrines and the gallows; visitors step- puV, holding a scroll. counterweight to the political power of the nobil- young, a symbol of sacriWce. The open brushwork ping out of their gondolas no longer had to make The library also oVers an introduction to ity, functioning as enlightened welfare agencies, characterizes his late work. The small kneeling their way past corpses left hanging. Entrance to Tintoretto and to Titian’s other younger rival, Ve- caring for widows, orphans, and the poor. To Wgures are most likely the aged painter and his son the Marciana is via the Museo Correr, at the ronese, of whom he was much fonder. When he glorify their activities, they built meeting halls as Orazio. This was the painting Titian expected to far end of the Piazza San Marco. En route, was not yet thirty years old, Veronese received a sumptuous as any palace. have placed on the altar above his own tomb in take in two more Sansovino works: the Zecca gold chain from Titian’s hand for the luminously On the left at the top of the stairs is the grand the church of the Frari: a beautiful image of piety [4], or mint, and his Loggetta [5], at the base of beautiful Music. salon, with its carved wooden ceiling of angel and humility, of Christian faith in Christ’s sacri- the campanile, a philologically signiWcant lit- Outside is the Grand Canal, which is, of faces. Enter the doorway on your left. With the Wce. Instead, the plague claimed him and he left it tle building. Nobles gathered here before their course, the city’s grand avenue, an incomparable exception of a cut right into the paintings unWnished. The admiring Palma Giovane added VENICE & THE NORTH PAGE 9

the angel with a funerary torch. little of Titian’s luxurious calm and repose. family tomb. It breaks with tradition by replac- a Mantegna, and a Wne assortment of Venetian From an earlier period is Titian’s St. John Tintoretto got the assignment through a combi- ing the symmetry and atmosphere of quiet repose bronzes and statues, including a Madonna and the Baptist, in which the saint looks more like a nation of ruse and abject pleading that nauseated with a Virgin holding an energetic infant Christ Child by Sansovino. The views over the canal are muscular god than an emaciated . Draped many of his contemporaries. When the confrater- who kicks his foot and plays with her veil. A bald terriWc. Titian’s casually draped , a popular in animal skins, holding a cross, he lifts his right nity asked for designs for a proposed ceiling paint- Saint Peter intervenes with the Virgin, and Fran- image that kept his workshop on overtime, shares hand to invite others to follow him into an Itali- ing in the hostel room, Tintoretto had a complete ciscan monks present other males of the Pesaro a room with a fully clothed Van Dyck nobleman. anate landscape rather diVerent from the arid painting of St. Roch in his glory secretly installed family, including a young boy who is the only Note the remnants from the outside lands of the Bible. The painting comes from a in the spot. He oVered the Wnished work for free. Wgure in the picture to gaze at us. The painting of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, where the German chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, where it stood The Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei breathes movement and vitality. Most dramatic traders gathered. The warehouse is now the main on the right of the high altar, Xanked by a statue Frari [11] is a vast fourteenth-century basil- of all, two huge carry our eyes upward post oYce and just up from the bridge. There is of Saint Francis. ica of the Franciscan friars. As you walk to- to a cloud high overhead, where two infant angels some dispute as to whether these frail leftovers are Judging by its modest exterior, the Church ward the altar, notice the unusual choir enclo- hold a cross, foreshadowing the sacriWce to come. by Giorgione or his young assistant Titian. of San Sebastiano [9] looks like it might house at sure—a beautifully carved and rare survivor During , the altarpiece barely escaped Within easy walking distance is the most a handful of moldy scenes of torture and tri- of an architectural feature that was removed destruction when an Austrian bomb failed to ex- Church of the Gesuiti [14], built by the umph. Hold on to your socks. The entire church from most of Italy’s great teaching church- plode; the ordnance is now on display nearby. Jesuits in the early eighteenth century on the glows with the work of Veronese, who decorated es by the dictates of the Ref­ormation. Soar- That leaves the other bomb, the monument Fondamente Nuove, where the boats leave for the it with frescoes and oils, even painting the organ ing above the high altar, illuminated from to Titian, a stiV monstrosity from 1853. Across cemetery and the islands. The contrast between doors, and was Wnally buried here in 1588. The behind by the sunlight that streams through the the aisle is the elegantly sorrowful tomb designed the lighthearted -and-white by ceiling alone is a stunning example of his techni- tracery of the pointed Gothic windows in the by and intended for Titian. A Domenico Rossi and the repellent subject of the cal brilliance—especially the radiant depiction of curved apse, is Titian’s astonishing Assumption of subscription campaign failed to raise the required Titian within, the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence the Crowning of Esther. Apparently, his irrepress- the Virgin. We see Mary lifted into the heavens by funds, and when the star sculptor died in 1822, (1548–49), couldn’t be more dramatic. But what ible humor was not dampened by his encounter a crowd of lively and adoring angels, some with the monument became his, instead. In a ma­cabre technical skill! Look at the remarkable variety of with the Inquisition over the Last Supper: The Xutes and tambourines. disposition of body parts appropriate to an art nocturnal light and the dramatic placement of a exalted queen hovers just above the fat butt of a When Titian presented the Assumption to saint, Canova’s heart is here, his right hand went mysterious palace looming over the saint and his bored dog. the church on May 19, 1518, he brought Venetian to the Accademia, and his body to Possagno, his half-lit torturers. At the entrance on the right is the Titian, a painting to a new plane. Nothing like it had ever birthplace. The Museo Correr has the model for Loop back toward the Grand Canal and picture of a befuddled old guy with three gold been attempted before—the movement and light, the tomb. the Church of San Salvatore [15], designed by balls at his feet. He is St. Nicholas, ancestor of the the simple, open wonder of the barefoot Virgin, Before you leave, visit the sacristy to see Sansovino in the style of the Venetian High Re- fat sprite. According to legend, the saint the sturdy Wgures of the Apostles (which dismayed Giovanni Bellini’s Virgin and Child with Sts. Nich- naissance. The architect also did the tomb for the quietly bestowed dowries on three maidens whose the friars). But exactly those human qualities of olas, Peter, Mark, and Benedict. Painted twenty doge Francesco Venier. Ti­tian’s Transfiguration loser father was about to put them out. This good the sacred Wgures made it the most important sight years before the Titian Assumption, it is an exam- of Christ is not a masterwork but an awkward deed is said to have started the custom of giving in Venice, securing Titian’s role as the city’s ple of the old style, in its jewellike repose and piety. depiction of a large Savior levitating past Old gifts at Christmas. supreme painter. The [12] was the city’s com- Testament prophets in a blinding burst of light. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco [10] is the The Venetian Republic forbade all statues of mercial heart in Titian’s time. “What news on the The Annunciation to the Virgin of 1565 is more only great meeting to survive individuals in public places, with such rare excep- Rialto?” Shakespeare’s merchant asks even de- complexly conceived and shows the fascination with its decorations intact. Titian’s serene An- tions as the of the rich con- cades later. Right by the bridge and market, on with color and light of his later years. Looking nunciation to the Virgin is displayed on an easel dottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni, who left the city a the Accademia side of the canal, is the Church of like a cousin of the ’s Nike of Samothrace, upstairs, but San Rocco is really the domain of tubload of money tied to a statue in St. Mark’s St. Giovanni Elimosinario, whom Titian painted the angel rushes into Mary’s house as the Holy Tintoretto. Between 1564 and 1587, he embel- Square. Wily elders took the loot and sent his in the act of dispensing a coin to an outstretched Ghost, in the form of a dove, descends in a Xash lished the Scuola Grande di San Rocco with monument to the distant campo of the Scuola hand. Because too few have followed his example, of glorious light. The vase of Murano glass in the bravura scenes from the Old and New Testa- Grande di San Marco. But self-presentation was the church is rarely open. foreground is a tour de force of artistry. There ments, including his own theatrical Annunciation. a typical component of the religious altarpiece, The Ca’ d’Oro [13] is the most spectacu- are also paintings by Titian’s brother Francesco Tintoretto’s narratives unfold in mysteriously lit and Jacopo Pesaro appears with his family in the lar Gothic palace on the entire canal, a dreamy Vecellio; all the painting genes went into one babe. realms of high drama and strange angles. There’s Pesaro Altarpiece that he commissioned for the jewel box whose collection includes a Carpaccio, FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 10 Tuscany by the Sea Take all of the Italian heartland’s usual objects of desire and add water. Very blue water. Clive Irving revels in the rich bounty of a discreet and luminous littoral

Photographs by Melanie Acevedo

The abundance of a Tuscan summer table awaits Porto Santo Stefano, the guests at La Parrina, a farm main harbor of the Ar- and hotel that has its own gentario peninsula. cheeses and wines. FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 1 1

Orbetello’s Spanish past flavors its Tuscan present.

ERE’S A TALL STORY: A DASHING AVIA- tor leaps from a crashing plane without a para- chute, lands in a tree in Africa, and escapes with his life. A couple of years later, he’s at a party at Pelican Point in Orange County, California, and meets a socialite. She had read of his African es- capade and admired him from afar and now, up close, admires him even more. He’s working for Porsche in the United States, but they elope to Europe, marry, and start looking for a place to build a new home. HIn Rome, they meet a plutocrat from the villas for themselves on the rock face of a dra- Borghese family who owns a chunk of real matic natural am­phi­the­ater above the hotel. estate on the coast a couple of hours north Aviator and bride become legendary hosts. of Rome. Plutocrat suggests that the aviator In honor of the place of their meeting, they build a small hotel on his new coastal prop- call the hotel Il Pellicano. Can it be true? Bear La Parrina cheese- maker Roberta Babini, erty and that aviator and bride run the place. with me. . . . second from right. It happens to be the time, in the early 1960s, of the great Roman Dolce Vita, and the small MUCH OF THE INNER TUSCAN The strawberry tartlet at hotel fits right into the time, convenient for landscape is so exquisite in an ordered, Il Pellicano. the Dolce Vita crowd, some of whom build natural way that just to drive through it leaves you feeling ecstatic. For example, the road from Florence to and then south toward Rome passes through a succession of short tunnels. As you near the end of each, you see a vignette of landscape framed in the tunnel mouth, a vignette that begins like a small, lapidary watercolor and ends, just before you break free, like a large, brilliant pastoral fresco. In mid-June, when I drove this route, the land had the full in- tensity of summer : Lower lev- els were golden with swaths of barley and wheat, the foothills were interspersed with the silver-flecked trees of olive orchards and the emerald canopies of vineyards, and the conical summits were ringed with cypress and usually capped with a large villa or castle, terra-cotta against the azure sky. Map by Neil Gower In Orbetello, the Corso Italia is the main attraction. FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 1 2

Whatever the truth of the story about the way the Borghese fat cat invited the aviator to found a hotel here, there is no doubt that the virgin site must have been an irresistible eyeful

The Argentario, really a 2,000-foot mountain, has pre- cipitous rock faces like this one at Punta Calagrande, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 1 3

La Parrina estate, in the coastal foothills, Although landlocked, this Tuscany he of the Inferno, took one look at it and yields the epitome of the terroir principle— seems to want for nothing to complete its called it hell on earth. In fact, it had not spell. Least of all does it need a coastline always been so. First the Etruscans and eating the best and freshest directly from the land or a sea or a beach. And yet, of course, then the Romans drained the marshes there is a Tuscan coast bordering the Tyr- and made the area habitable, but the place rhenian Sea that stretches 145 miles from regressed in the Dark Ages, and not until Viareggio in the north to in the the early nineteenth century was another south. I already knew Viareggio but not attempt made to reclaim it. Work acceler- with much affection. It has a few vintage ated under Mussolini but was finally com- On the Argentario, the rich and fa- grand hotels and one of those beaches or- pleted only in the 1950s. Now it is a model mous keep a low ganized in blocks of packed loungers and of fertility and irrigation in a rather mo- profile, while the locals, like these parasols reserved for hotel guests, and notonous landscape. girls at Porto Santo Stefano, although some of the hotels have been South of this delta, the Maremma enjoy a town with spruced up, Viareggio is indistinguishable rears up again into a commanding moun- a year-round life centered on fish- from a lot of other resorts. Moreover, it tainous rump that pushes right to the sea, ing and the ferries. has hardly anything to signify that it is in Tuscany—no trace of that ineffable Tus- can style. On this drive, I was headed from Flor- ence to the southern Tuscan coast, which has an altogether different cast. The ter- rain is starker, more sharp-edged and rugged, and dominated by a geologically distinct coastal belt called the Marem- ma, which extends all the way from the southern fringes of Pisa to the northern fringes of Rome. The upper part of the Maremma, called the Colline Metallifere (Metalliferous Hills), is spooky—scabby and tinted with iron ore and tapped for its mineral reserves of lead, copper, and py- rite. Parts of the coast are, consequently, blighted with processing plants. I first hit the Maremma at its center, where the hills are interrupted by a wid-

On a headland ening alluvial fan created by the Ombro- north of the Argent- ne River. This was once malaria-ridden ario is the tiny harbor of Talamone, marshland; in the Middle Ages, , one of a number of havens from the summer crowds. FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 14

most of it now a natural park of nearly ten thou- of the story about the way the Borghese fat cat was the guest of honor. There were only eight Guests, however well-heeled, dress down in a way sand acres. Hiking and riding trails lead up from invited the aviator to found a hotel here, there is and, given Graham’s connections, the that tends to blur nationality. After all, those sig- Mediterranean scrub forest to bleached, bare out- no doubt that the virgin site must have been an place was usually full of big names. Graham’s nals sent by a little casual detailing courtesy of crops of rock. irresistible eyeful. The oldest core of the hotel is wife, the Californian Patsy Daszel, also had a Chanel, Prada, Hermès, Ferragamo, are universal Beyond this rump I finally saw the sea, on a final rock shelf about a hundred feet above little black book she could dip into to attract ce- now, and the combinations are egalitarian. A polo and my objective. It looked like an island sit- the water. With the amphitheater behind it and lebrities. It was said that before she was swept off shirt from the Gap is likely to be mixed with Paul ting just offshore, and indeed an island it once the pellucid Tyrrhenian waters stretching beyond, her feet by Graham, she had been dating Clark Smith loafers. Certainly, flashy ostentation was was, but now it’s a promontory called the two qualities were immediately gifted to the ho- Gable. She seems to have been a gentler, graceful not the thing at Il Pellicano. So it’s hard, some- Argentario, linked by three sandy causeways tel’s creators: beauty and privacy. This was never foil to Graham’s more rampant ego. Il Pellicano, times, to tell who the really rich are. One morning, to the mainland. Inevitably, approaching the going to be like Portofino or Positano. There was run more like an English country club than a ho- I saw a plump middle-aged couple, eschewing va- western Italian coastline conjures certain no intermingling of town and visitors, none of tel, also served for the Borgheses as a kind of bait let help, hosing down their own car outside the re- stereotypes of desire: The relatively isolated that wash of daily energy that animates a Riviera. for real estate deals. Gradually, the hillside filled ception area. It was a brand-new silver Ferrari 550 villages of the , the burnished If not exactly a secret place, it was bound to be a with villas built by hotel guests who couldn’t get Maranello, list price about $213,000, with British glamour of Portofino or of Positano and the Amalfi discreet enclave. enough of the idyll. The hotel became the social plates. They told me that they had just bought it, Coast, the chic social density of Capri. From Which brings us back to its founding couple. center of an international set drawn from the on impulse, to celebrate their thirtieth wedding these, the Argentario stands apart, far less worlds of show business, the arts, publishing, anniversary. In a jocular Cockney lilt, the woman well known. THE AVIATOR’S NAME WAS banking, industry, and royalty. said, “I asked me mum if she liked the color. She There is, for a start, the name to play with. Michael Graham. Pictures of him show a dead But after a decade or so, Graham began said it was okay, so we went and bought it.” One explanation attributes it to the silver glint ringer for Ian Fleming, the begetter of James overplaying the role of the English eccentric. I doubt this pair, despite the car, would of its rocks; when I first set eyes on it, Monte Bond: hair slicked back from a tanned, finely If he didn’t like the looks of arriving guests, he have passed muster with Michael Graham. He Argentario certainly had the luster of a whole chiseled face and a cigarette jutting from a holder would turn them away—even if the place was liked cliques. The chosen hung out with him and mint of silver coins cascading to the sea. A more like a dart about to be fired. Definitely a raffish empty. In 1979, one of the Italian partners in the Patsy at the bar and could obviously become a convincing version (once you get into the Argen- type, probably short-fused and with that assur- venture, Sciò, acquired controlling in- rowdy crowd. The Sciòs run things with a lot tario loop) is that it refers to bankers (argentarii) ance of social entitlement that Brits can assume terest in Il Pellicano. Graham’s personality was more subtlety. Even when full, the hotel never or—less subtly—simply to money. In French the better than anyone—even if it is counterfeit. Just still pervasive, but the hotel was run on more seems crowded. There is some very discreet ma- name has no ambiguity: La Côte d’Argent. The the kind of guy who would be taken for a class act professional lines. Sciò began a policy of buy- nipulation of the guest list. The Anglo-Saxon Money Coast. by the assorted hustlers, stars and starlets, celeb- ing villas back when their owners made them contingent—meaning Americans and Brits— The queen of Holland discovered the Ar- rity-loving aristos, bankers, and gigolos whom, in available, and the villas were then converted into never exceeds about thirty percent. Sciò’s snap- gentario long ago and built a summer retreat in a 1960, Fellini melded into a contemporary circus generously sized suites and rooms to build up pily dressed son Roberto Francesco told me, rocky cove, reached by a road that loops around of lust and stylish decay. You can imagine Marcel- the hotel’s accommodations. “Nobody wants to flee from Manhattan only to the back of Porto Ercole, the prettiest of two har- lo, Fellini’s alter ego in La Dolce Vita, played with Patsy Graham died in 1988 and Graham find the same people here.” bor towns. Beyond the royal compound, I found, suave dissipation by Marcello Mastroianni, not himself in 1993. Since then, Sciò has spent heavily the road led to the object of my own desire, only warming to a character like Michael Gra- on the property. In fact, only two villas remain in I WOULDN’T SAY THAT THE Il Pellicano. ham but also becoming Graham’s model for the private hands. The property consists of fifty ac- appearance of the Argentario felt to me particu- The first sight of Il Pellicano is of a colony of kind of people he wanted to prop up the bar at Il commodations, all recently renovated. The origi- larly Tuscan—I missed the fragrant somnolence terra-cotta villas rising up the slopes of the natu- Pellicano. Art, life, money, and discretion would nal hotel was more or less torn down and rebuilt, of the valleys and the villages. The Argentario, like ral amphitheater, and it comes as the road takes find an ideal home with him. adding new and a beauty spa. a lot of the coast, seemed peppered not with hill- a sudden and steep descent. Whatever the truth The hotel opened in 1965. Charlie Chaplin Little of the Graham zeitgeist remains today. top villas but with fortifications. That is its history. FLORENCE & TUSCANY PAGE 1 5

It was part of the Republic of Siena when it fell to etable gardens to an ensemble of rustic buildings was as wonderful a display of Tuscan fecundity as Although the Borgheses and Corsinis have the Spanish in 1555. They built a chain of castles grouped around a . These include the you could ever hope to find, drawn from almost a sold off chunks of the Argentario—a large piece to defend against the ever-rapacious Turks. Sig- main villa, with its own church, an office, and a thousand acres. adjoining Il Pellicano was recently sold to a New nals of impending invasion could be sent to Siena working farm producing what turned out to be a While I was there, a steady stream of locals York real estate mogul for his own use—it’s one in ten minutes by a system of smoke and . cornucopia of produce. drove up to the farm stand to take their pick. La of those places where, after a few days, you sense This state of paranoia continued when the coast The cheesemaker, Roberta Babini, a russet- Parrina yields the epitome of the terroir prin- the presence of reclusive wealth. With such wealth fell under the rule of, in turn, the French, the Aus- haired woman of immense pride and enthusi- ciple—eating the best and freshest directly from goes a subtle, coercive control over the whole trians, and the Bourbons. It finally reverted to the asm, took me to what had once been a school for the land. In the summer, you can drive away with place. Nobody is allowed to trash it up. Advertise- Tuscans in 1815, and by then, the littoral had more farmworkers’ children. We began in the immacu- everything you need to make a meal drawn exclu- ments of wealth are regarded as bad taste, and military architecture than it knew what to do with. late dairy, where each morning milk from the es- sively from the locale—at its sublime simplest, a the Argentario has not become a Roman version Unending rape and pillage tend to harden skylines. tate’s cows, sheep, and goats came for processing, chunk of pecorino drizzled with olive oil, eaten of the Hamptons or St-Tropez. Porto Ercole, en- Tuscany did, however, reassert its hold in the and we ended in a chilly aging room, where large with farmhouse bread, and lubricated with a dowed with the physical appeal of a Riviera fish- at Il Pellicano. I met the chef, Stefano di wheels of maturing cheese, reaching optimum Maremma wine. ing port, remains a fairly funky, unflashy place de- Salvo, at the start of a day. He had just been down flavor within their coatings of hardening white Indeed, what makes the Tuscan seaside Tus- spite a brief celebrity appearance in The Talented to the fish market at Porto Ercole. I spotted a heap mold, were sitting on storied racks. Some cheeses can is, in the end, the food and wine and the prior- Mr. Ripley. of plump sardines, one of my favorite fish. They mature for more than a year, but one that I par- ity accorded to them. Certainly, gourmet cruis- In the 1980s, a member of the Agnelli in- would appear later in a marinade. Everything in ticularly liked, called pecorino stagionato, comes ing of the entire Italian coastlines, west and east, dustrial dynasty, Suny Agnelli, a local resident the kitchen was local—zucchini flowers ready for from ewe’s milk and ripens over seven months, will frequently gratify the taste buds, but to get in and mayor of the Argentario administrative stuffing, those matchless tomatoes, a rare kind of ending up as a small, pungent crumbly drum. combination that particular Tuscan flair with ar- region, clamped down on the development of wild wheat called emmer, which makes a wonder- Touring a cheese plant is, for me, a succes- tisanal products and the seaside is something else. Porto Ercole, just as the Dolce Vita–inspired ful bread or cereal. sion of alluring and increasingly unctuous smells, wave threatened to kill the very thing it claimed But it was the cheese that I was pursuing, each one suggesting a wine that should be paired IL PELLICANO IS REALLY AN enclave within to love, in the way of such modish tides. The because of an experience the night before involv- with it. As it happened, Roberta Babini is also an enclave. The Argentario itself has always been beach, of course, isn’t exactly as it was when, in ing the restaurant’s cheese board, not something in charge of wine production at La Parrina and a hideaway for those who don’t want to flash their July 1610, a former fugitive from papal justice, that usually is a particular strength of the Tuscan knew exactly what to drink with the pecorino— wealth around. The Borgheses were one of two returning after being pardoned for a suspected kitchen. It had presented a succulent sympho- the estate’s Podere Tinaro, a fruity, straw-colored families who once owned most of the rock. The murder, came ashore only to expire on the sand. ny of flavors, ranging from a rough-hewn blue wine blending the chardonnay, trebbiano, and other was the Corsinis. Their name had come Michelangelo Merisi, a.k.a. Caravaggio, who cheese to a creamy goat cheese in which pepper- sauvignon grapes. up when, a couple of years ago, I was research- took young ruffians of the street and tavern and corns seemed to have dissolved into pasty berries. Over recent years, big-name wine producers ing land ownership around Flor­ence for another made them saints on canvases, thereby trans- These and others were kept carefully in a cheese who have no more room to expand in other parts story. The Corsinis, I was told then, were once forming religious painting, had his last cellar in the kitchen, and I asked Di Salvo where of Tuscany have started buying up vineyards in so rich that they could travel from Florence to gasp in the embrace of the Argentario shore. they came from. this part of the Maremma. La Parrina was well Rome without crossing anyone else’s land. You We should all be so lucky. Lucky question. His answer led me to a ahead of the game. It was awarded appellation can imagine the Borgheses and Corsinis as Ital- nineteenth-century aristocratic estate called La status way back in 1971 and has proven, with a ian versions of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, Parrina, a half-hour drive away in the coastal growing range of white and red wines, that the but that really doesn’t do it. Italian aristocratic foothills of the Maremma. The natural terrain area can reach high quality. As Babini showed me fortunes began centuries earlier than those of oil is wild Mediterranean scrub, but a narrow back the rest of the fattoria (a farm that handles ev- and railroad barons and seem to have a lot more road wound through extensively cultivated veg- erything from source to table), I realized that this staying power. ROME & CENTRAL ITALY PAGE 16 Treasures of the Popes In a burst of inspired patronage, the Renaissance Papacy gave the Vatican a collection of sumptuous artworks. John Julius Norwich picks his masterpieces, and warns of the potency of papal hospitality

Begun in 1506, finished in 1590 with the comple- tion of the dome, St. Peter’s Basili- ca includes de- signs and works Photograph by Kazuyoshi Nomachi/CorbisKazuyoshi by Photograph by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bernini. ROME & CENTRAL ITALY PAGE 1 7

hair belonging to King William IV, his mis- not, we felt, a moment too soon—there tress—the enchanting comédienne Mrs. Jor- arrived a white-tie-and-tailed photogra- dan—and five of their illegitimate children, pher. The camera flashed; and the audience from one of whom I am descended. “Don’t was over. Y FIRST VISIT TO THE VATICAN, IN let me tell him the story,” she had implored Seven years later the telephone rang February 1956, was impressive indeed: a pri- me earlier that morning; but tell it—out of on my desk in the Foreign Office with the vate audience given to my mother and me by sheer desperation—she did. “Very fine, very news that I was to serve as general dogs- Pius XII in person. I well remember fine,” murmured His Holiness, and blessed body to the Duke of Norfolk at the corona- the object without hesitation. He then asked tion of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Mon- the invitation—really more of a summons— me whether I had any children and whether tini as Pope Paul VI—at which ceremony, inscribed in fine copperplate beneath the they were boys or girls; on learning that I as the senior Roman Catholic of England, insignia of the Triple Crown and Crossed had one of each, he handed me a white ro- the Duke was to be the Queen’s personal Keys; my mother was referred to by name, I sary for my daughter and a black one for representative. This second visit to the simply as “The Son”—which, in the circumstances, I found distinctly flatter- my son and blessed them, too. (Sometimes, Vatican was even more memorable than ing. On reaching the papal apartments we were received by a black-cassocked, we were told, he forgot the second question the first: three days of functions and fes- and absentmindedly murmured, “Black or tivities, reaching its climax with the coro- pink-buttoned monsignore and led through an apparently endless succession white?” instead; this had on occasion given nation mass itself, which was held—since Mof staterooms, each of which appeared to belong to a different century: One rise to misunderstandings.) Finally—and it was July and, even by the standards of a room was occupied exclusively by Swiss Guards, resplendent in that glorious

slashed costume of red, blue, and orange ness of our arrival; fortunately he left the stripes, designed—whatever the guides door very slightly ajar, and peeping through may tell you—by neither Raphael nor Mi- the crack I was astonished to see a pool of chelangelo; the next, by people dressed as purple on the as he prostrated himself we were; a third, by several immensely tall on the ground before his master. army officers in braid-encrusted uniforms In we went, and a tall, emaciated figure Villa Borghese that were pure nineteenth-century Rurita- advanced across the carpet to meet us, his Spanish Castel Steps nia; a fourth, by a dozen or so elderly gen- scarlet slippers almost incandescent beneath VATICAN Sant’ Angelo tlemen in inky black doublets and hose and his snow-white soutane. Carefully briefed in CITY Trevi advance, we had been assured that the Holy Fountain Father spoke perfect English; this, however, St. Peter’s The popes of this Basilica proved something of an exaggeration. After The Pantheon period did more a few halting words of greeting, he left most Farnese Palace of the going to us, only occasionally inter- than anyone to Tiber R. Vittorio Roman jecting a positive comment (“Very fine, very Emanuele Forum restore Rome to her fine”) or a negative one (“Very difficult, very ROME difficult”), from which it soon became clear ancient glory that he had not the faintest idea of what we white ruffs, for all the world like Hamlet’s were talking about. Not surprisingly, the father’s court in a rather old-fashioned rep- conversation began to flag. We had been 1 2 mile ertory production. In the last room we were warned to bring some religious object for ceremonially handed over to a bishop, who him to bless; all my mother had been able

told us to wait while he informed His Holi- to find was a glass cross containing locks of Map by Gregory Wakabayashi ROME & CENTRAL ITALY PAGE 1 8

Roman summer, stiflingly hot—outdoors, on the now all in white, with outsize white miters; to our the history, and the punch—are most perfectly sical—let alone anyone with the faintest of Low steps of St. Peter’s. A reception for the - right the whole piazza was thronged with people, illustrated by the Basilica itself. Like all success- Church leanings—to feel entirely at ease amid wealth cardinals, given by the British Legation the crowds stretching halfway down the Via della ful churches, it knows the value of drama. This such shameless opulence. to the on our first evening, set the scene Conciliazione toward the Tiber. Unseen choirs begins long before we even reach it, with the Although the decision to replace old St. Pe- magnificently: In those days—as today, for all I sang, hidden organs boomed, little bells tinkled, approach across the piazza between the sweep- ter’s (which had already stood for almost a thou- know—any cardinal attending such a gathering and at last the Triple Crown (unfortunately, a re- ing arcs of Bernini’s , and increases sand years and was beginning to crumble) was would be in full scarlet-and-magenta robes and markably ugly modern one that looked like a huge steadily as we pass the obelisk—moved here from taken by the first of the great Renaissance popes, preceded by two men carrying enormous light- bullet made of gunmetal—the gift, we were told, Nero’s Circus in 1586 by Sixtus V, who thus set a Nicholas V, in 1450, nothing much was done for ed candles; the effect, particularly on the dark of the people of Milan) was lowered onto the pa- fashion for obelisks—and mount the broad, shal- another half century; it was only on April 18, skin of Cardinal Gracias of Bombay (who spent pal head, and the new pontiff broadcast a brief low steps to what in any other major ecclesiasti- 1506, that the formidable Julius II laid the foun- most of the evening with the Duke talking about message in several dozen languages to the world’s cal building would be the west front but which, dation stone for the great new basilica, entrust- cricket) and the immensely tall Cardinal Rugam- faithful. My last memory of the evening is seeing in fact, faces east. (It is one of the eccentricities ing the work to the leading architect of the day, bwa of Tanzania, was breathtaking. him enthroned on the Gestatorial Chair under of St. Peter’s that it is built, liturgically speaking, . But Julius died in 1513, Bra- I remember too another, still more splen- its waving ostrich plumes and carried, swaying back to front, with the altar at the west end.) Yet mante a year later, and Raphael—whom the ar- did reception given by the Vatican itself in the dangerously, through a forest of upraised hands even now we are not entirely prepared for what chitect nominated as his successor—in 1520; Borgia Apartment (of which more later). As we clutching little white skullcaps. He would seize the lies ahead. The first object of St. Peter’s is to and work was interrupted yet again by the Sack queued on the stairs in the hundred-degree heat, nearest, place it for a second on his head, then re- impress, and it succeeds. That vast space, those of Rome, by German and Spanish troops, in the British Minister tapped me on the shoulder turn it and seize another, and another, and anoth- gigantic fluted pilasters that look as if they could 1527. At last, on January 1, 1547, the seventy- and whispered, “Watch the drinks, they’re le- er. After a few minutes of this, one felt, his arms hold up the universe, that extraordinary barley- one-year-old Michelangelo was summoned by thal.” Assuming this to be a reference to the Bor- must have been dropping off; but several hundred sugar Baldacchino (Bernini again, with his great Pope Paul III to take charge; and St. Peter’s was gias’ distressing habit of poisoning their guests, I of his flock would possess an object that had been bronze sunburst in the apse behind it), the sculp- to prove perhaps his greatest achievement— laughed learnedly and thought no more about it. worn, if only momentarily, by the Holy Father tures, the mosaics, that immense gilded dome one on which he labored, refusing all payment, for A few minutes later we were ushered into the first himself and that they would treasure for the rest soaring up to heaven—everything comes together the last seventeen years of his life. Most of the in- of that gorgeous enfilade of rooms, in which a of their lives. in a single explosion of glory so tremendous that terior architecture we see today is his, including long table groaned under the weight of immense It was then that I felt, in a way I had never you can almost hear the trumpets. Here, unmis- the basic plan in the shape of a Greek cross (the wineglasses, each of them filled to the brim with felt before, the full majesty of the Papacy. This el- takably, is the Church Triumphant. nave was lengthened early in the following centu- an almost colorless liquid that I took to be dry derly, undistinguished-looking little man with the It is not a lovable building; but then, the Ro- ry), the giant Corinthian pilasters, and, crowning white wine. Parched and sweltering, I fell on the bald head and the huge ears was the successor in man has seldom (if ever) been all, the breathtaking dome—which he never saw, nearest, drained it at a gulp—and very nearly direct and unbroken line to Saint Peter himself— a lovable institution. Many people—particularly since it was still uncompleted at his death. collapsed. It was a dry martini—one of the most who had been chosen by Christ as the Rock on British and Americans, in whose native lands the Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s is the work of an powerful I have ever known. As I struggled for which the Church was to be built; who, if tradi- full-blown Baroque is relatively unknown and old man; but in the first chapel on the right— breath, I saw the Minister grinning at me. “Told tion was to be believed, was himself crucified (up- thus almost invariably misunderstood—find it al- now, sadly, behind a toughened glass screen since you so,” he said. side down, at his own insistence) within yards of most shocking: This, they argue, is not a house of an attack by a lunatic some twenty years ago— where I was sitting; and whose tomb, discovered God, like Durham or Chartres; it is merely a draw- stands the greatest monument to his youth, the THE CORONATION ITSELF BEGAN as recently as 1949, lies in the Vatican Grottoes ing room for his ministers. As it happens, they are Pietà. There are several other superb in the late afternoon. By the time it ended, three immediately beneath the Basilica. What other hu- wrong: Despite today’s tourist hordes, there is in the Basilica—Arnolfo di Cambio’s bronze or four hours later, night had fallen: Gradually the man being, I asked myself, enjoyed such prestige as much genuine devotion in the world’s second- statue of Saint Peter, its right foot worn and pol- lights had come on, including floodlights for the or exercised such immense spiritual authority over greatest Christian as in any religious build- ished by the kisses of the faithful; Bernini’s tomb great façade of the Basilica. The official foreign some 900 million people? What other institution ing on earth. But sanctity lies, like beauty, in the of Alexander VII and Pollaiuolo’s of Innocent representatives—including the Duke, and with me could boast nearly two thousand years of history eye of the beholder; and it is hard indeed for peo- VIII; even Canova’s monument to the last of the as his humble attendant—had been given places and still pack so powerful a punch? ple brought up to expect places of worship to be English Stuarts—but none of them can bear a of honor directly behind the cardinals, who were All these things—the prestige, the authority, Romanesque, Gothic, or eighteenth-century clas- moment’s comparison with this sublime mas- ROME & CENTRAL ITALY PAGE 1 9

terpiece, carved when the young genius was just among the most colorful in the whole history of ancient city. Then—following a few months un- color, exuberance of stucco, and extravagant use twenty-four. the Papacy but also did more than anyone else der another nonentity—came Alexander’s sworn of gold leaf—as sumptuous a celebration of the to restore Rome to her ancient glory, it might be enemy Julius II (1503–13), as much a soldier and glory of a single family as can be found anywhere BUT THE BASILICA NEED NOT BE a good idea to introduce the most important of statesman as he was a pope. Julius was succeeded on earth. Alexander himself appears in the fresco seen only at floor level. There is a stunning view them, very briefly, here. by Leo X (1513–21), the thirty-eight-year-old son of the Resurrection, affecting a degree of piety downward from the top of the dome, from which First was Nicholas V (1447–55), the best and of Lorenzo de’ Medici (“the Magnificent”) who that was conspicuously absent from his life; his in- we can also go out onto the “panoramic ” most enlightened of all the Renaissance popes. will always be remembered for his exultant words famous son Cesare Borgia stands nearby, together and gaze down over the Eternal City. Alterna- A passionate lover of the arts and sciences, he to his brother when he became pope—“God has with the brother he murdered; the pope’s daugh- tively, we can descend to the Vatican Grottoes founded the Apostolic Library and restored many given us the Papacy, now let us enjoy it”—and ter Lucrezia appears in Room V, inappropriately and another group of papal tombs—including of Rome’s ruined churches; it was he who had the who was to prove one of the greatest patrons of disguised as the virgin saint Catherine of Alexan- that of John XXIII, always covered in flowers. original idea of rebuilding St. Peter’s and the Vati- the arts that even papal Rome ever produced. Fi- dria; while, again and again, the splendid ceiling More fascinating than either, however, is what is can Palace. His successor, Calixtus III, was the nally, after the Dutchman Hadrian VI and anoth- features the bull and crown that were the Borgia known as the Pre-Constantinian Necropolis. It first pope of that Spanish house of Borgia which er Medici patron who took the name of Clement emblems. Only Room VII, the so-called Sala dei was discovered only in 1940, when engineers dig- was later to become a byword for papal infamy; VII (1523–34), there was Paul III (1534–49), who Pontifici (“Room of the Popes”), though by far ging out the tomb of Pius XI accidentally hit on but apart from making one of his nephews cardi- boasted at least four illegitimate children but in the largest of the series, is something of an anti- what proved to be part of a Roman mausoleum. nals—the future Alexander VI—he did no serious whose reign Michelangelo painted the Last Judg- climax. Its ceiling collapsed in 1500, nearly killing The new pope, Pius XII, immediately ordered a harm and can at least claim the credit for annul- ment in the and assumed responsi- Alexander—who was in the room at the time— full-scale excavation, and nine years later there ling (unfortunately rather too late) the sentence on bility for the completion of the Vatican Palace and and largely destroying the original decoration, was revealed a complete cemetery of the first and Joan of Arc and declaring her innocence. the new St. Peter’s. which was replaced by lesser artists under Leo X. second centuries a.d., together with a rudimen- Next came Pius II (1458–64), whose life is so Immediately above the last Borgia rooms are tary tomb that there is good evidence to believe sumptuously illustrated by Pinturicchio’s paint- THE EARLIEST OF THE REALLY the Raphael stanze. Essentially, these consist of may be that of Saint Peter himself. (What the poor ings in the Piccolomini Library of Siena Cathe- great masterpieces in the palace is the Chapel of the four rooms that were used as the official apart- Galilean fisherman would say of the extravagant dral. He was an indomitable traveler (he got his Nicholas V. In all Italy there are few things lovelier ments of the warrior-pope Julius II (1503–13)— building above him that bears his name has for toes frostbitten in ) and compulsive than this tiny room. Painted by Fra Angelico be- he who commissioned the Sistine Ceiling—and centuries been an irresistible subject of specula- writer, and his works include not only a brilliant tween 1447 and 1449, it is suffused with the spirit his ten successors until Gregory XIII (1572–85). tion—though my own guess is that he would be autobiography but—surprisingly—a love story, of the early Renaissance, a world of purity and In the previous century the rooms had already absolutely delighted.) The necropolis can be visit- Euryalus and . Pius’s second successor simplicity and innocence that seems infinitely far been frescoed by a group that included Piero della ed only by special permit (obtainable through the was Sixtus IV (1471–84), who created—and gave removed from that of the darker, sterner century Francesca and Andrea del Castagno; to Julius, Ufficio Scavio on the south side of the Piazza), but his name to—the Sistine Chapel and Choir, re- which was to follow. Next in date comes the Bor- however, such painters seemed boring and old- this is well worth the trouble. stored countless churches all over Rome, broad- gia Apartment, so called because it was chosen fashioned. He first decided to call in a new team And so to the palace and museums. I find, ened streets, paved piazzas, and spanned the Tiber by Alexander VI for his own personal use on his consisting of Perugino, Baldassare Peruzzi, Sod- after a good many visits over the years, that my with a fine new bridge, the Ponte Sisto; in other accession in the fateful year of 1492. Its decora- oma, and ; then, in the autumn of favorites in the Vatican are not so much individ- respects, however, he was a worldly and ambitious tion he entrusted to a certain Bernardino di Betto, 1508, he heard Bramante speak of a prodigiously ual objects but intrinsic parts of the palace itself. ruler who enriched his family and embroiled him- called Pinturicchio, who had been assistant to talented compatriot of his from , a young Unlike most of the contents of the museums, all self deeply in those endless intrigues that made up Perugino in the Sistine Chapel some fifteen years genius of twenty-six named Raffaello Sanzio. Ra- these rooms (or suites of rooms) were inspired or so much of Italian political life. before. The first two of the six rooms are relatively phael was summoned to Rome, shown the rooms commissioned by one or another of that magnifi- After the brief and unremarkable reign of austere, but Room IV (Alexander’s former , in question, and given carte blanche. cent succession of Renaissance popes who reigned Innocent VIII came the second Borgia pope, Al- which is dedicated to the sciences and liberal arts), Only the two central stanze are entirely by his between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth cen- exander VI (1492–1503), who was to make five of Room V (which portrays the lives of the saints hand. The first, the Stanza dell’ Incendio—named turies. The names of these tremendous pontiffs his family cardinals (and was said to keep a whole and carries a strong Egyptian flavor), and Room after the great fire of 847, which, we are told, was crop up again and again as we go through the pal- of young girls and boys in the Vatican for VI (the pope’s , which explores the quelled when Leo IV made the sign of the cross ace and museums, and since they were not only nocturnal orgies) but who also rebuilt much of the mysteries of the faith) are—with their richness of before it—has a ceiling by Raphael’s master, Pe- ROME & CENTRAL ITALY PAGE 2 0

rugino, while much of the painting is the work of cession in 1513, decided that it should be made Michelangelo. The walls, frescoed for Sixtus IV The Vatican, with its total area of just 109 his pupils Francesco Penni and Giulio Romano; an allegory of the Battle of of the previ- between 1475 and 1480, are themselves an art gal- acres, is not only the smallest but, in terms of art, the same pair were also almost entirely responsi- ous year, at which he himself had been present. In lery of the early Renaissance, with glorious work far and away the richest independent state on ble for the last stanza, the curiously disappointing practice this meant giving his own features to the by Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Rosselli, earth. No single article—no single book, even— Sala di Costantino, which was completed only in figure of Saint Leo, despite the fact that he had al- to say nothing of Pinturicchio, , can hope to cover all the treasures it contains. 1524—four years after Raphael’s death at thirty- ready been cast as one of the attendant cardinals. Bartolomeo della Gatta, and Lucia Signorelli. The astonishing variety of its collections—quite eight. The Stanza della Segnatura, on the other Thus—since nobody bothered to change the latter Thus the chapel would have been world famous apart from the world-famous Chiaramonti and hand, betrays the hand of the master at almost portrait—the first Medici pope now appears twice even if Julius II had not called on Michelangelo Pio-Clementino museums, there is an Egyptian every stroke, at the same time providing a typically in the same picture. to paint the ceiling some thirty years later, in 1508. Museum, a Papal-Historical Museum, an Etrus- Renaissance combination of the sacred and the Beyond the last room, the Sala di Costan- It took him four years. The result was nine mon- can Museum, a Missionary-Ethnological Mu- profane, in which the Triumph of Religious Truth , runs the long gallery that is always known umental panels telling the story of the Book of seum, even a Profane Museum, to say nothing is contrasted with the Triumph of Philosophical as the Loggia di Raffaello, although the master’s Genesis from the Creation to the Flood, support- of the superb art gallery (the Pinacoteca, with its and Scientific Truth on the opposite . This lat- direct participation was probably limited to the ed by naked youths (so-called ignudi) of uncertain roomful of ) and one of the greatest li- ter fresco depicts the two greatest philosophers of overall plan and sketches of the first eight of the significance, with prophets and sibyls below them. braries in the world—cannot be attributed to any antiquity, Plato—almost certainly in the likeness thirteen bays. The series begins at the far end with But even this was not the end. Nearly a quar- one pope or even a group of them. Its possessions of —and Aristotle, surrounded the Creation and continues through forty-eight ter of a century later, in 1536, at the age of sixty- have been acquired over nearly two thousand by other ancient masters, many of them also por- scenes from the Old Testament and four from one, Michelangelo began work on the western end years and in every conceivable way: by accident, traits, including Michelangelo as Heraclitus and the New; but what gives the gallery its charm of the chapel. His Last Judgment was unveiled on by design, by inheritance, and by pure good luck. Bramante as Euclid, on the collar of whose tu- and freshness is the lovely lighthearted stucco October 31, 1541, twenty-nine years to the day af- They have been bought and borrowed, begged and nic the painter has signed himself with the letters decoration (by Giovanni da ) and the ter the unveiling of the ceiling; but during those bequeathed, seized and stolen; paid in tribute or R.U.S.M., for Raphael Urbinus Sua Manu (“Ra- grotesque figures on the walls and pilasters, in- years the painter’s world had changed out of all given in homage to saintly popes, demanded in phael of Urbino, by his hand”). The painter and spired by those that had recently been discovered recognition. Papal Rome had watched in impotent ransom and extorted as blackmail by villainous his friend Sodoma stand modestly together in the in the Golden House of Nero and other ancient dismay as the baleful influence of Martin Luther ones. The result, inevitably, is a hodgepodge—but right-hand corner. Roman ruins. In all Rome there is nowhere more and his heretical Protestant doctrines spread re- a hodgepodge that has been touched by magic. Raphael was also responsible for three of joyful than this, nowhere—if one could only share lentlessly across much of northern and Central the four frescoes in the third room, the Stanza it with just a few friends rather than a thousand Europe; in 1527 the had provided di Eliodoro, all of which are concerned with the tourists—one would rather spend a hot summer still further confirmation of the wrath of God. intervention of providence in the defense of the afternoon. Was this the penalty exacted by the Almighty for Church. That which gives the room its name il- And so, finally, to the Sistine Chapel. Al- the confident humanism of the early Renaissance? lustrates the story—little known except to those though Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes echo many It certainly seemed so. By the 1530s a new auster- who know their way around the Second Book of the subjects in the Raphael Loggia, they intro- ity was in the air—grim, militant, and unforgiv- of Maccabees—of the expulsion of Heliodorus duce us immediately to a sterner, nobler world. ing. It is known as the Counter-Reformation, and from the Temple in Jerusalem; the other subjects Opinions differ as to the success of their recent Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (at the time of this are Saint Peter’s delivery from prison, the miracu- cleaning and restoration by the Japanese. To some, writing unfortunately shrouded in scaffolding) il- lous mass at Bolsena (at which the host began to the new brilliance of color has come as a revela- lustrates it to . The clean-shaven figure bleed, thus allaying the doubts of the officiating tion; to others, the restorers have removed not of Christ, pitiless and inexorable, raises his right priest about transubstantiation), and the meet- only the centuries-old grime and soot but a good arm as if it is he personally who has struck the ing of Leo the Great with the Hun (when deal of the mystery and magic as well. You must blow that has sent the damned spinning down to the pope persuaded the barbarian to advance no decide for yourself. Remember always, however, their eternal perdition. We are a long way from the further to Rome). Only the last is less than satis- what so many people forget—that there is more to “Gentle , meek and mild” of our childhood; factory; first, because it is largely the work of as- the Sistine Chapel than its ceiling, and that there here there is no gentleness or love, only bitterness, sistants and, second, because Leo X, on his ac- are other great painters represented there besides anger, and terrible power.