HILARY, 2017 TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

THE OXFORD ITALIAN ASSOCIATION

BOTTICELLI REIMAGINED

A LECTURE BY DR ANA DEBENEDETTI, CURATOR OF PAINTINGS, V&A

ast year’s Botticelli Reimagined exhibition, organised by the L V&A in partnership with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, explored Botticelli’s artistic practice, his legacy, and the enduring impact of the master upon artists, designers and art historians. After four centuries of oblivion, the dramatic rediscovery and reappraisal of Botticelli’s art established the near universal acclaim of today. Antonio Donghi, Woman at the Café, 1932 The lecture will look back at the origins of the project, its starting point pose the following questions: Why is art Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). Co-curator and subsequent developments. The effective and how does it challenge the of the exhibition Constable: The Making exhibition was the largest devoted way people look at pictures? In a society of of a Master (V&A, 2014-2015), Ana to Botticelli since the 1930s, with mass media, saturated with a multitude of Debenedetti’s current projects include a book over 50 original works. The research images, what do all of these images have on Botticelli and the catalogue of the French underpinning it and the accompanying to say about us and how we engage with drawings in the V&A. She is co-curator of catalogue has highlighted a variety of them, as artists, designers and viewers, or Botticelli Reimagined and co-author of the significant issues relating to Botticelli perhaps mere consumers? accompanying catalogue. and his extraordinary posthumous Ana Debenedetti is Curator of legacy. Paintings at the V&A with responsibility Having drawn attention to a range for oil paintings, drawings, miniatures of promising areas of further enquiry, and watercolours. She has written and i The Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, the exhibition, catalogue and two-day published on Renaissance art, philosophy St Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, academic conference, held in May 2016 and poetry and holds a PhD in History of 7.30 p.m. drinks reception, at the V&A, laid the way for more debate Art focusing on the artistic and cultural 8.00 p.m. lecture, on Tuesday, 31st and new approaches. More specifically, milieu of Quattrocento , the January, 2017 Entry: Members £2, it explored the extraordinary resonance interaction between philosophy and non-members £5, students under of Botticelli’s images today, which artistic literature through the work of 30 free of charge.

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www.fcagroup.com www.cnhindustrial.com TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

FUOCOAMMARE

88 minutes Italian with English subtitles

Gianfranco Rosi ©Paul Katzenberger ©Paul

“A genuine triumph … moral courage and filmic artistry exist side by side” Sight and Sound

“Urgent, imaginative and necessary film making” Meryl Streep

Gianfranco Rosi’s beautiful, mysterious and moving film Fuocoammare is a documentary that looks like a neorealist classic. It is a portrait of Lampedusa, the Sicilian island, where desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East arrive each year hoping for a new life in Europe: Gianfranco Rosi enigmatically juxtaposes 400,000 in the last 20 years. Lampedusa scenes, switching between the migrants’ has quietly become the tragic epicentre of daily, desperate landfall, and the everyday the migrant experience: part holding tank, existence of one Lampedusa family and part cemetery. one young boy in particular, Samuele, The title refers to a wartime Sicilian song, whose uncle is a fisherman. about the bombing of an Italian warship Rosi has recorded quiet details from in 1943 in port at Lampedusa, prior to the indigenous Lampedusan lives at the island’s surrender to the allies, and how the periphery of something far more historically flames lit up the night: Che fuoco a mare dramatic and sensational, but the quietly che c’è stasera (“What fire at sea there is telling details are like jetsam, flung out tonight”). Islanders in Lampedusa make a centrifugally. The film does not take a i Film screening in the Lecture Theatre, living from fishing. Generations have grown view; it does not demand action. It simply Rewley House, OUDCE, 1 Wellington up and grown old with the fear of dying at shows us the details, and one can learn Square, Oxford, Monday, 23rd January, sea. The endless tide of migrants has made more from this film than from the nightly 7.30 p.m. In Italian accompanied by that fear a daily reality. TV news. English subtitles. All welcome.

For further information go to www.toia.co.uk. To view the trailer: go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=st22_s7BB1I TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

IN CONVERSATION …

We are living in a historical context in which we are witnessing an unprecedented, almost biblical flux of migrants, shaking the geo-politics of Europe. How do Sicilians respond to this? There isn’t one answer for everyone. Some people think that the little slice of well- being that they have carved out is under threat; others think that the only way to maintain the status quo is to help and welcome immigrants. There are others still who remember that Sicilians were once migrants and left for America and Northern Europe and that they were ill- Mario Bolognari treated, considered vagrants, mafiosi, immoral. Dante Ceruolo talks to Mario Bolognari The fact remains, regardless of the who recommended Fuocoammare as view anyone holds, that doctors, nurses, TOIA’s Hilary film. Mario, a speaker at the coastguards, police officers, social workers, 2015 Oxford FT Literary Festival, is the translators, mayors, teachers and the Professor of Cultural Anthropology and wider general public give up their time and Ethnology and Head of the Department Secondly, it’s a wonderful film; so good energy, with honest dedication, to help of Modern Civilisation Studies and Classic that it was nominated for the best foreign refugees and migrants. These people may Tradition at the University of Messina. language film Oscar. Paolo Sorrentino, the not understand the full import of what they Prolific author of more than 100 books, last Italian film director to win an Oscar (La are witnessing, but they are undertaking papers and essays, Mario served as mayor grande bellezza), said that Fuocoammare their duty all the same, saving human lives. of Taormina, a mecca for writers and wasn’t worthy of one, which makes me artists in the 19th and 20th centuries. appreciate the film even more. Sorrentino’s When you spoke so insightfully at a He is the former Director of Taormina Oscar-winning film was typical of those recent Oxford FT Literary Festival, you Film Fest, ’s oldest film festival, which appealing more to an American audience, described Sicily as a backdrop, almost was inaugurated in 1955 and has hosted in that it rehearses all of the most hackneyed like scenery to a play. Can you expand over the years many stars of international and trite of stereotypes. on this notion? In your view is there an cinema, including Elizabeth Taylor, anthropological constant underlying Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren, Colin To what extent does Fuocoammare cinematic representations of Sicily? Firth, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, differ from other cinematographic The director Giuseppe Tornatore said that and Antonio Banderas. representations of Sicily? Sicily is cinema and maybe he is right to As I was saying, this film shatters stereotypes assert that. There is a cultural constant: Mario, you recommended this film and it portrays a cinematic representation theatrical representation, reciting a role (Fuocoammare). What were the reasons of Sicily between documentary and fiction. on a stage, being an actor even within the underpinning your choice? Typecast beliefs are challenged because the intimacy of the family circle. In short, an To begin with, the very current and life of the people of Lampedusa, like that of inclination towards ‘cultural performance’ pressing problem of thousands of people the young Samuele, is always and forever as explicated by Victor Turner. Sicily making the treacherous journey to Sicily in a state of emergency: 400,000 “sbarchi” is a hierarchical society, organized and and the south of Italy. It’s a dramatic in the last 20 years and 15,000 people deferential in its own way. Each person reality, new and different in many respects. drowned at sea. This emergency unsettles plays a role and gives life to the character It tests complacently held embedded a static and repetitive tradition and at the that has been assigned to him. The study certainties and assumptions. It’s one of same time enflames feelings, passion and of organized crime, for example, is of the extremely complex challenges posed emotion. Whilst watching the film it is notable interest because it reveals its own by contemporary society and globalisation. difficult to know if you should be on the form of staging or, in musical terms, a Perhaps it is the most modern of historical side of the immigrants or not … that’s what perfect score, well-structured, closed and scenarios we are facing. makes it a masterpiece. complete within itself. TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

Palermo and Messina, or the writers and artists who put down their roots in Taormina, Lìpari and Siracusa. They brought with them their customs, values, and lifestyles to a place that willingly adapted to the new. In Taormina the most widely diffused type of garden you stumble upon is the English one, and of course here one can find the best gin and tonic and Martini cocktails.

To conclude, in your view, is it possible to describe the characteristics of an archetypal Sicilian or does this inevitably Simonetta Agnello Hornby involve lapsing into stereotype? ©Andrea Pellegrini A society is always a complex nexus of Perhaps it is this recital of roles that elements and relations in interplay. A constitutes the Sicilian cultural nucleus; it is culture can do no other than reflect this something captured, described and enacted complexity. To say the Sicilians think this, by Luigi Pirandello, rightly considered as a say that, and do the other is to make a figure of genius. generalization that simplifies what remains at heart multifaceted. Contemporary And turning to contemporary fiction cultural anthropology attends to the social and narrative, thinking for example of and focuses on the social dimension. Camilleri, an author who is very famous Perhaps it is the concept of ‘cultural’ itself in the UK, or Agnello Hornby? which is put in discussion. Agnello Hornby’s La Mennulara (The Consequently the idea of an authentic, Almond Picker) is a very good novel. It tells original and “true” Sicilian archetype of Sicily’s transition from a rural society to a would seem to be highly improbable. To developed one, but a development without be able to isolate this archetype one would progress. It is not by chance that the book first have to choose a period of history, a was received with such acclaim. Other social class, a precise place, then a gender, Sicilian authors, such as Camillieri, do all a generation, a profession, and so on share a common challenge. Once they have … In the end, I would be describing an achieved success they are constrained by individual in order to avoid generalisations publishers, by careless friends, possibly even and simplification. It’s inconceivable. by an interior weakness, to write further What can we do then? We can question variations on the same theme, to repeat the cultural processes of the interpretation themselves obsessively. Camilleri’s historical of clearly defined historical and social novels are worthy of a Nobel prize and my facts, as we have seen earlier in the reply to University Department nominated him to Recently the UK, in spite of Brexit, the question about Sicilians and migration. the Swedish Academy in 2015, but the rest hosted two major exhibitions on Sicily at In such a way we can extrapolate certain of his output has become like a vast chain the Ashmolean and The British Museum. patterns of behaviour of Sicilians from the of mountains, pitched solely at garnering What is it that fascinates the British chaos of complexity, the ideas that they further commercial success. There are other about the trinacria? themselves elaborate in relation to their writers whose use of language and narrative I am really not sure how to answer this one! I own behaviour, and finally, the narratives form is bracingly experimental, but they are imagine that the British are attracted by the that they weave around their everyday little known abroad. For example, Domenico exoticism or by a nostalgia for colonialism. lives. Only through this scientific process, Cacopardo, Silvana La Spina, Emanuela I’m being ironic of course: these are albeit subjective and interpretative, can we Abbadessa. stereotypes in themselves. Perhaps Sicily is know who the Sicilians are and what they There remain the classics of course, the a daydream mirroring what you would like want; not in a generalised way but with poet Ignazio Buttitta, Gesualdo Bufalino, to hear said. In the past eminent English respect to a specific and well-defined issue. Vincenzo Consolo and, obviously, Leonardo figures discovered Sicily and elected it to All the rest is an illusion of knowledge, Sciascia. Their sicilianità, in essence is be their adopted homeland. Think, for fabricated out of empty rhetoric and nothing other than a metaphor of universality. example, of the entrepreneurs in Marsala, stereotype.

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FROM CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE TO THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS: CESARE BECCARIA AND HIS CONTEXT

THE DOROTHY ROWE MEMORIAL LECTURE BY PROFESSOR RENATO PASTA, UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE

“The first evangelist of reason”, according to Jeremy Bentham, Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) stands as a modern classic and a landmark of liberal reform in the field of criminal justice. As such, he has been the subject of endless and often contrasting interpretations. Since its publication in 1764, On Crimes and Punishments has been acknowledged worldwide as a node in political thinking and an impassioned agent of change inside the body politic of the Ancien Régime. This common view contrasts with other interpretations, usually by legal historians and political scientists, which emphasise the inner tensions in Beccaria’s main arguments on torture and the suppression of the death penalty. Indeed the over-arching value of human dignity parallels in the text the quest for order, political stability and social control all to be pursued in the name of utility, efficiency and State power. The lecture shall discuss these contrasting perspectives within the wider contexts of both Enlightenment radicalism and the Habsburg government in Lombardy. It will provide a general reading of Beccaria’s work, of its main sources in Lockean philosophy and 18th-century sensationalism as well as of its success among French ‘philosophes’, British legal reformers and German-speaking jurists. Promptly translated into French and other languages (English, German, Spanish), On Crimes and Punishments established enduring legal rights and constitutional criteria still currently accepted, such as the principle that prior to the sentence in court the defendant should be deemed innocent or Beccaria’s pleading for limiting the length of previous

detention. The talk will also refer to ©Chiswick Chap Beccaria’s suggestions in the field of court procedure, decriminalization of offences Cesare Beccaria, causing no damage to the Commonwealth, Pinacoteca Brera, Milan and secularization of penal law: a key TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

social and public issue which harked back the Old Regime and to its inextricable government in Milan shielded our to “the immortal President”, Montesquieu. connection of religion and State power. No author and his friends from ecclesiastical By severing human crime from sin, wonder that the Roman Church put the encroachment, providing the pre- Beccaria followed a sensationalist tack book on the Index early in 1766. Beccaria’s conditions for a relatively free discussion developed by Locke, Helvétius and understanding of the rule of law reflected among equals. Beccaria’s booklet, with its Condillac. Differently from Locke, however, the views of the young ‘philosophers’ emphasis on sensibility as an inescapable he understood property as “a terrible and of Il Caffè, the periodical which Pietro element of human equality, arose from this perhaps not needed right”, a radical view Verri edited in 1764-1766, and to which ideological framework and contributed indebted to Rousseau and one which made Beccaria contributed. Grounded in the to set Rousseau’s droit politique on firm the Milanese essayist into a “socialist”, Enlightenment and readily accepted by footing. This short classic is still with us. As as one of his most bitter critics quickly Voltaire, Condorcet and Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire recommended in his commentary, pointed out. There are good reasons to his perspective also tied in with Habsburg we should “often reread this work as that believe this indictment. Beccaria’s parting jurisdictionalism at home which reduced of a lover of mankind”. of crime and sin represented indeed a the power of the Church and eventually challenge both to the corporate order of suppressed the Inquisition. The Imperial Renato Pasta is Ordinary Professor of early-modern European history at the University of Florence. He took his first degree at the State University of Milan and his PhD from the History Department, Princeton University (1985). He taught as Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, the Collège de France and the University of Cambridge. In 1996- 1997 he spent a year as Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His main research interests concentrate on the French Enlightenment and its diffusion, special attention being paid to the book trades and the learned institutions in eighteenth-century Europe. Among his works are a monograph on the Tuscan savant Giovanni Fabbroni (1752-1822), a volume on book diffusion and the history of reading (Editoria e cultura nel Settecento, Florence, 1989) and essays on the culture of the Enlightenment in Italy during the age of reforms. He has contributed to the edition of Beccaria’s correspondence (vols. III and IV of his Opere, Mediobanca, Milan, 1994-1996) and edited P. Verri’s Storia di Milano, vol. IV of P. Verri, Opere, Rome, 2009, under the general editorship of Prof. C. Capra. Pasta sits on the board of Archivio storico italiano and is a member of the board of the Swiss periodical, Beccaria.

i The Grove Auditorium, Magdalen College, 5.00 p.m., Thursday, 9th February 2017, followed Portrait of Cesare Beccaria, The Metropolitan Museum, New York by drinks reception. Free of charge. All welcome.

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THE CLARA FLORIO COOPER POETRY MATTERS MEMORIAL BURSARY OUT WITH RECIPIENT LECTURES THE OLD, IN WITH Thanks to the generosity of Professor Richard Cooper and Professor Emanuela Tandello and their family, each year TOIA invites applications for a bursary from graduates researching any THE NEW aspects of Italian culture. In 2016 the two bursaries were awarded to post-graduate students, Hannah Kinney, from Christ Church, and Ben Kehoe, from Wolfson College. With a generous passion to share their research, Hannah and Ben will talk about their current work, what fires their interests, and how the bursary assisted them. It will be an event full of energy and insight and we’d like you to be part of it.

Hannah Kinney Ben Kehoe

A New Year dawns and so we turn to Gianni Rodari to cheer us. Resistance fighter, communist, writer My dissertation, After Giambologna: I’m a second year DPhil student at Wolfson and journalist, Rodari (1920-1980) The Value of Replication and Material College, Oxford. Broadly, I’m interested was most famous for his writing as Innovation in Late Medicean Florence, in the ideology of nationalism within the fabulatore (storyteller). Recipient of explores a period in Florentine art that is context of nineteenth-century Italy. More the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in often brushed aside due to its perceived specifically, my research explores how 1970, many consider him Italy’s most imitative practices and lack of artistic the emergent idea of Italian nationhood important contributor to twentieth- innovation. My project evolves from a simple was received by popular audiences in the century children’s literature. He was question: if replication was not a valuable Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in the 1840s and author of Grammatica della fantasia practice in Grand Ducal Florence, then why 1850s. (1973) in which he reflects on his did it flourish? I argue that replication was My research draws upon a diverse own writing, observing his “arte di a valuable practice for both artists and the range of sources to examine both the inventare storie” was influenced by Medici. For artists, replication became a diffusion of national discourses among French surrealism. catalyst for material innovation. The Medici’s urban and rural populations, as well as control of the circulation of cast copies was the ways ‘ordinary Tuscans’ were engaging L’anno nuovo beneficial because it reinforced the fame of with the new national ideal. Chiefly, I’m the originals and, ultimately, allowed them to looking at data contained in the police “Indovinami, indovino, use both original and copy politically. records of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, tu che leggi nel destino: Conducting research on this topic has in order to reconstruct the circulation of l’anno nuovo come sarà? been a constant pleasure, especially since political information among the general Bello, brutto o metà e metà?” it has allowed me to travel frequently to population of Tuscany. Florence. Hidden amongst the documents of “Trovo stampato nei miei libroni the Archivio di Stato I have discovered many che avrà di certo quattro stagioni, traces of these artists who in many cases have dodici mesi, ciascuno al suo posto, been lost to time. These documents have the un carnevale e un ferragosto, power to make them and their work feel e il giorno dopo il lunedì present though we are separated by centuries, i Clara Florio Cooper Bursary Lecture, sarà sempre un martedì. a quite magical experience. The challenge of Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, Christ Di più per ora scritto non trovo the project, and its joy, is contextualising and Church, on Wednesday 15th February, nel destino dell’anno nuovo: explicating what period viewers appreciated 7.30 p.m. drinks reception, 8.00 p.m. per il resto anche quest’anno in the remarkable objects they produced. lecture. Free of charge. All welcome. sarà come gli uomini lo faranno.” TOIA MAGAZINE # 78

THE ROMAN Gladiator, 2000 ART OF DYING

A LECTURE BY DR PAUL ROBERTS, KEEPER, DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES, THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

In Roman society, just as in modern Italy, image and appearance were everything. In death, just as in life, there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things. This talk uses examples from art and archaeology, from Italy and all areas of the Roman world, to examine what constituted a ‘good death’ – the art of dying well. We’ll also Throughout the empire, tombstones look at how the Romans commemorated and sarcophagi, show the deceased death and dying in their art and how people reclining at a banquet, garlanded and throughout time have tried to interpret this. holding drinking cups. Mosaics, wall The Romans had an idea of afterlife, but paintings and even drinking vessels are unlike Jews and Christians, no clear road sometimes decorated with scenes of death map. To gain immortality, Romans needed and skeletons. Feasting happened around to be seen after death, through portraits and sometimes inside family tombs – and inscriptions. The image and name of sometimes even inside the tomb itself. the deceased were all-important, from the Why exclude ancestors from the feast wooden mummy portraits of Egypt to the simply because they are dead? stone portraits of Palmyra, the freedman When death finally, inevitably came, you monuments and sarcophagi of Rome and faced it with virtus – ‘manly’ bravery and Faithful unto Death by Herbert Schmalz the gravestones of far flung Britannia. resolve. Your death spoke volumes about For the Romans death, inevitable and you and was a continuity of your good life. non-negotiable, was to be accepted, and Better a noble suicide, than an unworthy calm dignity. Armies of martyrs arose from approached with dignity and bravery. Death life (and death). The emperor Nero died bloody persecutions, and the more they was everywhere – even at the table – in a badly, in a forced bungled suicide, begging laughed at death, as they were eaten by close link between dining and death. The for life. His teacher, Seneca, killed himself beasts or stabbed by warriors, the more bringing together of family and friends in calmly in the bath. A ‘good’ death wasn’t powerful they became. eating and drinking gave a time and place restricted to men, and numerous women A ‘martyr pornography’ arose of naked to dwell on life and death and the absence were praised for their noble death, most flesh meeting swords, razor sharp claws and of loved ones. famously Cleopatra whose death rendered teeth. Distasteful to us, it achieved its aim her almost Roman. of encouraging the faithful and ultimately For some death was a way of life. overturned the old order. A Roman death Gladiators were the mass entertainers of became the death of Rome … their day, the sports, film, TV and music stars all rolled into one. Their often lethal combats were certainly a spectacle, but were also an example of how to face death i The Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, with manly bravery. Add to that their St Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, undeniable sex appeal and they became 7.30 p.m. drinks reception, important symbols. 8.00 p.m. lecture, on Thursday, 23rd Female gladiators, The people who learnt most from the February, 2017 Entry: Members £2, Amazon and Achilia gladiators’ public image triumph, were non-members £5, students under the Christians, facing awful deaths with 30 free of charge.

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THE ASHMOLEAN IN FOCUS

pleased, I was decidedly not encouraged doorstep: a potent brew. It’s the only museum to continue with a Doctorate by the Dons, I would have left the British Museum for. so I went to live in Italy in Novara, near Milan, to teach English. My time in Italy Apart from the venerable Ashmolean, has made a huge difference as I understand which other museum do you most cherish Italians and respect local customs; it has and enjoy visiting? proved invaluable in curatorial work with The British Museum. It’s not as old as the Italian colleagues, as forging relationships Ash, which is the oldest in the UK, but it is determines how the project will go. on a scale and level of excellence that few I thought my future would be in Italy, places can match. It’s my other home and a Dr Paul Roberts kindly spares some time out however on a dig there I met John Lloyd, place that I love. I cannot lie! of his busy schedule to talk to TOIA. Paul the dig director, who encouraged me to do a recently curated the acclaimed Storms, War doctorate at Sheffield. Having completed it, I Can you give us an indication of what might and Shipwrecks together with Dr Alexandra took up a post at the British Museum. be on the horizon at The Ashmolean? Sofroniew. The exhibition went on to show I am lucky enough to do as a job In 2019 the museum will stage an exhibition in Palermo. what I was engaged in as a hobby and in entitled Feast focusing on Roman dining retrospect they did me a huge favour back at and exploring where the Romans got their Is there such a thing as a typical day in the Cambridge! culinary ideas from, principally the Greeks life of a Keeper or Curator? and the Etruscans. The first room will be The short answer is no. It’s wonderfully Which aspect of your job do you derive dedicated to the Etruscans, long overdue as diverse and no two days are the same. There most satisfaction and joy from? the last exhibition on the Etruscans here in may be periods when a project is in progress Sharing the collections and exhibitions, the UK was in 1835. and one can be incredibly focused during lecturing and gallery talks and, most of all, Presently, I am helping to bring an that short or long burst of time. seeing the public come in and their faces exhibition to the Ashmolean on five of the More typically, we undertake a whole light up. Many people do not have ready world’s great faiths. Called Empires of Faith, range of roles besides curating exhibitions, access to culture and the in-built mission it looks at how the structure and iconography encompassing research, fieldwork, storage, at the Ash is to share the collection through of these great faiths crystallized in the first public engagement, gallery tours and teaching and public engagement. millennium A.D. Exhibits will range from teaching. It’s extraordinary that a curator’s archaeological artefacts to large sculptures, teaching constitutes the equivalent of a half- Where does the uniqueness of the from beautiful, illustrated manuscripts to time university teaching post. Ashmolean lie? perishable, organic objects. In fact, I have At the core, we are here to look after After 21 years at the British Museum, the just returned from Macedonia where I was and share the artefacts and collections and Ashmolean is a bit different. It’s like the V&A, examining terracotta plaques from the 5th- to leave them in a better state than we had the National Gallery, the National Portrait 6th century depicting Archangel Michael found them. Gallery and the British Museum under one and the True Cross. roof, amalgamated and appropriately scaled! It will be a fascinating show, reaching out What led you on the path to curatorship It is a museum of world status owing to to faith communities, with all religions cheek and keepership? the diversity of its collection and its teaching by jowl. A first for the Ashmolean, it will be As a kid, picking up willow-pattern mission and it has the University at its marvellous. fragments in the garden and rushing into the house shouting “Treasure!”. At 11, I was washing pots at a dig in Gloucester. My family was hugely supportive: trips to (Tutankhamun) and also abroad to Athens, Rome, and Pompeii. My mum, Winifred Roberts, a butcher and then restaurateur, loved history and travel. Inspiration came from home and also a teacher who was an ex-Spitfire pilot and archaeologist. After school, I studied at Cambridge gaining a 2:1 and, although I was rather

For further information go to www.toia.co.uk ART AND ARCHITECTURE

THE UNSUNG HERO OF THE ITALIAN DIASPORA

THE CASE OF , THE ARCHITECT BEHIND CLANDON PARK. SOME THOUGHTS BY JOHN WOODHOUSE, FORMER FIAT SERENA PROFESSOR OF ITALIAN, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

The architect Giacomo Simone Leoni ( 1685 – London 1746), spent his working life in England, and left here a possible legacy of some twenty-five “Palladian” constructions, and, for English readers, the most splendid editions of the architectural writings of Palladio and Alberti. The main purpose of what follows is to provide a skeletal guide to Leoni’s surviving architectural masterpieces. Little is known of his domestic life in London. He married an Englishwoman named Mary, and they had two sons, John Philip and Joseph. His working career of over thirty years in England may be traced from his designs for buildings of various kinds, from splendid such as ©Bridget Gill , and the delightful Wortley Bensberg Castle, Hall, to more practical if still grand houses near Cologne such as Alkrington Hall, or to smaller treasures such as the octagonal pavilion in the garden at , now the chapel Despite relatively humble beginnings, of a translation of Palladio’s Quattro libri which houses the Astor tomb. Limits of the young Leoni, fascinated by the beauty dell’architettura. He also gained practical space prevent full discussion here of his of Palladio’s architecture, was able to lessons on building techniques. role in other buildings. This brief item may spend much of his adolescence travelling Leoni arrived in England about 1713, be regarded as a thumbnail sketch or guide throughout Italy, funded by his indulgent hoping to find a patron, and by 1715 had to his life and career. paternal uncle Antonio. The young man received a potential commission from Giacomo Simone Leoni was born in studied classical architecture and Roman Henry Grey, Duke of Kent, former “Grand Venice in 1685 in the modest parish of ruins as and Palladio Tourist”, and enthusiastic Italophile. At San Cassiano. La Serenissima was, at that had done in earlier centuries. He even the noble lord’s request, Leoni undertook time not only a favourite goal for English utilised Palladio’s guide to ancient Rome, to design the reconstruction of the Grey tourists but also the birthplace of Venetian L’antichità di Roma, which Leoni himself family at Wrest Park, and by artists seeking fame and fortune abroad. reprinted in later years. Until 1708 Leoni 1715 his plans were ready. The premature also spent time with his paternal uncle deaths of Duke Henry’s two sons and in Düsseldorf, as part of that brilliant heirs, followed by financial losses (as a diaspora of artistic talents which had result of the Duke’s disastrous investment spread Venetian culture throughout in the South Sea Company) scotched the Europe. A Venetian workforce was re- scheme and ruined Leoni’s hopes. Those building Bensberg Castle for Joseph 1715 blueprints still reside amongst Duke Wilhelm, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Henry’s correspondence conserved in Reduced now to the status of luxury hotel Bedfordshire and Luton Archives. Wrest the Althoff Grandhotel Schloss Bensberg, Park was not renovated until 1833 (and The Octagonal in Bergisch-Gladbach near Cologne, the then in French style by Thomas 2nd Earl Pavilion, Clivedon imposing building is still visitable. At de Grey). Leoni’s life was to be punctuated

©Wyrdlight Düsseldorf Leoni began a rough version by similar crises and disasters.

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But Leoni was not one to fall at the first hurdle. The times were auspicious, was all the rage, and there were keen patrons infatuated by their sometimes errant concept of the new fashion. Leoni turned his hand, meanwhile, to demonstrating his familiarity with Italian . Unlike his less fortunate English contemporaries, he was able, thanks to his innate knowledge of Italian, to pioneer and publish luxurious English translations of the influential works on architecture of both Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) and (1505-55). For a decade between 1716 and 1726, Leoni concentrated his efforts on the production of his eye-catching editions of their treatises. The volumes also contained Leoni’s exquisite prints of his own and his ©Mike Peel predecessors’ work. He added scholarly Lyme Park introductions, notes and observations on past and current techniques, providing authentic information about Palladian style buildings, though regrettably his remarks were ignored by students of architecture, both then and now. Leoni, in whole or in part, was responsible for some 25 buildings in England. In 1995 one of his finest, Lyme Park in , the Legh family mansion, became renowned for its role in the television adaptation of ’s Pride and Prejudice, where it starred as , the home of the noble Darcy family, famously providing the scene for Darcy/Colin Firth’s plunge into the lake, prior to emerging wet-shirted before Elizabeth Bennet. A mention of this frivolity is a swift way of connecting popular drama with Leoni’s work, since few of the millions of viewers knew or know the name of

Lyme Park’s builder. In a similar allusion ©BristolIcarus to Leoni’s mansions, Clandon Park in 2008 had its modern reputation enhanced Clandon Park after the fire by its role in the drama, The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley. Tragedy struck in 2015 (ironically the third centenary of They depend for authentication on the accession of George I, this prevented many the discarded plans for Wrest Park), when plans and engravings which Leoni included commissions and complex contracts. The Clandon Park was destroyed by fire. At in his editions of Palladio and Alberti, as work he did seems to have been rewarded least the conflagration provided a brief well as on fragile or brief correspondence with “a present”, not a profitable contract. excuse to recall Leoni’s name when in a with his patrons, comments written on Here, for interest, are the better or fine article in The Times (30 April 2015), some of his manuscripts, and hints by more obvious examples of his work. He Simon Jenkins regretted “the destruction his contemporaries, but no contractual constructed possibly the first London of Giacomo Leoni’s masterpiece”, and there documents. As a Catholic Leoni was town houses (Leoni called them his “small enlarged upon its fine architectural merits. disqualified from bidding for public works, houses in town”), the first in the garden Experts have found it difficult to assign and in a political climate of Whigs and of , at 7, Burlington Leoni’s claims to some of these buildings. Protestants, particularly after 1714 and the Gardens (at present a fashion outlet). ART AND ARCHITECTURE

combined led to aspects of the architecture of Jefferson’s University of Virginia, while his political power might also have influenced the design of Washington’s Capitol, and so the design of most North American town halls. English critics have pointed to the clear if superficial parallel between Aston-Webb’s ponderous 1912 facade to Buckingham , and the west front of Lyme Park. Leoni’s own preparation for progressing in his enterprises was usually assiduous, but the illness or misfortune of his patrons at crucial times often ruined his plans. To crown his misfortune, despite the rich patrons for whom he worked at one time or another, his remuneration continued to be Another smaller house was Argyle House were destroyed, accidentally, by fire, or by regarded by them as a “present”, and when in King’s Rd, Chelsea, and a third, Lord industrial development. Giacomo died in abject poverty in 1746, he Shannon’s House, at 21 Arlington Street. Some afterthoughts: The rather was helped during his last month of life by a Among the great houses he designed, apart gloomy Piggot Monument in Quainton charitable gift of eight guineas from his last from the above-mentioned at Clandon and Church (post-1735), Buckinghamshire, is employer, Lord Fitzwalter. He was buried Lyme, , at Rickmansworth, is now the nearest example to Oxford of Leoni’s in Old St Pancras Churchyard, intestate, an up-market golf club, and periodically work. It has a parallel in his funerary and leaving his widow, Mary and his two used for film work, Thorndon Hall, in monument to Daniel Pulteney in the east sons. In 1854 the burials were removed by became another golf club and in part cloister of Westminster Abbey, where the Midland Railway to lay the main line of apartments. Wortley Manor at Wortley the reading figure itself was carved by the new St Pancras station. The names of near Sheffield, has a pretty south front one of Leoni’s old collaborators, Michael the more illustrious dead were saved and and by good fortune, although destined for Rysbrack, whose fireplaces in Clandon’s commemorated on a memorial stele set destruction in 1950, it was bought by local marble hall are rather more splendid. up in 1877 by Angela Burdett Coutts. This Labour and Co-operative trade unions and Another curiosity is Leoni’s dedication to contains the names of other notables once converted into an interesting and reasonably Lord Burlington of his beautiful etching buried there, including J.C.Bach, Mary priced hotel now open to the general public. of Vitruvius’s Egyptian Hall, in volume Wolstonecraft, John Flaxman, Sir John Alkrington Hall, in Middleton, Lancashire, three of his 1729 edition of Alberti’s De re Sloane, and James Leoni, perhaps the built for Sir Darcy Lever, stands alone aedificatoria. This was used by Burlington most public appreciation of his brilliant on its height, surrounded by suburbia. as his own plan for the Assembly Rooms but tragic life and career. Leoni’s plans for a re-building of Cliveden, in Blake Street, York, now an Italian Buckinghamshire, failed in the competition, restaurant. but he did construct the Blenheim Gate, Critics have wondered why Leoni’s Old St. Pancras an elaborate bower in the garden there, designs seemed to lack the enormous Churchyard and a small, but beautiful, garden pavilion variety of Palladio’s buildings. But it which now serves as the (Waldorf) Astor must be remembered that Giacomo was memorial tomb. Park, Sutton, offering the English gentry what they was another blow for Leoni’s ambitions. Sir thought, often mistakenly, was fashionable William Scawen, ex-governor of the Bank Palladian architecture. To have inserted of England had commissioned Leoni to more of Palladio’s variety into his offerings build a new mansion at Carshalton and had might not have been so saleable. allegedly set aside ten thousand pounds for Recent critics have seen the influence the purpose. Unfortunately William died of Leoni’s Palladio volumes, in Thomas before the foundations were laid and the Jefferson’s construction of his mansion ©Stephencdickson family fortune, perhaps mismanaged by at Monticello, notably Leoni’s design his nephew, Thomas, was dissipated, along for Palladio’s Rotunda, built “sopra un with Leoni’s hopes. Ironically several of monticello”, as well as Leoni’s suggestion of Leoni’s premier buildings, including Bold the Pantheon as a model for the spherical Hall, Burton Park, and Lathom House in architectural design. The two ideas

For further information go to www.toia.co.uk DEPARTMENT FOR Weekly Classes CONTINUING in Oxford EDUCATION

January 2017 Day & Weekend Events

• An Introduction to European Film Join us for a day or weekend to listen • Artists and Patrons of Renaissance Europe to some of the world’s leading experts on a wide range of subjects: • Decline and Fall: The Western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries • Six Masterpieces of Italian Art • Gothic Yielding to Renaissance: & Architecture, 6 lectures, Architectural Transition in Italy 26 January – 2 March • Greek Culture in the Roman World • Roman Judea, 6 lectures, • Isabella d’Este and the Art of the Italian 27 January – 3 March Renaissance Courts: 1450-1550 • An Introduction to Teaching • Language & History Grammar, 4 February • Language Teaching: Essential Techniques • An Introduction to Dante’s Paradiso, 11 March • Plato’s Atlantis • Eternal Bronze, Essential Stone: • Puccini and his Women Sculpture, Symbolism and Modernism from Rodin April 2017 to Giacometti, 1 April • Magna Graecia and South Italian Architecture: • Introduction to Semantics: from Roman Empire to Risorgimento How Language Makes Sense, • Modernism in European Art 22 April • Power and People in Imperial Rome • Language and Identity, 13 May • The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century: In Thrall to Italy • Language in Use, 27 May • Ways of Seeing Sicily

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EXPERIENCE SICILY: STAY – COOK – CREATE AT A CHARMING BOUTIQUE B&B IN TAORMINA

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TOIA is an Oxford-based cultural association for those VICE-CHAIR: Dott.ssa. Luciana John, interested in any aspect of Italy and its culture in the broadest 6 Chalfont Road, Oxford OX2 6TH sense: language, art and architecture, travel, politics, history, Email: [email protected] literature, music, food and wine, or other. No knowledge of Italian is required to enjoy its diverse programme of events. SECRETARY: Spencer Gray, , Great Clarendon Street, The annual subscription is £15 renewable each November Oxford, OX2 6DP (£23 for couples, £6 for students under 30, and £6 for Email: [email protected] members living more than 40 miles from Oxford). Further information, with an application form, is available from the TREASURER & CURATOR OF THE ROWE TRUST: Membership Secretary or downloadable from our website: Dott.ssa. Luciana John, www.toia.co.uk. The TOIA Magazine is published three times 6 Chalfont Road, Oxford OX2 6TH Email: [email protected] a year. Members and non-members alike are welcome to attend our events; membership brings with it benefts of MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: Dott. Dante Ceruolo, reduced entry charges, a termly copy of the magazine and University of Oxford Language Centre, you will be supporting a non-proft organisation promoting 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT all things Italian. Email: [email protected]

WEBSITE CONTACT: http://toia.co.uk/contact/ We are delighted to announce that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and CNH Industrial have generously MAGAZINE CONTACT: [email protected] agreed to sponsor your new-look TOIA Magazine.

TOIA Events: at a glance

23 JANUARY Film, Fuocoammare, Lecture Theatre, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, 7.30 p.m.

31 JANUARY Lecture, Botticelli Reimagined, Dr Ana Debenedetti, The Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St. Anne’s College, 7.30 for 8.00 p.m.

9 FEBRUARY The Dorothy Rowe Memorial Lecture, Cesare Beccaria and his Context, Professor Renato Pasta, The Grove Auditorium, Magdalen College, 5.00 p.m.

15 FEBRUARY Lecture, Hannah Kinney and Ben Kehoe, Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, Christ Church, 7.30 for 8.00 p.m.

23 FEBRUARY Lecture, The Roman Art of Dying, Dr Paul Roberts, The Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St. Anne’s College, 7.30 for 8.00 p.m.

Special preview: TOIA events forthcoming in the Trinity Term, Gavin Hewitt (Chief Correspondent, BBC), 11th May, and internationally acclaimed author Simonetta Agnello Hornby, 23rd May.

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