Tag Archives: Italy

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Postcard Version

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I sent this card to my brother Jim in December 1994, on the day that we visited Windsor Castle.

The British postmark is where it should be. The USPS thoughtlessly postmarked the image. Nice going, USPS. Just another example of disrespecting postcards.

As this account of the 1992 Windsor Castle fire says, only two of the castle’s artworks were destroyed by the fire, not including the one depicted on the card, “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (Cristofano Allori, 1613) which was part of the Royal Collection at Windsor. It still is.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about Allori or the painting. The Royal Collection Trust notes: “According to his biographer Baldinucci, Allori painted this work in part as an autobiographical account of his love affair with Maria de Giovanni Mazzafirri, which ended badly. The figure of Judith, Baldinucci claimed, resembles ‘La Mazzafirra,’ the servant in the background her mother, and the severed head of Holofernes is a portrait of the artist himself.”

I had seen “Judith I” (Gustav Klimt, 1901) in Vienna earlier that year, and of course the story of Judith came up in my studies, but I also didn’t really know how popular Judith was in artistic depictions. This I found out later. Nothing like a story of deception, a fetching feme, a drunken fool and a beheading to inspire art, I guess.

As for the work at Windsor, most recently — as in, last week — I read how it came to be in the Royal Collection. Acquired by Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga collection, Mantua, the trust says, which lead me to read further about the Gonzaga collection. If I had heard about it before, and I might had, I’d forgotten.

The long and short of it is that the House of Gonzaga, after much effort, put together a splendid art collection, only to sell it when they needed cash — to King Charles in the late 1620s, well before that monarch’s grim fate, in a deal facilitated by one Daniel Nijs.

The lesson here? Postcards are educational.

The Leaning Tower of Niles

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We were in Niles, Illinois, on Sunday, which you might call a north-northwest suburb. It’s also a close-in suburb, since it has a border with Chicago along Touhy Ave. at one point.

On the Niles side of that road stands the Leaning Tower of Niles, which was built, unlike the one in Italy, to lean on purpose. I’d seen it before, decades ago, but Yuriko hadn’t. So we took a look.Leaning Tower of Niles Leaning Tower of Niles

“In 1932, industrialist and inventor Robert Ilg constructed a recreational park for his employees,” the Encyclopedia of Chicago says. “Although the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilating Co., later Ilg Industries, was located in Chicago, Ilg lived in Niles.

“He installed two swimming pools and a water tower which he hid behind a half-size replica of Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. In 1960, the Ilg family turned over part of the park property to the Leaning Tower Young Men’s Christian Association. The tower has since been restored and is a symbol of the community. In 1991, Niles and Pisa became sister cities.”

At one time, you could take tours of the interior, but not now. The tower has bells, since it’s a replica of a campanile, but we didn’t hear them ring. Its restoration, like that of the tower in Pisa, probably means that it’s stable, like the tower in Pisa. Still, it’s a little unnerving, standing near that lean.Leaning Tower of Niles

It also makes me want to see the original. At twice the height of the one in Niles, that’s got to be impressive. And maybe a little unnerving, too.

Paestum 1983

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One more card, depicting Paestum, which I visited on July 20, 1983. The postcard dates from the early 1990s, sent to me by an Australian I knew. I’d recommended he visit the place, and he did.Paestum

“Paestum, also known by its original Greek name as Poseidonia, was a Greek colony founded on the west coast of Italy, some 80 km south of modern-day Naples,” says World History Encyclopedia.

“Prospering as a trade centre it was conquered first by the Lucanians and then, with the new Latin name of Paestum, the city became an important Roman colony in the 3rd century BCE. Today it is one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world due to its three excellently preserved large Greek temples.

“Paestum is most famous today for its three magnificent temples which are amongst the best surviving examples of ancient Greek architecture anywhere,” the encyclopedia continues. I’ll vouch for that. They were impressive indeed, and I also delighted in walking along such a well preserved Roman road.

A bonus thing to think about in that text: Lucanians, an Italic people who spoke Oscan. The Roman juggernaut eventually absorbed them, lock, stock and barrel, and I’d say they and their language are even more obscure than the Etruscans.

On the whole, it seems to be a well-written article, but I’m not sure about Paestum being a “most visited archaeological site.” It might not be entirely authoritative, but Travel & Leisure published a list in 2012 regarding the most-visited ancient ruins. Paestum doesn’t make the cut; the closest places are Pompeii and Herculaneum.

My own experience was that Steve and I had the place to ourselves on that summer afternoon — the same summer when we encountered a well-populated Pompeii. Of course, those recollections are decades old, but I suspect even now people don’t show up at Paestum in any great numbers, but rather go to Pompeii as always.

Clichéd the term might be, the beaten path is a very real phenomenon in mass travel, with its own discontents. The odd thing is that you don’t have to go very far or think that hard to find marvels away from the path.

Dolce Far Niente and All That

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Here’s an interesting list of words, if accurate, or even if not, and I suspect that’s the case for some of them (but I can’t know). Dolce far niente is a worthwhile concept: pleasant idleness, or the joy of doing nothing.

Such lists now appear periodically on line, and I believe they hark back to a pre-Internet book called They Have a Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases by Howard Rheingold (1988).

I have a copy of it around somewhere, bought fairly new. I don’t remember any of the words in it, except the concept of a ponte day. “Bridge” day in Italian, meaning a day off between the weekend and a holiday, an especially useful concept in that country since Italy doesn’t have a version of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, and holidays can fall mid-week.

I also remember the author appearing on the radio show Whad’ya Know? Maybe in 1989. I didn’t listen to it every week in those days, but fairly often. I understand that it ran as a radio show until 2016, and now exists as a podcast.

Just before Christmas 1989, I went to a broadcast of the show when it was in Chicago, at the Blackstone Theatre (these days, the Merle Reskin Theatre). Remarkably, I can listen to it again if I want. So far, I haven’t.

Today I was near the Robert O. Atcher Municipal Center, not far from where we were yesterday. Atcher, besides being mayor of Schaumburg from 1959 to 1975, was a successful country musician.

The trees are just beginning to turn.

Schaumburg in the fall

Schaumburg in the fallClose to the Atcher Center are flowers. We’re in the narrow window when the trees are coloring up, yet some flowers are still blooming.
Schaumburg in the fall While on the grounds, I noticed a memorial I’d never noticed before. According to various news reports, it’s been there some years — how did I miss it? A plaque for a Schaumburg resident, René LeBeau, who died awfully young.
René LeBeau memorialI must have heard about the crash of United 232 when it happened, but I had to read about it to remember. Quite a harrowing story. It’s a wonder anyone survived.

Keith Jarrett, Piazza del Campidoglio

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July 16, 1983, was quite a day for me. In the morning my friend Steve and I visited the Castel Sant’Angelo (the Mausoleum of Hadrian), followed by an afternoon at the Vatican. As in, the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and finally St. Peter’s itself, including a climb to the dome.

That should have been enough for any day, but at some point, Steve spotted a poster advertising an outdoor concert by Keith Jarrett that very evening at the Piazza del Campidoglio. I would have blown it off, having only a faint notion of who he was, but Steve knew more and insisted we go. It was standing room only.

Remarkably, I found a recording of that concert on YouTube.

The recording is about 25 minutes long. Not because whoever recorded it didn’t capture it all, but because right in the middle of things, the known-to-be-prickly Jarrett — maybe bothered by the persistent ambient noise of the setting — stormed off, never to return.

Italian 50 Lira, 1951

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If this banknote could talk, I’d imagine it would say, “We just lost a major war and can barely afford such luxuries as currency.”
Italy, 1951. Small in value — 50 lira, or the equivalent of about 8 U.S. cents, at least as of the mid-50s, which is when my parents picked it up in change. Must adjust for inflation, however, so theoretically in today’s money that many lira is the equivalent of a whopping 75 U.S. cents, or about 0.68 euros. Apparently this note and the 100-lira were replaced by coins not much later in the 1950s.

The Italian lira was a famously small currency. I checked the 1983 exchange rate not long ago, and found that the lira gradually lost ground to the dollar that year. In July, when I was in country, it was about 1,500 lira to the dollar.

I recorded a few prices in the diary I kept that summer, noting (for example) that the admission to the Forum was L 4,000, or about $2.60, which seemed reasonable (and would be about $6.70 now). I wondered how much the price has been jacked up since then. But I didn’t have to wonder long. I looked it up, and now it’s 12 euros, or about $13.20, though that includes admission to the Colosseum as well. I don’t remember whether I paid separately for that, or at all.

The note is also small in size. Interestingly, exactly four inches long and two-and-a-half inches tall. Odd, I would have thought that the sides measure evenly in centimeters rather than inches.

The Merchant of Venice

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On Saturday Ann and I went to the North Side of Chicago to the Pride Arts Center to see The Merchant of Venice as performed on a small stage by Invictus Theatre Co., which did a first-rate job.

Besides enjoying the steady stream Shakespearean turns of phrase — as with any of his works — by seeing that play, we were also dipping our toes into the unending argument about how to interpret the play and especially Shylock.

The modern urge is to want Shylock to be sympathetic, and he is sometimes, such as in his righteous anger. Yet sometimes he’s not, as when he bemoans not his lost daughter, but the money she took with her. I doubt that Elizabethan audiences concerned themselves much with understanding Shylock, however nuanced Shakespeare made him. They just were looking to be entertained, and probably booing and hissing at Shylock was fully part of that.

But we bring centuries of further history with us when we see the play. Invictus referenced this explicitly by setting the action in Fascist Italy, with costumes specific to that period — including the stylish dresses of upper-class women of the time, but also blackshirts. The setting added an extra layer of menace to the situation Shylock found himself in, making him easier to sympathize with.

Also emphasized: Shylock as an outsider. Joseph Beal, who did a fine turn with the part, played it with a Yiddish accent, which might not have meant anything to Venetians of 1600 or even 1938, but which marks him apart from the rest of the cast to our ears.

There are comic elements in the play, of course, some of which actually were funny, especially when Portia’s suitors mulled which box to pick to win her hand. A young actor named Jack Morsovillo briefly stole the show as the comic Arragon in that scene. Though it wasn’t all that funny, the play also featured the comic conceit of two men unable to recognize their wives simply because they were pretending to be men.

In this production, a silent addition marked the end of the play. Jessica, the daughter who abandoned Shylock, emerges on one side of the stage, looking miserably torn about the decision she’s made. Shylock emerges on the other side of the stage, looking at her. Are they going to reconcile? Quarrel? Before anything is said, two blackshirts come from behind Shylock, grab him and take him away.

Quite an ending, even if appended for a modern audience, for a play that’s technically a comedy. So the production was squarely in this new(ish) tradition — since the 19th century, I believe — of making Shylock more victim than monster, but hardly all victim. Well done, Invictus.

Getting Around Europe, Summer 1983

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June 3, English Channel

Woke and had a good breakfast at our Harvich [England] B&B. After some confusion caught a bus to the Parkeston Quay, where we had no trouble boarding a huge ferry, the Prinz Oberon. It had five decks, with shops and restaurants for the elite, a cafeteria for the everyone else. We ate in the cafeteria — I had some industrial white fish — and then watched a sweet and sour Bert Reynolds movie, Best Friends, in the ship’s tiny movie house. As usual, Bert Reynolds can’t act.

Afterward Rich and I had a talk with a 10-year-old English boy named John, who knew all sorts of dirty jokes, and told us them. He had his Dutch mother with him, who habitually closed one eye when she talked, which was mostly about the perils of Amsterdam. Things aren’t what they used to be, everybody’s nasty now, etc.

June 16, Lüneburg, West Germany, to Copenhagen

At 12:30, Rich, Steve and I went to the youth travel agency and they told us, and we somehow understood, that the next train to Copenhagen was in 50 minutes or so. We bought tickets and dashed off to the bahnhof. And I mean dashed — Rich was worried about getting lost on the way and Steve had to meet us there, because he had to meet French Girl for a moment about something or other. I wonder that we ever got on the train, but we did.

For a while we were on the wrong car. Only some of the cars are put on the ferry, like a snake swallowing mice. One of the conductors told us that, and we went to the right car with a few minutes to spare. The crossing was brief, but we didn’t know that, so we ordered lunch. We had to eat fast.

Arrived in Copenhagen, spent some time figuring the subway out, then rode to part way toward a hostel we knew to be nearly out of town. Then we walked the rest of the way, only to find they had no space. But the kindly clerk at the hostel recommended another place that did have room — near the main train station we had just come from. We took a bus back into the city. Beds were available at the close-in hostel.

July 1, Lüneburg to Bremen

Rode a morning train from Lüneburg to Hamburg-Harburg. Some punkish fellows sat across from me: colorful pants & leather jackets with steel studs & short, almost crewcut hair with a mandatory earring each. One wore a digital watch.

At Hamburg-Harburg, I had 40 minutes to wait. I met a fellow, more conventionally dressed and only a little older than I am, who spoke British English so well I wasn’t sure whether he was British or German for a few minutes. Turned out he was from near Lübeck. His book for the ride was an English-language edition of The Lord of the Rings. The German translation, he told me, is “rubbish.” We talked about a number of other things as well. He told me he didn’t like the prospect of Pershing IIs stationed in West Germany, but he thought they were necessary.

July 14, Vienna to Rome

In the afternoon, we boarded our train. In my compartment was a family of four Hungarians and an Italian. Slept on a top bunk from 10 to 7 or so. Sometime in the night we crossed the border and so I woke in Italy. By that point no one had asked for a passport or a ticket. Arrived Rome at about 2. No one ever did ask for a passport, but the conductor eventually got around to checking my ticket.

July 22, Campania, Italy

Steve and I boarded the bus to Avellino in mid-morning yesterday and I remember having a fine ride – no hint of things to come. The Campanian scenery was pleasant, a lot of rolling countryside, though the air was more polluted than I would have expected. We got to Avellino, expecting to find a station, but instead a large parking lot full of buses functioning as the station. We asked a driver which bus connected with our destination, Mirabella, the small town where Steve has relatives, and he told us where to wait for it.

I felt nauseated in the hot sun waiting for the connecting bus. That bus wasn’t especially late — a notable thing in Italy — and my condition got worse during the bouncing, twist-and-turn ride deeper into the country (for Mirabella is a very small town). We arrived at a street corner in Mirabella, and immediately after unloading our packs from under the bus, I said to Steve, “I think I’m going to throw up.” Which I did right away. First on the sidewalk, then another wave in the gutter.

July 30, Florence to Innsbruck

The midnight train out of Italy was, of course, crowded, but at least we found seats. We had to disturb a mother and daughter already asleep to get those seats, and then more people boarded the car. After Bologna, the rest of the night passed more quickly than I expected in a fitful sleep sitting up, and by daylight I woke up tired in the Italian Alps. It was a good sight after the flatter, dustier parts of Italy we’d passed through earlier. Arrived Innsbruck about 9. Mucked around the station a while and then walked no short distance to a hostel run by a small church.

Aug 7, Down The Rhine

Today we took a slow boat down the Rhine. As good as it sounds. We started out this morning on the train to Mainz. Unfortunately, we forgot to change trains, and so ended up in Frankfort. But no problem. A friendly Ⓘ staffer helped us find a train to Rüdesheim, where we waited for the boat to Koblenz.

At this point, the Rhine cuts through steep hills, all very green and many overgrown with grapes. Castles stand on a few of the hills. We sat on the pea-green deck under a warm afternoon sun, watching the hills and castles pass by and listening to the other passengers, mostly children at play on the deck. Now that was an afternoon.

Wine Label Art

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As I’ve mentioned before, I like the idea of wine better than wine itself, which pretty much goes for any intoxicant. One reason to like wine is wine bottles, and one reason to like wine bottles is the label.

Here’s a collection of labels used by Château Mouton Rothschild for more than 70 years. The winery has been hiring an artist a year to create its labels, with some interesting results.

But you don’t have to go all the way to the Médoc to see interesting wine labels. I can do that at a grocery store a few miles away.

This one caught my eye recently.
I don’t think Franklin counts as a Federalist. Sure, he supported the ratification of the Constitution, but in terms of participation in politics, Franklin found himself at a major disadvantage by the time the Federalists became a force in U.S. politics. Namely, he was dead.

There are plenty of actual Federalists who could be on a wine label. Famously, Alexander Hamilton or John Adams. Less famously, but more interestingly, DeWitt Clinton, Rufus King or Charles Pinckney. Well, maybe not Pinckney, since he owned a lot of slaves, but King was an abolitionist before it was cool.

Turns out, the winery did put Hamilton on a different bottle. Along with Washington (he of no faction!) and, incongruously, Lincoln. People might get the wrong idea if you called your product Republican Wine, but there’s always Whig Wine. Lincoln was originally one, after all, and it opens up the possibility of Daniel Webster or Horace Greeley on a bottle.

I saw this and thought: Botero.
I couldn’t find any evidence that Botero himself did the Bastardo label, though as Château Mouton Rothschild shows, artists are hired for such work. Shucks, you don’t even have to be a painter to shill for inexpensive wine.

Another artist-created label.
By one Victo Ngai, whom I’d never heard of. Raised in Hong Kong and current resident of California. She’s done a number of labels for Prophecy; probably a good gig. Just another one of the things you can learn poking around grocery stores.

’50s Euro Bottles

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Out in our garage, there’s an accumulation of bottles. Collection’s too dignified a word. Some of them have already been photographed for posting, generally for the oddity of their labels.

My parents brought home some bottles from their time in Europe in the mid-1950s. Some time ago, I decided to take pictures of them at my mother’s house.

A Chianti. I assume Rigatti is the brand. For a Chianti to be a Chianti, it must be produced in the Chianti region and be made from at least 80% Sangiovese grapes, Vinepair says. Also: “Almost none of the Chianti sold today comes in the classic straw basket.”

Clearly not true 60-odd years ago.A grappa. The brand label is partly missing, looks like. According to Rome File, the main ingredient of grappa is pomace, which consists of the grape skins, seeds and stalks that are left over from winemaking.

And something German.

I didn’t know this until I looked it up. Steinhäger is a type of German gin, flavored with juniper berries. It’s local to Steinhagen, North Rhine-Westphalia.

It makes me glad to think that my parents, or at least my father, sought out a few local liquors while in Europe. Not only that, they kept these aesthetic bottles as no-extra-charge souvenirs.