Painting of the Week - Perugino in Florence

The church of Santa Maria Maddalena de Pazzi is easily missed through its unassuming doorway on Borgo Pinti. The door gives way to a delightful courtyard, built to the designs of Giuliano da Sangallo from 1481 onwards. Developing the traditional Florentine monastic vernacular of arched porticoes, Giuliano adds a dash of the Greco-Roman, replacing the arches with a flat entablature. The columns are surmounted by a charming series of Ionic capitals with rather eccentric drooping scrolls. In spring the courtyard is filled with daisies.

This area of Florence is a welcome relief from the mayhem of the Piazza del Duomo, though not quite as rural as it would have been in the 15th Century. It was just one block north of here that Giuliano da Sangallo was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici to design a monumental villa (never built) and it was a neighbourhood popular with many sixteenth century artists: the area between the Borgo Pinti and SS Annunziata was home to Andrea del Sarto, Piero di Cosimo, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini (who cast his Perseus in a house near the Teatro della Pergola) and Perugino, whose painting we are on our way to see.

When you enter the church, make your way towards the high altar. At the end of the left wall is the entrance to the Sacristy, where you can leave a little offering and ask to see the ‘Crocifissione del Perugino’ in the Chapter House of the original order here, the Cistercians. On the walls of the corridor before you descend are some pictures honouring Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, the mystic Carmelite sister who was canonized by Urban VIII in 1626 and to whom the church was rededicated. You now pass through the crypt and up the other side into the Chapter House itself.


There are few places in Florence that can claim to possess such a peaceful and spiritual atmosphere as this simple room, unadorned except for Perugino’s Crucifix filling the end wall, and the small scene of Christ bending down from the cross to embrace St Bernard. The immediate impact is one of space – the wall opened out like a window into an idyllic landscape, the figures forming a pair of lines that meet at the crucified figure of Jesus whose cross hovers somewhere between our space and theirs. The mood is by no means tragic or even melancholic, rather one of repose and contemplation. Perugino himself was not, according to Vasari, a particularly religious man:

Pietro was a man of very little religion, and he could never be made to believe in the immortality of the soul – nay, with words in keeping with his head of granite, he rejected most obstinately every good suggestion. He placed all his hopes in the goods of fortune, and he would have sold his soul for money.

Nonetheless, no one was more attuned to the sensations of grace and purity in the natural world, especially landscape and female faces. It seems these were his own preoccupations after all, which were neither to be lost upon his most talented pupil, Raphael (Vasari continues):

He earned great riches; and he both bought and built houses in Florence, and acquired much settled property both at Perugia and at Castello della Pieve. He took a most beautiful young woman to wife, and had children by her; and he delighted so greatly in seeing her wearing beautiful head-dresses, both abroad and at home, that it is said he would often tire her head with his own hand. Finally, having reached the age of seventy-eight, Pietro finished the course of his life at Castello della Pieve where he was honourably buried, in the year 1524.

The cheek of it

I recently spent 3 hours in conversation with a Roman coach driver named Alessandro over that most passionate and imflamatory subject, cooking spaghetti. He insisted (and he is not alone here) that Roman pasta dishes such as Carbonara and Amatriciana cannot be made outside Rome because of the water used to boil the pasta. I did not have the opportunity to test this theory at the time, but am determined to do so, as and when it becomes possible to carry several jerry cans of regional water around Italy.

This notion that regional dishes can only be prepared in their own regions is common throughout Italy, and is symptomatic of the country’s notorious divisions. It is a reminder of the ultimate Italian identity crisis, that the nation forged during the Risorgimento of the 1860s was an artificial construct: local affiliations and rivalries more pronounced than in other European countries. So making Roman pasta could be as hard in Naples as it could in New York.

The one vital regional ingredient in three key Roman dishes is guanciale di maiale, the cured pork cheek that features in Pasta alla Gricia, Amatriciana and Carbonara. It is readily confused with the pancetta (bacon from the belly) used all over Italy, while the correct addition of pecorino is usually supplanted by parmesan – the former is made from sheep’s milk and has a slightly sharper tang.

To make guanciale the cheek is washed in wine then seasoned with salt and pepper and left for forty days to cure, then hung to dry. Pasta alla Gricia is said to be the oldest Roman pasta, before the addition of tomatoes to make Amatriciana (the arrival of the tomato in Italy is another story) and eggs for Carbonara. As I am reliably informed by the proprietor of the Ristorante Sant’Ana in Rome, ancient Roman soldiers would carry a piece of cured guanciale in their packs and eat pieces with stale bread moistened with water. Fortunately the dish has come on some way since then, but is still a masterpiece of simplicity.

Gelato in Rome

Undoubtedly one of life's great pleasures is eating Italian ice-cream, but nothing can compare with discovering that Rome's finest is right on the doorstep as I found this afternoon.

Finding 'the best gelato in Rome' is something of a hackneyed endeavour.  Traditionally the palm of victory falls between Giolitti (operating since 1890 on the Via dei Uffici del Vicario, just north of the Pantheon) and San Crispino (the original is near San Giovanni but now more conveniently it has branches near the Trevi Fountain in Via Panetteria and a new one by the Pantheon in Piazza Maddalena). 

I have to confess that I've never been terribly thrilled by either, whilst the groaning tubs of whippy sludge on view at the likes of Blue Ice and Della Palma (where quantity is extolled at the expense of all else) are positively horrifying.  The truth is, the myth of Italian ice-cream, that somehow just by having the name 'Gelato' it is superior to all else, plays into the hands of anyone who happens to sell cold, sweet creamy stuff near a major site.  So it's no surprise that to find something special one has to head off the beaten track to residential Rome.

The Gelateria dei Gracchi of Alberto Manassei sells organic, preservative-free, seasonal produce in a shop that could not be more discreet.  The emphasis here is on fantastic ice-cream and not designer statements, yet there are some fairly wondrous combinations - ricotta and pear, coffee and anise or pear and caramel.  Their pistacchio is famously good and almost everyone inside is ordering it.  It's all utterly delicious, and what's more, when you ask for a small cup you actually get a small cup.  Heaven.  

Sicilian Baroque

With the publication this year of Maria Giuffre’s The Baroque Architecture of Sicily (Thames and Hudson) it’s time to restore (or perhaps establish) the reputation of one Rosario Gagliardi, the under-admired master of the late Baroque. His work is best admired in the purpose-built Baroque cities of South Eastern Sicily, notably Modica, Noto and Ragusa, and there is no better time to visit – these towns were appointed UNESCO heritage sites in 2002 and a huge programme of restoration have been carried out. While a visit a couple of years ago would have been characterised by swathes of scaffolding, today the buildings are revealed with all their crisp details renewed in richly coloured (yet easily corroded) golden sandstone.

These towns presented one of Architecture’s most glorious opportunities – following the devastating earthquake of 1693, the towns of Scicli, Noto Ragusa and Modica were completely rebuilt, in the case of Noto on a totally new site. The undertaking was of a staggering scale, a phoenix-like triumph that could not be further from the grizzly utilitarian rebuilding experienced after the war. Gagliardi was responsible for a fair number of the towns’ churches and the results are amongst the finest examples of what an artist can achieved when untramelled by compromise and building from scratch.

So, why has he been neglected by art historians? The reasons are fairly prosaic, I’m afraid, though revealing. First, the geographical – Gagliardi, a Syracusan by birth, never left Siciliy. Given the amount of work he (and his many contemporaries) received close to home it is no surprise, but one wonders what impact it would have upon his reputation if he had worked in Rome. There was no sense in which this would represent a stylistic rejection of parochial Southern architecture. It simply means his work was less widely seen.

Second, and most pertinent from an art historical perspective, is the date – Gagliardi was working in the 18th Century. When art historians talk about the Baroque, it is generally in reference to the early part of the 17th Century, the time at which Bernini and Borromini were transforming Rome. Unfortunately, art historians can often have one-track-minds, and by the 1700s and the severe curtailment of the power of the papacy, interest in Italy has faded somewhat in favour of Northern Europe and the glories of the Enlightenment. What good are wildly extravagant churches when man is now at the centre of the universe?

But Gagliardi endures, and the experience of standing before his churches such as San Giorgio in Modica and San Giorgio (popular man) in Ragusa is unforgettable. Particularly for someone who travelled so little (although ideas could be transmitted through drawings), his imagination is immensely ripe, dramatically playing with forms and space, all executed with the most acute attention to detail and drawing. The South’s answer to Borromini.

Metro C – Piazza Venezia revisited

The tantalising prospect of digging up parts of the centre of Rome to see what lies beneath is a reality at the moment for the archaeologists at work on the new Metro C line that will cut through the centre of the ancient city. This is the third Metro line, the first (confusingly named line B) opened in 1955 for the World Exhibition. The current stretch will head through the archaeological minefield, the ‘centro storico’, and it’s no surprise that this project more than any other has been given an ever-distanced string of completion dates.

The most apparent area of activity is the Piazza Venezia, transformed into Rome’s makeshift centrepiece after the city became Italy’s capital in 1870, framing the vast monument to Victor Emmanuel II. Many of the finds here are rather young for Rome – the remains of the 17th century palaces that had to make way for the new square, notably the Palazzo Torlonia and the wing of the Palazzo Venezia known as the ‘Palazzetto’ (little palace) on the Ripresa dei Barberi, the street at the end of the Corso where the riderless horses of Rome’s famous races would slow down through a series of hanging curtains that would stop them careering into the palace wall. These races are best remembered by Gericault’s series of paintings of the subject.

The current upheaval is a reminder of the shocks Rome received during the 19th Century building work in the city, described in particularly scathing tones by the great travel writer Augustus Hare. In the introduction to his glorious work, Walks in Rome, he writes:

Twenty-two years of Sardinian rule – 1870-1892 – have done more for the destruction of Rome than all the invasions of the Goths and Vandals …. The old charm is gone for ever, the whole aspect of the city is changed, and the picturesqueness of former days must now be sought in such obscure corners as have escaped the hands of the spoiler.

Strong words, Augustus, and one dreads to think what he would say about Rome today, but the good news is that the obscure corners still remain unspoiled, and the thrill of finding them is possibly more exciting than ever before, with the added reward or escaping the hordes of people and traffic, and not simply the excesses of 19th Century architecture.

Launching...

My work in travel has tended to focus on two age groups - those who have yet to start working and those who have retired, the latter representing the most-travelling demographic. This represents something of the appeal of group travel, which for many means lack of independence and the need to rely upon someone else's help - a situation that does not apply to young professionals. Technologically savvy, more inclined to risk, and unwilling to travel with strangers are all good reasons to steer clear of group travel. So why is it so many friends ask, "when are you going to do a tour for us?"

Well, what is the solution? Is there a recipe for group travel that will appeal to young professionals? It's certainly true that at our age we are time-poor but wish to find the best of things in the places that we visit (restaurants, hotels, and sights off the beaten track) that require time and experience to search out. The internet seems like the perfect tool for finding such things, but it is notoriously difficult to find any quality, independent reviews (for free, at least). Just try typing a hotel name into Google, and see the tripe that appears.

So I shall be posting a few titbits here, but not so much that I put myself out of work.