Look up

The advice, “don’t forget to look up,” was the best tip I got before I spent a month cruising the Louvre in 2014. It changed my traveling art pilgrim’s perspective. It made my heart open and my soul expand.
It was a euphoric experience in Rome. I was awed and seduced by the glory overhead, revelations just waiting to be noticed. When artistic geniuses put forth their best effort into visual redemption, they deliver. Spare a thought for what it takes to create this work, the skill and dexterity that has to be married to the physical challenge of working upside down.
Sometimes it’s a specific element, like trompe l’oeil, that makes the magic happen.

Sometimes it’s pure pattern, color, and light.

Sometimes it all about showing off temporal power and might; the doves from the coat of arms of the Doria Pamphilj dynasty or the battle victories of the Colonna.

I am partial to the stories of gods and goddesses rollicking in sylvan glades, Hercules in action, and astrological symbols (hey, I’m a former hippie).

It’s different from works on canvas. I never warmed up to Vasari (painter and author of Lives of the Artists) until I saw his frescoed ceilings in the Vatican. It was a revelation. The stiff pomposity of his large canvas works was nowhere to be found in the gauzy-edged, joyful overhead renderings. Biblical stories are a favorite theme. I don’t know how much time the popes spent on their back, but I am sure their mistresses were grateful.

I’ve always associated the notion of heaven with gazing up whether it’s a view of blue skies, sunlight streaming in ribbons through the clouds, or a night sky strewn with stars.
We instinctively raise up that which we venerate. There’s reason for thrones and podiums and altars; to remind you that you are in the presence of something greater than yourself. There’s a reason people cram the Vatican Museums to bursting and all surge in one direction; the Sistine Chapel. Imagine, in a world lit only by fire you could look up and see light and color and beauty instead of darkness.

Mirrors and binoculars don’t work for me, but I have a few successful strategies for the ubiquitous crick-in-your-neck issue.

1. Stop, look down and to the left and right. Pause. Go back for more.
2. Take photos where permitted. Your phone on selfie mode works great! You can take excellent photos without doing a backbend.
3. Lean on a stone wall or marble pillar, arch your back, and tilt your chin up. If the wall surfaces are frescoed, don’t do this.
4. Find a pew, slide down until your neck is supported, and stare to your heart’s content.

Sometimes the painting overhead is a culmination of a space entirely given over to beauty and inspiration. Visual hope. When it’s done right, it’s full immersion, like when the Baptists go down to the river, and you are forever changed.

Rome: The Good, the Bad, the Heartbreaking.
The Heartbreaking
Look down.
I know I’ve insisted on looking up. Having your breath taken away by the extreme beauty of Italian ceilings is an experience that never gets old.
But one day I happened to look down as I opened the front doors of my apartment on Via Germanico, 96. I saw three brass squares the size of cobblestones, set slightly askew in the sidewalk.
Curious, I looked closer. A few minutes later, I felt my heart crack. A teaspoon of information was on each one; a name, three dates, two places.

Qui Abitava
Giuseppe Efrati
Nato 1880
Arrestato 16.10.1943
Deportato
Auschwitz
Assassinato 23.10.1943

I can only recognize a few words in Italian, but I understood this immediately. Arrested, deported, assassinated. I barely needed the dates to know what I was looking at. Auschwitz is synonymous with Hell in every language. In one blink, I’d seen a Holocaust memorial, powerful and painful. Here, right here, these people lived, just as I lived here now, and they were taken from here to be slaughtered.

Qui Abitava
Clara Baroccio Efrati
Nata 1891
Arrestata 18.10.1943
Deportata
Auschwitz
Morta
in luogo ignoto
in data ignoto

I had to Google Translate the ending of Clara Baroccio Efrati’s brass square

Dead
In an unknown place
On an unknown date

The third square belonged to their son.
Qui Abitava
Augusto Efrati
Nata 1916
Arrestata 16.4.1944
Deportata
Auschwitz
Morta 19.3.1945
Gross rosen

It ended with another phrase I didn’t understand; Gross rosen. Big Roses? What could that mean? Google knew. It was the center of an industrial complex and the administrative hub of a network of at least 97 subcamps. If you saw the movie Schindler’s List, it was set there.

What did the writing on the three brass squares tell me? A 63-year-old man and 52-year-old woman – husband and wife (most likely) and their 29-year-old son, who shared the name of an emperor of Rome. The couple was arrested in October 43, he first, she two days later. The young man was not captured until April 44, seven months later. I wonder, was he in hiding, or in denial? Unable to escape or unwilling to leave his home? The father died a week after deportation, the mother’s death is at a place and at a date unknown. The son survived for 11 months after his arrest.

I don’t know which fragment of information is more devasting. The two days the wife is left behind, or the day they knock at the door again? The mother’s anonymous death and unmarked grave, or the seven months the son spent in grief and dread? Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets Jan 27, 1945 but not soon enough for the son. He dies two months after that date, after eight months of forced slavery and unspeakable misery, exterminated by the Nazi regime.

I began to see these brass plaques in memoriams in front of doors in other Roman streets. They never failed to crack my heart wide open.They commemorated  Jews and patriots. The memorial for Don Pietro Pappagallo was a Resistance priest killed in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre in 1944 and whose character featured in Rossellini’s movie Open City

I learned more about the origins of these miniature memorials, called stolpersteins, via Google, Wikipedia and NPR.

“The stolperstein art project was initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, and is still ongoing. It aims at commemorating individual persons at exactly the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror,  euthanasia, eugenics, was deported to a concentration or extermination, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of 31 January 2017, over 56,000 stolperstein have been laid in 22 European countries, making the stolperstein project the world’s largest decentralized memorial.”

Rome: The Good, The Bad, The Heartbreaking.
The Bad.
Roma è schifoso. Seriously. Rome is not just dirty, it’s nasty.  It’s filthy. Dumpsters overflow with garbage, stinking puddles of ooze spreading out from the base.I don’t know why my souvenirs of Rome didn’t include Cholera. Bags of garbage are left on street corners for city pick up that may or may not happen. Seagulls, dogs, and other scavengers* rip them open and scatter the contents. I’m not bitching about graffiti or pollution. Litter is everywhere. People drop wrappers, cigarette butts, cans, bottles, and half-eaten pizza on the sidewalk and walk away. Rome’s parks are weedy, trashy and unkempt, overgrown pastures for the homeless. Don’t take my word for it. Watch this April 2017  footage of poor neglected Piazza de Vittorio. If you want to cut to the to the rubbish chase, start at 2:43.

Locals tell me it’s an intractable situation created by city employee corruption and/or the Mafia. The whole system needs to be scrapped and redesigned. Good luck with that.

In April, Rome mayor Virginia Raggi, elected on a promise to solve the garbage crisis, announced a 12-point plan to clean up the eternal city.
My favorite unintentionally hilarious point is redefining garbage as “post-usage materials.” Poof! Garbage no longer exists, so there’s no longer a crisis.
One glimmer of hope – recycling is a fundamental Roman skill. Roman builders scavenged ‘spolia’ (reusable materials) throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the church re-purposed temples into churches and recycling is the centerpiece of Raggi’s plan.

I doubt a Keep Rome Beautiful PSA will do it, even if they made Michelangelo’s David cry.
However, in a world where smoking can successfully be banned from Italian restaurants, anything is possible. Maybe divine intervention is the way to go. Pray for a miracle. 

*rats

It all funneled down. Forty-eight hours in Rome left to spend, and it was getting harder, not easier, to decide what to do with my last two days. Revisit favorites? Too many candidates, an embarrassment of choices. I had some entry mileage left on the Barberini ticket and my Vatican Patron privileges, but I just wasn’t feeling it.
Instead of bid farewell to La Fornarina, or St George, I chose to do something I haven’t done  – a walk through the Jewish Ghetto, a scrap of Roman real estate where the Chosen people survived despite the best efforts of a hostile world and the machinations of the pope.
The weather was ideal, and I walked and listened to the RomeWalks audio tour; to the stories of persecution, resistance, fortitude, and pride. S Angelo in Pescheria, in the center of the fish market from the 12th century until 1880, was the official church of the Confraternity of Fishmongers. Pope Gregory XIII forced Jews to attend the church and listen to denunciations of their faith. That went on for 200 years.

The octagonal dome of S Maria del Pianto caught my eye.

The Jewish synagogue was built in 1904, after the Papacy fell as a temporal power and the Italian State was created. Assyrian and Babylonian motifs deliberately distinguished it from the domed churches. Palm trees and flowers grew in its verdant side gardens. Sadly for me, it was closed to visitors, along with its museum. No reason was given, and no day when it was expected to reopen.
I watched this row of hydraulic pilars raise and lower like a reverse portcullis. Something both chilling and comforting, guard houses at the entry points, for protection from terrorist activity.

I ducked into Limentani’s, a warren of rooms below ground, filled with crates of Baccarat and Waterford,  Christofle and Spode, Meissen and Portmeirion. I was hoping to find a nice linen tea towel, but no luck.

Ubered to a delicious lunch from Mordi & Vai at the Testaccio market.  I also downed a glass of fresh pressed juices. I bought a handbag/tote, made in Florence, in a muted taupe that matched the suede belt.

Consulted my GoogleMap, and having a few hours to spare, I walked to the Protestant Cemetery, Cimitero Acattolico. I almost didn’t because I was in a melancholy frame of mind. Not the best mood for a city of the dead, even if famous foreign poets (Shelly, Keats) were interred there. But it was so close by, just a few minutes walk away.

Of course, it was one of my favorite places. A tidy, quiet terraced garden protected by ancient Aurelian walls, with wonderful inscriptions on the stones on one end, and the Pyramid of Cestius on the other. Terraced levels, like a vineyard of marble, Someone was sculpting a stone in a small workshop built into the wall. I heard the tapping of a chisel and hammer all afternoon.  Cypresses and pines, orange trees, palms, and wisteria in graceful bloom.  It was more expressions of love and esteem than cries of grief, though there was some of that too.  It makes you want to live so those you leave behind will think this highly of you.
Some of my favorite epitaphs:
Wise, magnanimous, tenderhearted

Let come what will come
God’s will be well come

Excellent in his profession
Modest in self-estimation
endeared to friends by his social virtues
beloved by his family as a
kind husband and tender father

Let the earth be light for you.

Marvelous statuary. I loved both sculpture and inscription of a young Scotsman “Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn…beloved by all who knew him, and most precious to his parents and family, who had sought his health in many foreign climes. He departed this life in Rome, aged 21 years.”

Yes! There’s Maddy! Just what I’d like for my tomb, except I’d be sitting up in bed, leaning back on a pillow and reading. What? They don’t sculpt like that anymore? Right. Back to fabricating reliquaries. Maybe I can work in an etching.
I was surprised to find a marker for a soldier of the Confederacy.

The pyramid was more monumental than I had grasped from photos, and gleaming from a recent cleaning.

I sat down on a bench near the pyramid and drew what I saw – the edge of the monument, the iron and brick fence, the redbud tree in bloom. One of the most restorative and peaceful hours I’ve spent in Rome. I came here to soak up history and art, and here they were, in spades. Plus, English! As I left, I saw a middle-aged couple stood before Keats stone, holding hands, her head leaned on his shoulder in silent reverence. Nice.

Ubered back, day well spent. Time to start packing.

**Thomas Jefferson Page (1808-1899), American explorer, commander of United States Navy expeditions mapping Argentina and Paraguay. He moved to Argentina and then Europe following the Confederate defeat in the Civil War.

Close to the Tiber and only a few doors away from the Napoleonic Museum was the address Google had given me for Museum Praz, Via Zanardelli Giuseppe, 1. Open Thurs 2:30-7:30, Fri 2:30-7:30, Sat 9-1:30.

I recognized the marble entry with three doors as soon as I stepped inside. I’d been here before when I was searching for the entrance to the Napoleon Museum and was sent away by a man at a table in a dark room lined with bookshelves. Which door to choose, the lady or the tiger? I picked the middle door. Same guard, same dim room filled with books. “Dove Museum Praz?” I asked. The man held up a finger for me to wait and called someone, then led me through two rooms he had to unlock, put me in a personal sized elevator and tapped the third-floor button. Once again, there were three doors. The far right door opened, a man beckoned and I entered a small vestibule with a view of a long narrow room crammed floor to ceiling with ornate furniture, mirrors, books, sculpture, and paintings.
A bevy of teenagers whispered and watched me. Hmmm. An adult man explained briskly that I must be escorted by a guide, I could take photos without flash, and there will be no time to sketch. A boy stepped up, and the tour commenced.

I’ll pause here for a quick bio. Professore Mario Praz was an Italian-born writer, Anglicist, and collector. Along with two books on interior design, an autobiographical book The House of Life** and An Illustrated history in Interior Design, he also penned The Romantic Agony, a survey of erotic and morbid themes in European literature. Praz theorized that furnishings were tangible artifacts of social history and that the interior of a home was a representational evocation of the individual that resides in the home, reflecting the character or the personality of the occupant. He called his apartment his archive of experiences and the museum of his soul.

What impression did these rooms give me of his soul? An interestingly eccentric man, straddling the thin line between hoarder and collector.  It’s crammed with oddities, from bas-relief miniature portraits made of painted wax and ornate fans, to musical instruments so peculiar you’re not sure which end the sound comes out of.

He combined Napoleonana and squicky sentimental paintings, like a girl weeping over her dead lapdog.  He had a motif of hot air balloons in his dining room décor. He hung a portrait of a pope over his teenage daughter’s bed. What adolescent girl wouldn’t love that staring down at her at night?
He needle-pointed the upholstery for a sofa with his wife, a pair of swans on a field of butter yellow. Swans mate for life and his marriage ended in divorce after eight years, yet swan iconography is everywhere. Ironic, bitter, or oblivious?
Along with the weirdness there were elegant pieces; large mirrors, chandeliers, inlaid cabinets, English furniture, French bronzes, Russian malachite, Bohemian crystals, German china, landscapes of Italian and European cities, and the portraits of reigning monarchs, from the Bourbons to the Bonaparte family, plus a canopy bed from the Castle of Fontainebleau. It was a quirky assemblage, but that was its chief appeal.

“It had its spring in the France of Louis XV, its summer in the Empire and its languid autumn in the delicious awkwardness of the Biedermeier,“ Praz said. Awkward yes. Delicious, I’m not so sure. Fun to gawk at, most definitely.
The young man walked me around the first room, and pointed out the most impressively weird acquisitions, like this bust of a woman whose hairstyle dates to when recently imported giraffes were all the rage. Seriously.

Three girls followed us and prompted him sotto voce, correcting his English and nudging him to talk about specific items. By the second room, I’d learned they were college students and this was a project for their English language class. There were maybe 15 of them, and they handed me off to each other, like a fire brigade passing a bucket hand to hand. The Mamma in me came out. They were working so diligently. I asked encouraging questions. Sometimes I helped with a word. I pulled out GoogleTranslate when they got stuck. I inquired about their areas of study. I cheered them on.
The student tour guides are what made this morning shine for me. It reminded me of the time I visited the Louvre on a Wednesday night and art students were stationed in the Denon wing to explain the significance of various works of art. I left thoroughly charmed. I asked the man in charge if they did this every Saturday. “Oh no,” he said, “this was a one-time project, a once in a lifetime experience.” He winked.  I left thoroughly charmed.
Long walk back to the hotel, stopping at various stores I’d earmarked via Google to find souvenirs for my family. Not much shopping luck. Cheesy and cheap or just okay stuff that cost a whack. After dinner, I walked down via Urbana to get some of the Fatamorgana gelato and heard a deep-throated bark overhead. I looked up and saw Cerebus.

Tomorrow, the infamous flea market, Porta Portese.

**Cyril Connolly and Edmund Wilson had opinions about his autobiographical book, The House of Life. Wilson praised Praz’s work as a “masterpiece,” Connolly called it “one of the most boring books I have ever read…it’s unbelievably exhausting…it has a bravura of boredom, an audacity of ennui that makes one hardly believe one’s eyes.”  Jeez, Connolly, tell us how you really feel.

Never expected to wake up at a decent hour after a marathon of reading until 3am. I even hung the Do Not Disturb sign on my door, but my eyes popped open at 7:30. I sat in the little lounge/dining area of the hotel, ate my standard breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and pondered where to go.
Usually, the night before I scan my Theory of Everything document, which has every venue on my list. The first section is museums, churches, and monuments/historic sites. The second section lists restaurants and the third is shopping. That pretty much tells you my priorities. This also has the address, website, and days and hour each place is open. This is critical in Italy, land of the eccentric opening/closing times, Lots of churches close from 2-6, and some museums are open Wed-Sun only.
I pick out my top three choices based on proximity, figuring I’ll get to at least two of them. I consider restaurant options in the neighborhood.
This is Italy and the peak times are 1:30-2:30. Most places open around 12:30. If they open earlier than that, you don’t want to eat there. If you get there at 2:30, they may be out of artichokes, the only vegetable in Italy. Ha ha! JK. Don’t order fish before Thursday or after Sunday.
Back to planning, I copy and paste my choices into an email, I add appropriate notes like mail postcards, find ATM, get chocolate.  I can change my mind in the morning about the order, or go in a different direction entirely, but I do better if I have a plan. It’s like having a manuscript to edit. I love putting the travel day puzzle together, but I get lost in possibility and consideration and two hours can go by and I realize I am still in my jammies. Speaking of which, I also put out my clothes the night before, for the same reason.

I decided to go to the Basilica of Santa Maria Del Popolo, to revisit the famous pair of Caravaggio’s; Peter crucified upside down and Saul’s moment of conversion on the road to Damascus. Both showcase virtuoso painting and feature a pair of prominent asses, horse and man.  Caravaggio was a particularly quarrelsome artist, who couldn’t let a real or perceived slight go without a fight, or conceal his contempt for his patrons.

Going back to my planning procedures, here’s the copy/paste of the church listing from my Theory of Everything:
Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, Piazza del Popolo 12, near Porta Pinciana, Rome, Latium, 00186 open Mon–Thurs. 7:15.–12:30 & 4–7 , Fri. / Sat. 7:30 – 7 , Sun. 7:30 -1:30 & 4:30–7:30 www.santamariadelpopolo.it Seven chapels, by Pinturicchio, Raphael, Bernini and Caravaggio.
See what I mean about opening days and times?  Just showing up at a church or museum in Rome is a recipe for disappointment. If no one has told you, the Borghese Gallery, one of the finest collections in the city, is ticketed entry only, for exactly two-hour increments, and fully booked a week or more in advance. I actually wish the Vatican (museums, not the basilica) would do this. As it is now, mornings are like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, with herds of tour groups substituting for careening bovines.

My brain, though functional, was still working in slo-mo, because after the taxi dropped me off at the edge of the piazza, I stood in the center of the piazza, perplexed, trying to figure out up from down on my iPhone’s map, when one of the single rose vendor guys stuck one in my face. Startled,  I batted it away and barked an irritable NO! I knew then I was so sleep-deprived that I didn’t have a working filter and I’d have to watch my temper.
There are three churches in this piazza and when I entered what I thought was a likely door, I found myself in the Carabinieri Comando Provinciale Roma. They ushered me out, politely but firmly. They wore beautifully tailored uniforms and they wore them well.
After three failed attempts I found the right door. The Caravaggios were easy to find, I just looked for a clog of tourists in the artery of the aisle. There was a retractable belt stanchion, and young layman letting through as many people as came back out. That actually makes sense to me. I joined the line and, being solo, got pulled to the front when a single person left, since most of the people were families or couples.
I try to approach each church with ‘soft eyes.’ I picked up that phrase from an episode of The Wire series about looking for evidence at the scene of the crime. Don’t stare hard looking for evidence, unfocus your gaze. Look for what isn’t there. I’ll add, look at the margins and edges. That’s how I found the stone dragon, and how, even though I was distracted by Caravaggio, I didn’t miss the Chigi chapel. Thanks, Raphael and Bernini! Clearly, the Chigis knew what heaven ought to look like, from top;to bottom. On the chapel floor, a winged skeleton held up the Chigi family coat of arms. The Latin inscription Mors aD CaeLos (translation From Death to Heaven) and the capital letters, MDCL, were Roman numerals for 1650, the year the floor was laid. There were different artistic takes on skulls and bones everywhere you looked.

I spent most of the morning there, and paid attention to the edges of the slabs over the tombs beneath the floor. They had a variety of border designs that would translate well to the metal boxes I’m working on.
Next, I walked to a small museum of a single artist, the sculptor Hendrik Christian Anderson, via Pasquale Stanisloa Mancini, 20. Despite two rooms packed with weirdly cheerful figures on a gigantic scale, there was something sad here.

I was the only soul there for an hour and a half. Four staff members guarded a museum that was well cared for but lonesome, like they threw a party but no one came.  Still, it had the happiest baby sculptures in town.
By then I was tired and hungry. I trudged around looking for a taxi stand, but no luck. I finally walked back to Piazza del Popolo and taxied across the city to the Trattoria Vecchia Roma, looking forward to the relaxed atmosphere and welcome I’d enjoyed with my nephew and his family. The woman, so friendly before, scowled, flapped her hands to wave me away, repeating, “No room, no room.”  I suppose the empty tables were reserved.  Luckily, I knew I was only two blocks away from Panella, via Merulana 54. I took a table outside, ordered bean and shrimp soup, and addressed postcards. A thin broth was set before me with head, feelers, and tail waving hello. I channeled my inner NOLA and plunged in. Not bad, but nothing I’d order again. But their pastries… ahhh. I bought three to go, because they were that freaking scrumptious.

Suddenly I  felt as tired as a bag of cement. Walked back to the hotel and fell immediately asleep. When I woke up, I sized photos for this blog and then walked down via Urbana, picked up a personal pan-sized sausage and broccoli pizza from Trieste and ate that, a lemon curd tart from Panella, and chai tea for my dinner. All in all, an awesome day.