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Searching For Bernini

~ Musings on the Ecstasy of Italian Art and Culture

Searching For Bernini

Monthly Archives: May 2013

Secrets of Piazza di Spagna—Part II

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by SearchingForBernini in Art, Art History, Bernini, Italian Life, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

architecture, Baroque, Bernini, Borromini, Food, Francesco Borromini, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Italy, Paolo, Piazza di Spagna, Piazza Navona, Roman, Rome, Spanish Steps, Travel

When to eat, what toilets to visit…and Bernini’s biggest rivalry revealed in stone!

Spanish Steps

Spanish Steps

I love to eat. Who doesn’t? And I’ve been fortunate, here in Rome, to meet all kinds of real food and restaurant experts who’ve shared tips and information about cuisine and restaurants in Rome and the wider world as a whole. (If you’re interested in learning more about them, I’ve added links to their blogs and sites at the end of this post.)

On Paolo’s tour of the Piazza di Spagna area, we learned a little bit about dining in Rome, and then we got to the real meat (for me) of the tour: a delicious discussion of my 400-year-old boyfriend, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and his bitter rivalry with another artist and architect, Francesco Borromini. But first, food….

Aperitivo time!

Aperitivo time!

1. Avoid eating like a tourist. The Romans, Paolo tells us, dine at fairly specific times. True Italians eat lunch between 1 and 2:30 p.m., have their aperitivi (beverages and small snacks, like olives, potato chips, formaggio) around 5:30-6 p.m., and dinner around 8:30-9:30 p.m. So, all the people sitting at cafés at three in the afternoon on the quaint, cobblestone streets around Piazza di Spagna are almost certainly tourists.

What’s more, at the off-times, the food is different—and not as high quality—as that served during the Roman lunch or dinner hour, when the restaurants whip up their best meals. For those tourists sitting down for a late lunch at 3 p.m. (of which I’ve been one, many times—guilty!), the food is often second-tier. Oops.

Otello alla Concordia

Otello alla Concordia

For a good, traditional Roman meal, Paolo directed us to Trattoria Otella alla Concordia, which lies beyond the madding crowd. This is a real Roman restaurant—the kind of place the locals frequent, and when we walked by, at around 3 p.m., it was deserted. The restaurant has been family run for 70 years, but goes back as far as the 1700s, when it was an inn that hosted artists, novelists and poets. I went back a few days later for a delicious lunch of rigatoni all’amatriciana. Buonissimo!

Rigatoni all'amatriciana at Trattoria Otello alla Concordia. You can check out their menu here.

Rigatoni all’amatriciana at Trattoria Otello alla Concordia. You can check out their menu here.

Via dei Condotti

Via dei Condotti

2. How Via dei Condotti got its name: Condotti means “channels” or “ducts” in Italiano, and underneath Via dei Condotti are pipes that carried the water to the Baths of Agrippa. Today, there are still pipes beneath the street that carry water to parts of Rome, like Piazza Navona and Campo dei Fiori.

Antico Caffé Greco

Antico Caffé Greco

3. Rome’s oldest coffee bar is Caffé Greco, operating since 1760, at Via dei Condotti, 86. Artists and writers like Stendhal, Keats, Shelly and Casanova enjoyed a coffee here. One tip from Paolo: Order a coffee at the bar inside to the right of the front door (if you can make it through the crowd), and then walk back through the café to use the toilets—it’s a good way to see the place without paying the exorbitant prices charged at the tables (although your coffee will be served in white-gloved fashion by elegant waiters, if you choose to pay).

Bernini, self portrait

Bernini, self portrait

4. Bernini vs. Borromini, the big rivalry, summed up in one building. Now, the really good stuff! Pope Gregory XV founded the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (how’s that for a mouthful?) in 1622 as a center where the Church arranged missionary work. It was, and still is, based in Palazzo Ferratini. Pope Urban VIII developed the site into the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, for training missionaries, and in 1634 he commissioned Bernini to build a chapel and spruce up the palazzo.

Palazzo di Propaganda: Bernini's facade

Palazzo di Propaganda: Bernini’s facade

Bernini got started, and the façade is a Baroque design that is more restrained than might be expected; with classical lines, it stands with quiet dignity along Via di Propaganda and looks out over the edge of the Piazza. But Bernini really wanted the commission to work on St. Peter’s, and when that finally came through, he abandoned the Propaganda building and left it to his rival, Francesco Borromini, to finish.

Paolo, a fount of information on Bernini, walked us around to the side of the building where you can see visible evidence of how the two men’s perspectives on the Baroque, and their philosophies regarding life and politics, diverge. Bernini, as I wrote in an earlier post, was a consummate politician and courtier—earning the respect (and commissions) of popes and keeping them happy by always saying the right thing (or sometimes saying nothing, which turned out to be the right thing!). Borromini, on the other hand, was more emotional, could be histrionic, and ultimately committed suicide. He had the stereotypical artistic temperament.

Bernini vs. Borromini, written in stone

Bernini vs. Borromini, written in stone

Here, you see where Bernini’s work ends and Borromini’s begins. Bernini believed art should express reality—his sculptures reveal this, especially—they are so lifelike the marble looks as soft as human flesh. In his architecture, in this case, Bernini opted for a celebration of rationalism—organized, restrained, where every line makes logical sense. His philosophy of religion (and, perhaps, life), said Paolo, was, “If I follow the rules, I’ll go to heaven.” Full stop.

Borromini

Borromini

Borromini, on the other hand, was more of a mystic. His emotional philosophy tended more toward, “Please save me! Hey, I’ll try this with my building! Do you like it?” His eventual arrival in Heaven was not, for him, destined merely by following “the rules.” Salvation had to be earned, and was not determined by a clear path.

Borromini’s part of this palazzo, therefore, looks like a separate building. Not only did he use different materials, he also created round windows, and added pilasters and architectural flourishes that are nowhere to be seen in Bernini’s design. As much as I love my boyfriend, Borromini’s part of the palace is more fun to look at, I think!

5. Palazzos can move—literally! The final “secret” Paolo shared with us is this: When Via Nazionale, a main street that connects the main train station, Termini, with the city center, was built at the end of the 19th century, the street passed through parts of Rome where numerous palazzos sat. So what did they do? They moved them out of the way! It must have been quite the enterprise, but instead of destroying the structures to make way for modernity, the palazzos were lifted and moved back, to make room for the street. What a feat of engineering! Ciao!

Here is the list of Foodies I promised:

Katie Parla, an American who’s been in Rome for 10 years, she’s a restaurant critic and writer who contributes regularly to the New York Times and works with other women in Rome to produce The Rome Digest, an online magazine about food, wine and happenings in Rome. She has an app: Katie Parla’s Rome, which I’m finding invaluable (available on iTunes).

Rachel Roddy, a British writer, blogs about food from Rome. Her recipes are irresistible and they’re helping me (a non-starter in the kitchen) improve my cooking! Check out her blog.

Hande Leimer, a Turkish sommelier, hosts wine tasting events through her company, Vino Roma. She’s incredibly knowledgeable and experienced and her tastings are not to be missed! She works with Katie Parla on The Rome Digest.

Elizabeth Minchilli, an American who’s lived in Rome for years, writes about food for numerous publications and on her website, Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome. She also has an app: Eat Rome.

Simran Sethi, an American who’s in Rome researching a book on the biodiversity of seeds is one of the most impressive women I’ve met here. She’s an expert in her field and if you want to learn more about her work, check out her website.

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Secrets of Piazza di Spagna—Part I

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by SearchingForBernini in Italian Life, Politics

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

architecture, Federico Zuccari, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Italy, Piazza di Spagna, Roman, Rome, secrets of rome, Spanish Steps, Travel, Trinità dei Monti, Vatican City

Statues talk, humans are available to rent,
and sometimes doorways scream…

The Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps

There’s so much to learn in Rome that it can be intimidating when I think about all I don’t know. But as the Italians tell me so often, especially when I stress out about not being able to speak, “Piano, piano!” Slowly, slowly….

So, every chance I get to absorb some new info about the city and its history I’m grateful, and concentrate fiercely on trying to remember it all.

After Italiano class one day this week, my school, Italia Idea, offered a two-hour walking tour around the neighborhood where it’s located, near the famous Piazza di Spagna. Our guide, Paolo, is one of the teachers and an official tour guide (in Italy, becoming a registered tour leader isn’t easy; it requires taking difficult oral and written exams).

It turns out Paolo has studied the works of my 400-year-old boyfriend, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and seems as fascinated with his art and flamboyant personality as I am. So, here are some of the secrets of Rome I learned from Paolo on our tour, conducted in Italiano. On a warm spring day, we started off east of the Steps and wound up a cobblestone street, Via Gregoriana, to a look-off point on a hill above where an interesting palazzo sits…

Palazzo Zuccari (photo by Manfred Heyde)

Palazzo Zuccari (photo by Manfred Heyde)

1. The walls have ears, and here the doorways scream. The Palazzo Zuccari is an odd building designed at the turn of the 16th century by Federico Zuccari, an artist from Urbino (his frescos can be found in the Santa Maria del Fiore church). He built the palazzo to celebrate artists. Looking at the building from the front it seems a nice, old palace. It changed hands several times and during the mid-1600-1800s—the period when upper class Europeans took a Grand Tour—it became an inn that hosted artists like Joshua Reynolds and Jacques-Louis David.

Paolo informed us that the palazzo originally had an amazing view across what were rolling hills and gardens that descended down to what is now the Piazza di Spagna. Where this palazzo gets a little odd, however, is when you walk around and look at the side of the building, where an entrance and a couple of windows are framed by screaming, open mouths.

Palazzo Zuccari's screaming door.

Palazzo Zuccari’s screaming door

Apparently these were meant to intimidate visitors so they knew that entering the palazzo was an important act, and not to be taken lightly. Zuccari had used a similar depiction years before to evoke Dante’s doors to Hell. Welcome! Come on in! (Or, actually, don’t, unless you’re a top-level German scholar specializing in Italian and Roman art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods who’s won an exclusive fellowship to study at the Hertzian Library, which is now housed there.)

2. The Spanish Steps are both “modern” and “natural.” At least that’s how Paolo describes them—and when a country’s history extends back more than 2000 years, steps built in the 1700s seem new. From the Palazzo, we walked by the Trinità dei Monti church and started down the Spanish Steps.

Walking down the Steps

Walking down the Steps

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the area around what is now Piazza di Spagna was considered the center of Rome. There were a few bustling streets where commerce happened, and the area was home to several grand palazzos, surrounded by countryside or gardens. What we know as the Spanish Steps didn’t exist until the 1720s, when they were built to follow the natural flow of the land and hills around the piazza. They were meant to be organic and naturalistic, a favorite theme of the Baroque. So if you really look at the steps, all 138 of them, you can see how the architect, Francesco de Sanctis, designed them to flow down the hill from Trinità dei Monti, following the shape of the land. At different points of the year, the steps are covered in flowers—today the Bougainvillea is bountiful.

Palazzo di Spagna

Palazzo di Spagna

3. Rome is a dual capital. More Italian politics: Rome is not only the capital of Italy, it is also the capital of Vatican City. The church is its own city-state. In fact, it’s the smallest internationally recognized independent state in the world. And as Paolo informed us, all countries with representatives in Rome actually have two embassies, one for Italy and one for the Vatican. One of the palazzos in the square is the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, and it’s from the embassy that the piazza takes its name. In the 17th century, the area around the embassy was considered Spanish territory.

Fontana della Barcaccia

Fontana della Barcaccia

4. That boat fountain tells a true story. Bernini first learned to sculpt at the feet of his father, Pietro Bernini. Pietro earned a commission from Pope Urban VIII to create the Fontana delle Barcaccia in the middle of the Piazza. Bernini the Elder reportedly took his inspiration from the flooding of the Tiber in 1598 (incidentally, the year my Bernini was born), when a small boat actually did get stranded in the area.

Caravaggio's Martha and Mary Magdalene

Caravaggio’s Martha and Mary Magdalene

5. Human models were available for rent. Models here! Get your models here! The area around Piazza di Spagna was a kind of Soho of its time: Artists of all types lived and worked here at different times—John Keats died in the building to the right of the Steps in 1821, and it’s now a museum dedicated to him and Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the 16th and 17th centuries, young Romans would stand in the piazza hoping to be hired by artists who needed people to pose for them. I love the idea of gorgeous, young Italians sucking in their cheeks and flaunting their beauty just waiting to be immortalized by Caravaggio or even Bernini (although I think he was his own favorite model). In fact, the reason many of the faces look alike in different Renaissance artists’ paintings is probably because the artists hired the same models. Oops! I wonder if they got into fights: “Hey, you stole my Virgin Mary!”

6. Talking statues. No, not the models I mentioned above. Throughout Rome, and on our walk we passed by the Café Canova Tadolini at 150 Via Babuino. (I’ll check out the restaurant in future—you eat among the statues.) Outside, sits a statue that perhaps gave the street (Babuino means baboon) its name, because the reclining figure ain’t so pretty.

Talking Statue on Via del Babuino

Talking statue on Via del Babuino

The statue is one of several around Rome where citizens would come to leave notes complaining about things they would never be able to out loud: “My taxes are too high!” “The Pope doesn’t give us enough bread!” Back in Bernini’s time (and before…and after), Romans had to guard their tongues (see my earlier post on “dissimulation”). If they spoke against the Church openly, the punishments were harsh and sometimes deadly. But these statues provided one outlet for the frustrated to voice complaints—and so they were called talking statues.

Stay tuned for Part II of the walk around the Piazza di Spagna….

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