Architecture of late baroque and neoclassicism

In XVIII century scales of construction in Italy were reduced, as many Italian states have been captured by an economic crisis. Architect Filippo Juvara (1678—1736) carried out orders in Portugal and Spain (the master has died in Madrid in an operating time over the project of a royal palace). However its best constructions are in Turin (in the northwest of Italy). First of all it is majestic and simultaneously very harmonious monastery and Superhectare church (1715-1731), located on a high hill and cities defining shape. In the plan the temple reminds an ancient Roman Pantheon: центрическое the building with a monumental portico is topped by a dome. In 1718 Juvara has attached to a medieval castle in the centre of Turin the additional case which has received the name of a palace (palace) of Madama (1718-1720) . Its most part is occupied with a huge lobby with two wide ladders. Decorative registration is executed with a delicate taste, and ladders give to all construction monumentalism. The largest work of Juvary — royal hunting lock Stupinidzhi near Turin (1729 1734) . To the central part of a powerful dvortsovo-park complex — to a two-story oval hall with a dome — conducts a number of court yard with narrow avenues. Behind a hall the park is located. In Rome in XVIII century built not so much and in an original way, as earlier. In ensemble of the well-known fountain of Trevi and palaces Weed (1732-1762), architect Nikkolo Salvi, sculptors of Petro Brachchi and Giovanni Battista Maini) the big sizes of architectural details and sculptural furniture make impression not monumentalisms, and bulkinesses are faster. In this complex already there is no grace of the best monuments of baroque. And still in the Roman architecture of late baroque there was originally fine construction is a magnificent ladder on the area of Spain (1721 — 1725, architects of Alessandro Spekki and Franchesko де Sanktis). Masters should connect space of the small area of Spain to a temple of Santa-Trinita деи to Monti located on a high hill. The ladder bordered with a balustrade, at first describes an oval before a facade of a temple and an obelisk standing at an input, then as if the river, is divided into two "sleeves", again merges and, at last, extends before area space. On wide and low steps it is very convenient to rise and go down. This ladder visually increases the sizes of the area and helps to feel, as the strict facade of church is good.

In second third XVIII centuries neoclassicism trends gradually get into the Italian architecture. It can be seen in shape reconstructed раннехристианской basils the Dignity-dzhovanni ин Laterano in Rome (1735, architect Alessandro of Galilee), erected in IV century during lifetime of emperor Konstantin Velikogo. In an interior updated basils prevail lines of late baroque — luxury and grandiosity. And the aspiration was embodied in a facade to the ordered, harmonious and strict forms. The easy and graceful sculpture in a Baroque taste crowns the top balustrade. Such end does the Dignity-dzhovanni ин by Laterano similar to St. Peter's Cathedral — two Roman temples as if enter dialogue. Lines of arising neoclassicism are visible and in the updated facade basils of V century to Santa-Marija Madzhore (1734-1750, architect Ferdinando the Fugue) though abundance of a sculpture and modelled furniture reminds of traditions of baroque. Excavation in Pompey and Herculaneum and the edition in 1764 In Rome capital work «History of art of an antiquity» of the German theorist of art Johann Ioahima Vinkelmana have definitively inclined architects on the neoclassicism party. It is possible to consider as the most interesting example of this style a majestic royal castle of Kazerta near Naples (1752 1774). It was constructed by two talented architects — Luigi Vanvitelli (1700—1773) and its pupil Juseppe Permarini (1734—1808). The monumental furniture of smart halls reminding theatrical sceneries, park with the huge water cascade and fountains are characteristic for baroque. However a palace lay-out in shape to a penalty (quadrangle) with several courtyards, strict registration of facades of work of Permarini completely answer spirit of neoclassicism.

Symbolics of Italy

On May, 5th, 1948 the Italian republic, has found the arms. Creative process of its creation proceeded almost two years. 500 persons among whom were both professional artists, and laymans have taken part in two declared competitions nearby. In total 800 sketches have been presented. The decision on creation of the arms of Italy was accepted in October, 1946. Government Gasperi has founded the special Commission (under the chairmanship of Ivanoe Bonomi) which has started to work with the big enthusiasm. It has been decided to declare open competition on all country with following conditions: on the arms the Star of Italy, and also symbolics of the earths and municipalities should be displayed. Thus use символик political parties was strictly forbidden. The award at a rate of 10.000 lyres (that for today makes about 500.000 lyres) has been promised to authors of five best works.

The treatment of the arms of Italy

Еhe Arms of the Italian republic consists of 3 elements: - stars - a cogwheel - olive and oak branches. The star is one of the most ancient iconographycalimages of Italy. It always associated with image of this country which as it is considered, lights up the radiant light. Such it represented in an iconography of times of Risordzhimento, and such it has existed on the big arms of incorporated Kingdom up to 1890. Then, at the time of Reconstruction, the star crowned with itself a republican sign on honour - the Star of the Italian solidarity. Today its presence specifies in an accessory to armed forces of Italy. The steel cogwheel is a symbol of work and reflects the first article of the Constitutional law in which it is told:“ Italy – the democratic republic based on work.”The olive Branch symbolises the peaceful disposition of the nation meaning aspiration to the internal consent in the country and an international brotherhood behind its limits. The oak branch speaks about force and advantage of the Italian people. At the same time, both these branches represent two most typical kinds of the Italian vegetation.

The author of the arms of Italy

Paolo Pasketto was born on February, 12th, 1885 in Torre Peliche, in a province of Turin (has died in the same place on March, 9th, 1963). With 1914 for 1948 was the professor at the Roman institute of the Fine arts. In painting was многосторонен: was engaged in a drawing and a xylographie, painted in oils and took a great interest in frescos; passed from religious themes to landscapes. Besides, was the author of numerous stamps, including marks of the first release for air mail.

The flag of Italy

 National colours of Italy, has appeared for the first time in kingdom Emilija on January, 7th, 1797 when the parliament of Tsispadansky republic, under the offer of deputy Juseppe Kompanoni, has decided:“ ... Use of a three-coloured green-white-red Tsispadansky flag becomes universal. The same colours should be present on Tsispadansky to a cockarde.”But why these three colours are represented on a national flag of Italy? The matter is that in 1796 in Italy occupied by victorious Napoleonic army, numerous Iakobinian republics which have arisen on a place it is feudal states, almost all used flags with three strips of the identical size and some variations of colours (on the sample of French model 1790). The Italian military groups created for support of army of Bonaparte, had banners of the same kind. Moreover, on regimental banners of the Lombardijsky legion, already there were white, red and green colours which since old time have strongly taken roots in this region. Really, white and red colours existed on the ancient arms of the Milan commune (a red cross on a white background) while green, till 1782, was colour of the form of Milan municipal guards. The same colours have appeared, subsequently, on banners of the Italian legion which soldiers have been called from the earths Emilija and Romagna. Most likely it also has served as the reason of that the above-stated three colours began to be used on a flag of Tsispadansky republic. In the centre of a white strip the republic arms – a quiver with four arrows, decorated with military trophies and surrounded with a wreath from laurel leaves have been represented.

Hymn of Italy - the official text "Fratelli d'Italia"

L'Italia s'è desta

Dell'elmo di Scipio

S'è cinta la testa.

Dove'è la Vittoria?.

Le porga la chioma;

Chè schiava di Roma

Iddio la creò.

Stringiamoci a coorte,

Siam pronti alla morte:

Italia chiamò!

Noi siamo da secoli

Calpesti e derisi,

Perchè non siam popolo,

Perchè siam divisi;

Raccolgaci un'unica

Bandiera, un speme;

Di fonderci insieme;

Già l'ora suonò.

Stringiamoci a coorte,

Siam pronti alla morte:

Italia chiamò!

Uniamoci, amiamoci;

L'unione e l'amore

Rivelano ai popoli

Le vie del Signore:

Giuriamo far libero

Il suolo natío;

Uniti per Dio

Chi vincer ci può?.

Stringiamoci a coorte,

Siam pronti alla morte:

Italia chiamò!

Dall'Alpi a Sicilia

Dovunque è Legnano

Ogni uom di Ferruccio:

Ha il cuor e la mano.

I bimbi d'Italia

Si chiamano Balilla:

Il suon d'ogni squilla

I vespri suonò.

Stringiamoci a coorte,

Siam pronti alla morte:

Italia chiamò!

Son giunchi che piegano

Le spade vendute:

Già l'Aquila d'Austria

Le penne ha perdute.

Il sangue d'Italia

E il sangue polacco

Bevè col Cosacco

Ma il cor le bruciò

Stringiamoci a coorte

Siam pronti alla morte:

Italia chiamò!

English translation: Italian brothers

Italy has arisen,

With Scipio's helmet

binding her head.

Where is Victory?

Let her bow down,

For God has made her

The slave of Rome.

Let us gather in legions,

Ready to die!

Italy has called!

We for centuries

Have been downtrodden and derided,

Because we are not a people,

Because we are divided.

Let one flag, one hope

Bring us together;

The hour has struck

For us to join forces.

Let us gather in legions,

Ready to die!

Italy has called!

Let us unite and love one another;

For union and love

Reveal to peoples

The way of the Lord

Let us swear to free

Our native soil;

If we are united under God,

Who can conquer us?

Let us gather in legions,

Ready to die!

Italy has called!

From the Alps to Sicily,

Everywhere it is Legnano;

Every man has the heart

and hand of Ferruccio.

The children of Italy

Are all called Balilla;

Every trumpet blast

Sounds the (Sicilian) Vespers.

Let us gather in legions,

Ready to die!

Italy has called!

Mercenary swords

Are feeble reeds,

And the Austrian eagle

Has lost his plumes.

This eagle that drunk the blood

of Italy and Poland,

togheter with the Cossack,

But this has burned his gut.

Let us gather in legions,

Ready to die!

Italy has called!

 Lyrics: Goffredo Mameli, 1847Music: Michele Novaro, 1847

Adopted: 1946

POETS AND WRITERS FROM OTHER LANDS

POETS
AND WRITERS
FROM
OTHER LANDS

The flow of people from northern Europe to bathe in Mediterranean culture as an experience and as a necessary part of one's education began, one might say, at the end of the seventeenth century and, for the English, after the Restoration, when the arts were freed from Puritan strictures and the ideals of classical culture and classical proportion were taken as the guide; one of the results of this classical bent was the criticism, if not the direct denial, of the disorderly splendours of the Elizabe¬than period.

The antiquarians flocked to Italy in search of excavated rarities, together with classical poets and scholars, seeking the splendours of the ancient world. During and after the Napoleonic wars came the Romantics, with Byron and Shelley, Keats, who came only to die but whose poetry was steeped in Mediterranean memories: these were followed by Landor, a lesser figure, but who pawned his watch to help Garibaldi, and Robert and Elizabeth Drow¬ning, whose best work is indissolubly linked to their Italian years, Swinburne, whose «Songs before Sunrise» coincided with the high tide of the Risor-gimento, not to mention Edward Lear, who apart from writing nonsense verse, may be said to have dis¬covered the wild beauty of Calabria for the English. At the end of last century came such main figures of the nineties as Max Beerbohm and Frank Harris; the series ends with the Sitwells and D. H. Lawrence and Norman Douglas, each in his own way seeking the frank scnsualily of ancient times.

Six years of war interrupted this stream, but it immediately took up again in a very different way, because the common suffering of the war provoked both in England and Germany a vein of narrative based on postwar Italy.

A good deal of space would be necessary to make a list of all the famous people who can't live out of Italy.
After many years I met Ezra Pound again, in the house of some friends: he still holds himself straight, with that little grey beard that seems to belong to a tired faun, but his eyes, which were once liquid fire behind his glasses, now seem to have grown smaller and duller, and the big white hands that once waved like flags in support of his arguments, have become still and resigned.
Eight years have passed since he was released from the St Elizabeth Criminal Mental Hospital, in which his defenders managed to get him to save him from a death sentence, after his capture in 1945. His great age, thirteen years of living with insane people, added to that year in the Pisan plain in a cage of iron and concrete, roasted by the sun and assailed by floodlights, had beaten him, shrunk him and changed him.
When they took him from his cage and pushed him towards the van to bring him to his judges he was blind and seemed to have lost his wits. Feeling damp earth under him in place of hard concrete, he took a handful and brought it to his mouth.

Capry: View from Monte Solaro

So kissed the earth after sleeping on concrete».
In recent years there have been many translations of his works into Italian and many essays devoted to him: «Poesie scelte» by Alfredo Rizzardi, «Lo Spirito del Romanzo» edited by Sergio Baldi and «Saggi Lettcrari» edited by Nemi d'Agostino, to whom we also owe what is certainly the most thorough study, «Ezra Pound» (Edizioni di Storia с I.cttcratura, 1950). A chapter in the volume «La Condizione Americana» by Rizzardi (Cappelli 1959) summarises the various points in the controversy over his polcmicizing, from which we should like to see eliminated his support of Fascism, above all because of the cruel expiation he made but also because of the odd nature of that support, born of ignorance, snap judgments and misunderstanding.
We agree with d'Agostino that Pound the Su¬perman, herald of a brand-new universal creed, is not to be taken seriously, nor can his critical work be considered to possess the importance and origi¬nality that T. S. Eliot accorded it.
The essays which concern Italians most directly are those dealing with Guido Cavalcanti; they show that he gave a great deal of effort and affection to these studies. The hypothesis that Cavalcanti, while not being an atheist, was intolerant of the principle of authority and was also familiar with dangerous doctrines, in contrast to his friend Dante «qui etait diablement dans les iddes rccues», is now considered valid, and it is important that Pound formulated it in 1912. But even in Pound's own opinion the translations of Cavalcanti have little value beyond that of an exercise, there is a strongly Pre-Raphaelite tone about them, and the introduction and notes to the canzone, «Donna mi priego», together with the comment and the notes on inter¬pretation, have been assembled from the most heterogeneous and irrelevant sources: —comparison of Greek and Etruscan sculpture, of Giotto's painting and Reynolds's, the episode of meeting an amateur poet who is also a policeman, the remarks of one Schloezer on Stravinwky. Leaps, glissandi, howls of protest and wickedness that may amuse the reader but add nothing to the structure of the essay and much less to its clarity.
It is clear how difficult it is to extract a poetic canon from all this glittering and delightful confu¬sion, and how right d'Agostino is when he says that in this vast confusion of ideas it is best to give up looking for a coherent kernel, and to judge the whole as a miscellany in which recurrent motifs can be found — a passionate love of art, faith in its supremacy and in its inherent energy which transmutes into action and leaves its imprint on reality; out of this comes his condemnation of the artist's isolation and his aspiration to a committed art.
But these opinions were not only his, and they are not enough to form an artistic originality: what is more interesting is innovation in poetic language at a time when similar experiments were being tried by the Futurists, the Symbolists and the Dadaists. We mustn't forget that «Parole in Liberia» dates from 1912 and therefore comes before all other rebellions against syntax, structure and the dictates of logic, which symbolised, in the first twenty years of this century, intolerance of empty sonority and the wish to restore clarity and purity to the corrupt language of decadentism.
But the work on which Pound concentrated all his ambitions was the Cantos, which proceed, as we know, in a series of aphorisms, repetitions, pauses, torrents and babblings, like a whirling and incandescent skein which often tangles into knots of unintelligible allusions. Only in the Pisan Cantos, written in the prison cage, does the magnificent confusion dissolve into the authenticity of suffering. Even if the images are fragmentary and formless, or the mixing of sources more and more arbitrary, here for the first time is the poet falling back on his failure and contemplating the ruins of his own pride to arrive at moving expressions of loneliness.
Now Pound is much better. He has begun to walk again with his chest out and his beard and hair Buttering in the wind, and to enjoy a few contacts with people. He often runs down to Venice from the castle at Merano where he lives with his daughter and grandchildren, and someone has photographed him on the landing-stage of a big hotel together with two woman friends. In the photograph he seems inert and absent. There «among the columns of stone as smooth as soap/ Where San Vio meets the Grand Canal» he once stopped, uncertain whether to throw a packet of papers into the grey water. They were the drafts of his first poems, afterwards published in an edition of a hundred copies by a Venetian printer under the Italian title of «A lume spento».

In these photos we see Ezra Pound, strangely calm before the Ara Pacis, thoughtful in his study at Rapallo and hieratic in the church of Sant'Ambrogio at Rapallo.

We also met him In the drawing-room of the painter Lisel Hohs who has taken the place of the irascible Peggy Guggenheim and paints nude women floating in the black canals with flowing hair. He BEGAN to complain of the sirocco, and that the sea at the Lido was too warm and colourless. Much better AT Rapallo, where not even a thunderstorm would keep him from his morning swim.
If Pound represents a subversive experience to be judged historically within the limits of aims achieved and Influence exercised, Harold Acton is a writer of traditional type, erudite, exquisite and affable.
He is fascinated by the history of Naples and has devoted his life to recounting it and commenting on it In two volumes running from Carlo III to Fcrdinando I, In the first volume, and in the second from Francesco I to Franceschiello, with whom the dynasty came to an end.
They are attractive reading, clearly favourable to the last Bourbons, who arc usually described as obtuse, cowardly and bloody. It cannot be thought that Acton has said the last word on this disastrous dynasty, but he is in any case one of the many who can help us to tree ourselves from the uncritically laudatory pap that was handed out to us at school.
He is an elegant gentleman, with a face that would please a sculptor and the piercing grey eyes of a well-bred Englishman. He lines at «I.a Pletra», a Granducal villa on the slope of Pratolino, within sight of Plorencc and protected by an Italian Garden with box hedges, privet and lemon-trees, where he oilers hospitality to artists and scholars from all over the world.
He is not one of those captivated on the Grand Tour, who remained, enchanted by the grace of the hills. He was born in Florence in this very villa, where his parents lived from 1904 on, and returned there as to his home after the wanderings and adventures of his youth. He stayed long in England and at Pekin, served for four years in the Air Force in the Far East. He is a direct descendant of General Joseph Acton, brother of Sir John, who was Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Naples, Governor of Gaeta, and head of a nume¬rous Neapolitan family. Only Harold's grandfather and his brother opted for British nationality.

Perugia: Church of San Michele Arcangelo 

Harold has an excellent knowledge of Italian history and is a great admirer of Cavour, whom he considers the greatest European statesman of his age. He is fond of Italian poetry, particularly Leopardi: of the moderns he likes Palazzeschi, Arbasino, Leonardo Sciascia and Anna Banti: of the art critics he likes Longhi and Zcri.
In England, Paris and Italy he met all the artists and writers of the 'twenties, and has described them in a book «Memoirs of an Aesthete» which was very popular in England and which will shortly appear in an Italian translation. Its pages are enli-vened by tiny details, glances, wit, more or less profound notes of praise, more or less lighdy sketched. There is the serenity of the writer of memoirs, the disdain of the aristocrat, a keen zest for fashionable life. I don't know whether the Italians will like it.
Max Frisch, who has lived seven years in Rome, has decided to go back to Switzerland. He arrived in a state of depression, after the failure of his family life and in the throes of a divorce; our sun brought him back to life and serenity. I went to see him in his studio in Via Margutta, looking towards Trinita dei Monti through a huge window. One of the panes was broken and had been patched with a dramatic star of black paper. The studio was half-empty with a camp bed, a few books in a bookcase and one drawing by a Positano artist on the wall.
A muscular youth with grey hair, full ruddy cheeks, big shoes and a student's sweater. He moved like a wild beast in the great bare room; he said he loved lower class Italians for their cordial huma¬nity and that he was sorry to find that our governing class were such a poor lot. He had only a slight idea of Italian cultural life, of our writers he admired Vittorini, having read «Conversazione in Sicilia» in translation.
Of the writers of the past he admired Svevo and had an unbounded admiration for Pirandello. Evident echoes of Pirandello can be found in his plays, which arc little known here. Andorra, which was put on some years ago at the Quirino gave the impression of being over-padded and the melodramatic direction didn't please Frisch himself. The audience was puzzled because the tragedy of racial persecution (a youth who is thought to be a Jew and who refuses to prove that this is not true) seems diminished by the play being set in a non-existent country (it is not the Republic of Andorra), with no links with reality, in an atmosphere of fire and brimstone. In essence it is a denunciation of anti-semitism, but the play also presents the entirely Pirandcllian problem of human identity, and how a man becomes a prisoner of the image of himself that the world has imposed on him: something between a thriller and a Morality, or an edifying drama, said the critics, but redeemd by nobility of theme.
What kind of life did he lead? That of a monk, more or less. He sometimes ate in a trattoria or with friends. He named an official of the German Embassy and an antique dealer in Via Margutta. He asked me to translate two lines of Montale into English or German, and I'm afraid the result wasn't at all satisfactory.
Frish, who has written ten plays, reached interna¬tional fame with Herr Biedermatin and die Brandsti/ter, put on with great success in Paris and Milan, translated into Italian as Omobono e gli iiiccndiari and included in the antology published by Feltrinelli. The play is about a stupid and boring bourgeois who, pardy from cowardice and partly to show that he has no prejudices, gives hospitality to two incendiaries in his luxurious flat. They settle down in the attic, heap up cans of petrol and prepare the fuse, helped by the master of the house, who supplies the matches with which they blow up the whole district. Who are these «incendiaries»? Is it really acceptable that they represent revolutionary forces that the decaying bourgeoisie cannot resist? Frisch is too subtle to fall into such banal allusions.
Together with Diirrenmatt, Frisch is one of the glories of Switzerland, one of the two playwrights unexpectedly produced by the Swiss.
He said he liked Italian cinema, especially Fellini, of whom he praised the wonderful surrealism of Otto e Meigp. He too is basically a product of German surrealism, to which he has added a heavy baggage of problems. Here in Italy he wrote the novel which has already had success in Germany Mein Name sei Gonteiibein, in which he discusses once more the problem of personal identity.
He spoke fluid English in a thunderous voice: at a certain moment he stopped, glass in hand, to look at the trees on the Pincio, repeating, perhaps to convince himself, that he must really leave Italy: that to regain strength he needed, like Anthcus, to touch the earth - - or rather, his earth.