When I paint my masterpiece.....
Rome does not need introduction – it is one
of the most visited places on the planet.
But everyone sees it differently, depending on many variables. Some visitors are studious. Some come for the dolce vita. Accounts of what it was like to live in the
city in ancient times are relatively uncommon (Satyricon, by Petronius,
being a rare exception), but one extraordinary character left us several
impressions of what it was like in the sixteenth century….
Rome , Naples and Florence
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece
One day..... Maybe.....
Oh, the streets of Rome
Ancient footprints are everywhere
Wandering around the remains of
ancient Rome is
a luxurious, stimulating, activity, which takes a lot of beating: Nobel
Laureate Bob Dylan, however, got it right - the streets are filled with
rubble..... In some places the
actual street level has risen by ten metres in the last two thousand years,
which is why you tend to look down on the excavations of the various fori
and rediscovered temples.....
Though there is looking down.....
and there is looking down.....
You can almost think that you're seein' double....
As we rode into Rome
Then, after it became part of The Grand Tour, literature has been
littered with descriptions of the ruins, though they are not all alike. James
Boswell was impressed:
Tuesday, 26 March, 1765:
We viewed the celebrated Forum.
I experienced sublime and melancholy emotions as I thought of all the
great affairs which had taken place there, and saw the place now all in ruins,
with the wretched huts of carpenters and other artisans occupying the site of
that rostrum from which Cicero had flung forth his stunning eloquence….. We entered the famous Colosseum, which
certainly presents a vast and sublime idea of the grandeur of the ancient
Romans. It is hard to tell whether the
astonishing massiveness or the exquisite taste of this superb building should
be more admired.
Thursday, 28 March, 1765:
We climbed to the Palace again, where the cypresses seem to mourn for
the ruin of the grandeur of the Roman emperors.
The view from here is magnificent…..
James Boswell on the Grand Tour
 |
Principal Domes L-R, Chiesa Nuova, S Andrea della Valle, S Carlo ai Catinari, then the Pantheon and the Synagogue (you can also see S Ivo, in scaffolding, and, 35 miles to the north west, the Monti Cimini around Lago di Vico.) |
The following year, Tobias Smollett was less so:
From the Capitol to the Coliseo, including the Forum Romanum and
Boarium, there is nothing intire but one or two churches, built with fragments
of ancient edifices. You descend from
the Capitol between the remaining pillars of two temples, the pedestals and
parts of the shafts sunk in the rubbish.....
(Tobias Smollett, Travels through France
and Italy
Then a couple of years later, Goethe, in self-imposed exile among
German Romantics, found much to interest him:
I study the layout of Ancient Rome and
Modern Rome Rome can one educate
oneself for Rome
(Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italian Journey,
1768).
In about 1810 Byron waxed lyrical:
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown
Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped
On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown
In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,
Deeming it midnight: - temples, baths, or halls?
Pronounce who can; for all that learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls –
Behold the Imperial Mount! ‘tis thus the mighty falls.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold,
Canto IV, stanza 107
A little later Stendhal (Henri Beyle) was less
complimentary:
21st September 1817:
I have now spent fifty days in mingled awe and indignation. Why, what a thing of splendour were this site
of Ancient Rome, had not her fatal star decreed, as crowning outrage, that the priests should build their new metropolis upon the
very ruins of the old! What glory might
our eyes not still behold, were all those ancient stones – the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Antonine Basilica, together with that fabulous wealth of
monuments, now rased to the ground that churches might be built instead – still proudly standing within their ring of
deserted hills, the Aventine, the
Quirinal , the Mons Palatinus. O fortunate city of Palmyra
But then, just two years later, Byron’s
friend, Shelley, was star struck:
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letters:
Come to Rome
What shall I say of the modern city?
Rome
(March 23rd, 1819,
to Thomas Love Peacock)
This is holy-week, and Rome Rome
In the Square
of St Peter Italy
(April 6th, 1819, to Thomas Love Peacock)
Twenty-seven years later Charles Dickens was imaginatively
sceptical:
It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so suggestive
and distinct is it (The Colosseum) at this hour: that, for a moment - actually in passing in – they who will, may
have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of
eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood,
and dust, going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter
desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow;
and never in his life, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not
immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions.
To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown
with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass growing in its
porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets, and
bearing fruit…. To climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin,
ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and
Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Caesars; the temples of the old
religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked and
wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately,
the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its
bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over
with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon
it now, a ruin. God be thanked: a ruin!
Charles Dickens, Pictures From Italy
In fiction, after another
thirty-two years, Henry James,
retouched the romantic fantasy:
A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered
her in that beautiful abode of flowering desolation known as the Palace of the
Caesars. The early Roman spring had
filled the air with bloom and perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine was muffled with tender verdure. Daisy was strolling along the top of one of
those great mounds of ruin that are embanked with mossy marble and paved with
monumental inscriptions. It seemed to
him that Rome
Then he passed in among the cavernous shadows of the great structure,
and emerged upon the clear and silent arena.
The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One half of the gigantic circus was in deep
shade; the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron’s
famous lines, out of Manfred;
but before he had finished his quotation
he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by
the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors….
Henry James, Daisy Miller, 1878
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wastin' time
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb
1902 and Hilaire Belloc arrived, to publish The Path to Rome, which
ends with a discussion between the author and the reader:
So, passing an Egyptian obelisk which the great Augustus had nobly
dedicated to the Sun, I entered…..
LECTOR. But do you intend to tell us nothing of Rome
AUCTOR: Nothing, dear Lector.
LECTOR. Tell me at least one thing; did you see the Coliseum?
AUCTOR…. I entered a café at the
right hand of a very long, straight street, called for bread, coffee, and
brandy, and contemplating my boots and worshipping my staff that had been
friends of mine so long, and friends like all true friends inanimate, I spent
the few minutes remaining to my happy, common, unshriven, exterior, and natural
life, in writing down this
DITHYRAMBIC
EPITHALAMIUM or THRENODY
In these boots, and with this staff
Two hundred leaguers and a half –
…..
Nor ever turned my face to home
Till I had slaked my heart at Rome
LECTOR. Bu this is dogg - -
AUCTOR. Not a word!
So, then, James Joyce, resident in Rome from 1906 to 1907, thought the
ancient city was like a cemetery…The exquisite
panorama he said, was made up of flowers
of death, ruins, piles of bones, and skeletons. On August 7th, 1906, he wrote to
his brother, Stanislaus, that the area around the Colosseum was like an old cemetery with broken columns of
temples and slabs. And on September
25th he declared that Rome
Indeed, in jaundiced
characteristic, Joyce reached back to Byron to express his distrust of the
magnificence of the Imperial
City
Looking at it all round gravely from a sense of duty, I heard a voice
from London
The Colisseum –
Almost at once two young men in serge suits and straw hats appeared in
an embrasure. They leaned on the parapet
and then a second voice from the same city clove the calm evening, saying:
Whowail stands the Colisseum
Rawhm shall stand
When falls the Colisseum
Rawhm s’ll fall
And when Rawhm falls
the world sh’ll fall –
But adding cheerfully:
-Kemlong, ‘ere’s the
way aht-
James Joyce: letter to his
brother Stanislaus Joyce, August 7th, 1906
Seventy years later, and I was in
Rome . A much changed Rome . But,
despite all changes, there were still touches that reached back across the
centuries. Every day I crossed the Ponte
Sisto from Trastevere toward the Campo Marzio, to catch the bus to work. I used to pass a mournful fountain at the
beginning of the Via Giulia, with its wide mouth (the ugliest fountain in Rome
In the Campo de’ Fiori, a few paces further on, the Norcineria
Viola
- an outlet for the many products
from the pig-heaven town of Norcia, now sadly, reduced to rubble (again) by the
October earthquake) – still survives, though prettified, and without the model
for that fountain, who graced the first floor window when I took this photo in
the late seventies.
In those days the market was
strong with Roman dialect under the shadow of the statue of Giordano Bruno who was burned at the
stake here on February 17th, 1600.
Giordano still stands here, unperturbed by his immolation, but the
majority of stall holders now herald from the outlying fields of the Roman
Empire, such as the Indian subcontinent, or North Africa …..
It’s always been a rough area:
Benvenuto Cellini stabbed a man to death near here; I drew a little dagger with a sharpened edge, and breaking the line of
his defenders, laid my hands upon his breast so quickly and coolly, that none of
them were able to prevent me. Then I
aimed to strike him in the face; but fright made him turn his head round; and I
stabbed him just beneath the ear. I only
gave two blows, for he fell stone dead at the second. I had not meant to kill him; but as the
saying goes, knocks are not dealt by measure….
On July 26th, 1977,
another death occurred here, when the brother of film actor Gian Maria Volontè,
known as Claudio Camaso, stabbed a man who tried to intervene between Claudio
and his wife. Claudio made his escape,
but gave himself up after ten days on the run, but then committed suicide in
prison a few days later…..
I wander down the Via dei Banchi Vecchi, little changed
since the days of Cellini or Camaso, and stop for refreshment in one of the few
remaining Vino Olio shops in Rome ,
the
Enoteca Il Goccetto.
Such locali used to be where you could fill
your bottles with wine from the Colli
Albani and oil from anywhere. In
this case, I settle for a plate of mixed cheeses and salami and a glass of Pecorino
DOC…..
Aaah. And I rest, for a moment, from the turbulence
of the Streets of Rome, the rubble and the rumour…..
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece
 |
Actually Raffaello Sanzio's girlfriend, 'La Fornarina' (but don't tell) |
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory
As the daylight hours do retreat
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece
One day..... Maybe.....
