Jeffrey Bale's World of Gardens

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Pebble mosaics of the Palazzo Reale, Genoa, Italy

A fountain of a mermaid holding an urn graces the terrace above the Court of Honor at the Palazzo Reale

I spent the winter in Italy this year, mostly in the north of the country. One of my favorite cities, which I did not spend enough time in was Genoa, which the Italians call Genova. It is most famous in the west as the supposed birthplace of Christopher Columbus, although that is disputed. Still, it merits a fine statue.

A monument to Christopher Columbus on the Via Balbi in Genoa

The Palazzo Reale, or Royal Palace in Genoa sits on a hill across from the Church of San Carlo on the Via Balbi, in an area of the city that was being developed in the 17th Century in to a fashionable neighborhood for the city's wealthiest families.

A Renaissance period grotto in a palazzo on Via Balbi

The project of building the palace was begun in 1643 for the Balbi family who rose to noble status through successful trade in the production of silk, and later banking.

Lavish silk wall coverings in the palace

But fortunes and styles change, and finacial problems forced the Balbi family to sell the palace.

Portrait of Catarina Balbi

Substancial additions were made in to the next century by the next owner Eugenio Durazzo, who's family became the most influencial in Genoa. His son Gerolamo completely refurbished the palace after his father's death, so that almost nothing remains of the original Balbi Palace, even though it had been ornamented by some of Genoa's finest artists and craftsmen. Being patrons of the theater and opera, the Teatro Falcone was build adjacent to the palace.

Gate leading to the Court of Honor of the Palazzo Reale

A view from the garden to the gate

In 1816, the Savoy dynasty of Torino petitioned to make the palazzo in to a royal palace. Their son Ferdinand was given the title Duke of Genoa, and sumptuous apartments were built for his parents the Duke and Dutchess of Savoy, and himself. The Savoy Palace in Torino to the north has a grandeur comparable to Versailles outside of Paris, which became the enviable model for what a royal family should aspire to. So great halls with mirrors became all the rage in a number if Italian royal palaces, the one in Genoa included. This hall was used for important diplomatic receptions.

Galleria degli Specchi, The Hall of Mirrors

Sala del Trono, The Throne Room of the Duke of Savoy in the Palazzo Reale

A very well made film about the palace can be seen here that covers the detailed history of the development of the palace interiors and the families who inhabited it. No mention is made of the gardens since they are a much later addition, which I am discussing here.

A romantic fresco with Puti and a mandoline player in the ballroom

The frequent remodeling of the palace includes the peculiar looking wings with roof terraces were added to the back of the main building, and have that tacked on look but also makes for a look something like a fancily frosted cake.

The Palazzo Reale with its awkward additions

The 1944 bombing of Genoa by the allies damaged the Teatro del Falcone in the palace but most of the building was spared, unlike so many others important historical buildings throughout Italy. In the 1950's the theater was rebuilt and the 'Hanging Garden' terraza was installed.

Pebble Mosaic in the Risseu style

The pebble mosaics were reassembled here after being removed from the war damaged Monastery of the Blue Nuns of Castelleto district. The mosaics have ornate white pebble designs set in a field of black pebbles depicting a series of animals, and scenes from daily life surrounding an 8 sided marble fountain basin. These are the lovliest pebble mosaics that I saw while traveling in the Liguria Province.

Wide axial paths connect connect it to the palace and lead to a view towards the lighthouse and harbor. Its quite beautiful from the ground plain or seen from the roof terrace and bridge arcade above.

The pebble mosaic terraza was once part of a Convent that was heavily damaged in World War II and moved to the palace during restoration.

This traditional style of pebble mosaic is called Risseu and can be seen all over the region of Liguria, although usually the patterns are more simple. The Genoese kingdom spread across parts of the Mediterannean and Adriatic and Aegean and Black Seas in the 13th Century, and along with it came the import of pebble mosaics. I saw several elaborate Risseu style mosaics in front of Turkish mansions on the island of Lesvos in Greece dating from the Ottoman empire in the late 19th Century which were influenced by the Ligurian Risseu style.

An Ottoman period mosaic in the Ligurian Risseu style in Mytilini, on the Island of Lesvos, Greece

Dogs hunting a wild boar at the Palazzo Reale

The mosaics relocated to the hanging garden terrace in Genoa depict a number of exotic animals in natural settings, forming a kind of zoo like menagerie. There are hunting scenes, and wild animals from far away lands, and mythological creatures that would have added an entertaining and somewhat educational relevance to the designs. Some of them could be telling a story but I am not aware of what they would be.

A leopard in a forest in the Palazzo Reale's pebble terrazza

A stag mosaic at the Palazzo Reale

Elephant with a monkey on its back under a palm. It is possible that the artists had never actually seen a real elephant.

A Seahorse

The mosaic terrace has very good proportions and sets the stage for the view of the harbor although industrial development has made the view towards the harbor less appealing than it once was.

Fishermen drinking wine while they work

A man herding mules to a Mill

The Mosaic Garden looking out to the Genoa Harbour

A plaque commemorating the restoration of the Palazzo's mosaics

The scale of the garden is very pleasing, with its plantings of native Chamaerops humilis, the Mediterranean Fan Palm and other species, as well as Italian Cypresses

A white marble balustrade borders the terrace of the Hanging Gardens

Looking down from the arcade bridge built that divides the Hanging Garden from the Court of Honor

Marble urns and the Mermaid fountain on the arcade

A man playing a horn in the forest

An ancient Roman sarcophagus ornaments one of the axial paths of the garden

View of the harbor lighthouse from the Hanging Gard

A video can be seen at this link showing the process of building a Risseu technique pebble mosaic.
http://www.mused-mosaik.de/en/2013/07/31/ligurian-risseu-technique-la-repubblica-tv/
The process is obviously tedious, something I know very well from building them over the last 3 decades, although my process is quite different. The pebbles used in this work have a very uniform shape and thickness enabling them to be set in a thin bed of lime mortar.

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The results are quite wonderful to behold, and pavement fit for a king. Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

These are some images of other pebble mosaics that I saw in the beautiful town of Portofino, north east of Genoa. It is traditional to see these kinds of mosaics around churches.

4 dolphins and 2 tridents

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Angels with dirty faces; Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno.

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Angel with a mallet

The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genoa, Italy is the largest repository of Italian funereal art in the country and one of the largest in Europe. When I visited this magical, charismatic sea port known best as the supposed birthplace of the explorer Christopher Columbus, a friend sent me a message and suggested I visit the cemetery that had so impressed him when he was a young man.

I love cemeteries and have visited so many I can't imagine counting them, but there are a handful that stand out in my memory as being truly spectacular. There is of course Père-Lachaise in Paris, which in my mind is the most amazing, although Staglieno in Genoa certainly rivals it a different way.

Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

My recent visit to the Campo Santo in Pisa, Italy took my breath away. Pisan Gothic arcades in white marble form a vast rectangular courtyard surrounded by a lofty roofed corridor that contains Roman sarcophagi to 19th Century masterpieces in sculpture.

The Campo Santo at Piazza di Miracoli in Pisa

Many graves are set in the marble floors like those found in churches while marvelous crypts are placed along the walls and in a domed chapel.

A gorgeous monument in the Campo Sacro in the Piazza di Miracoli in Pisa

The Capuchin crypts in Palermo Sicily are unforgettably macabre, with semi preserved bodies laid out on ledges and hanging from the walls in their rotting funeral garb. The embalming processes used there combined with the climactic conditions of the underground crypts have preserved the dead creating a place literally like going in to the graves themselves.

Bodies on display in the Capuchin Crypts in Palermo, Sicily

Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires is regal and grandiose and Sao Joao Battista Cemetery in Rio de Janiero is worth a visit if only to see the grave of Carmen Miranda. The Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is a museum of breathtaking marble sculpture as well. There are a lot of cemeteries in the world and this is just a tiny selection, but I remember them as being grand outdoor galleries of extraordinary sculpture honoring the dead.

What really threw me on entering the hillside cemetery at Staglieno was that it is a city of the Dead set in a landscaped forest that covers over one square kilometer. One of the largest cemeteries in Europe, it even has two mini buses that ply the winding roads, driven by impatient bored chauffeurs who have been known to clip and damage the occasional monument as they zoom around like race car drivers.

A road climbing the hill to the upper reaches of this enormous cemetery complex

Vast arched galleries run for hundreds of meters lined with some of the finest marble sculpture ever executed by the hand of man. Ernest Hemingway called it "one of the wonders of the world". The famed French short story writer Maupassant and the German philosopher Nietzsche visited the cemetery. Oscar Wilde's wife is buried here while he is interred in Père-Lachaise in Paris.

Opium Poppies

Mark Twain wrote this after an apparently moving visit: "Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to accommodate 60,000 bodies), and we shall continue to remember it after we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble colonnaded corridor extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, and on every slab is and inscription - for every slab covers a corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish, and therefore, to us, these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world."

The Emporer Napoleon was the man who first dictated the need for proper cemeteries in Italy with the edict of Saint-Cloud in 1804 to help alleviate the disease and stench of internment within city walls. People were often buried under the floors of churches and catastrophic epidemics were commonplace. During times of plague bodies were just piled in the piazzas for lack of a place to put them. As proper cemeteries were established beyond city walls, affluent families saw the opportunity to create grand memorials to their legacy and loved ones. A grand funerary memorial is a symbol of status in the hopes of not being forgotten.

Arcades create enormous galleries for a breathtaking array of funeral monuments

The Genoese architect Carlo Barabino began work on the design in 1835 after proving himself a master with other prominent projects in the city. The architect Giovanni Battista Resasco carried on the work after Barabino's death during a cholera epidemic. The main structure of the cemetery wasn't completed until 1880. Additions of an English, Protestant, and Jewish cemetery were added over time.

A sign with a plan of the cemetery

The lower and upper arcades create high terraces containing different periods and styles of art considered in vogue at the time of their construction. These arcades frame the dramatic centrally positioned Pantheon, a domed building modeled after the ancient structure in Rome.

The Pantheon with a monolithic sculpture of Liberty bearing a cross

Above and beyond these symmetrical structures is a more naturalistic park with winding roads and stairs connecting a fantasy world of family tombs in a variety of styles from Neo-Gothic, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau to Art Deco.

The Neo-Gothic Capella Raggio, built in 1896

The back sides and corridors of these arcades are filled with simpler covered crypts in a style that goes back to the pre Roman Etruscans. More contemporary renditions lie behind these older ones in a style that is popular throughout Europe today.

The flat areas in between were later filled with the humble but telling graves of the common people, smothered in gardens of colorful silk flowers and the flickering lights of electric eternal flames, that is until the battery runs out. Photos of the departed are affixed to the stones to keep memory alive and aid in locating loved ones when visiting.

Tombstones of the common man fill ground that was once open

A revered Nun

But what is most remarkable about this place is the memorial artwork itself. Renowned sculptors were commissioned to carve imagery depicting grief, loss, mourning, death, decay, pride, valor, reverence, beauty, and the ascension to Heaven, often guided by angels or Jesus Christ himself.

Christ resurrecting from his tomb

The sculptors ability to convey the feeling of a person moving from the world of the living to the afterlife, leaving behind family and friends is done with such nuance that you can feel the emotions meant to be expressed. The downcast eyes have lashes, the delicate hands touch those of an angel preparing to carry the soul to heaven. There is even a sculpture of a woman literally dancing with death while trying to tear herself away.

Dancing with Death

This is an exhausting collection of images that I took on a melancholy but unseasonably warm day in January. These incredible works of art are all the more mysterious in that they are now covered in a layer of dust, rather than polished and cared for. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the literal sense. As the Rolling Stones once sang, "Time waits for no one." Here is a comprehensive tour of what I found to be visually haunting and beautiful at the Cimitero monumental di Staglieno.