See You in the Piazza

by Frances Mayes

  Pietro Paolo Rubens, as the Flemish painter signed himself while in Italy, painted the palazzo builders, the Genovese nobility, portraits that fascinate me more for the splendid clothing worn by the subjects than for the sometimes pinched and ordinary faces. Rubens became fascinated with palazzo architecture when he lived in Genova. I have the volume he published in 1622, Palazzi di Genova, drawings (not his) that record floor plans, room uses, gardens, and elevations of the most important homes—those owned by the rolli, first families listed on the city’s “rolls.” He intended his publication to be a source of inspiration to architects in the rest of Europe. He admired the style of a “perfect cube” and a central living room. By the time a second volume was printed, grand squares had been superseded by rectangles with courtyards.

  I’m glad I read this book before coming to Genova; I had acquaintance with the floor plans, their niches, friezes, marble balconies, trompe-l’oeil loggias, balustrades, and sculptures—the architecture that reveals how a life is lived. The grand palazzi provide, too, a contrast with the crowded, serpentine clusters of housing for the hoi polloi in the medieval centro. (I wonder, where would I have lived? Oh, perhaps in a stone cottage on the shore.)

  Is there a book on the frescoes of Genova? The houses were decorated, not usually with predominant religious subjects but with maps, battles, and mythological themes. The owners also collected art, and not just Italian art. An astonishing patrimony accumulated in the palazzi. Visiting dignitaries, popes, and princes would stay in someone’s palace. Each had a grade, like Michelin stars; the more important the visitor, the fancier the accommodations assigned by the government. Imagine a courier dropping off a note: You’ll be entertaining the king of Spain’s third cousin for two months.

  Some of the palazzi have become apartments; many are schools or part of the university, others are banks. Some are residences still belonging to the last of the nobility. Many are open to visitors. First, we visit Palazzo Rosso, then Palazzo Bianco, overwhelmed in both by the richness of the art, then Palazzo Tursi, one of Italy’s most treasured.

  Have I used the word overwhelmed several times? A recurring word for how I feel in Genova, especially after entering Palazzo Rosso: six floors of opulent living space and paintings. The sixth floor opens onto a walled roof where you can see the sweep of Genova to the sea. The art—Van Dyck, Veronese, Dürer, Ribera, Tiziano (Titian), Lotto, and many Genovese masters I’ve never known before. One is Andrea Sacchi, whose Daedalus and Icarus captures a fraught and tender moment as Daedalus is tying wax wings on Icarus’s slender body. At this moment neither of them knows how it will end. A dreary underlying message: Don’t reach for the sun. How regarded must have been Gregorio De Ferrari and Domenico Piola, who painted the four ceiling frescoes in the rooms named for each season. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to have a winter room, a spring room, others for summer and fall. Looking at De Ferrari’s work, I’m not surprised to learn that when he worked in Parma he copied Correggio’s frescoes. They share the style of dynamic, floating forms and bold color. Piola was top-tier in Genova for the last half of the 1600s. Such immense fame, now faded. Palazzo Rosso was bombed in World War Two, as were many historic places in Genova. The restoration is seamless.

  * * *

  THE ART IS even more compelling in Palazzo Bianco: Rubens, Zurbarán, Memling, Cranach the Elder, Van Cleve, Brueghel. Bounty from the noble bankers and canny sea-traders, all of whom seem to have been enchanted with art. Two of my favorite Italians are here, too: Pontormo and Filippino Lippi. Most magnetic, however, is Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo, Behold the Man. Dark, like all Caravaggios, except for the vulnerable torso of Christ, whose naked chest is bathed in a luminous, buttery light. He looks not at all transcendent this moment after being crowned with thorns. Downcast eyes, thin frame, his suffering private. The torturer’s expression haunts me with its ambiguous mix of pity and enjoyment. The face of Pilate is thought to be a Caravaggio self-portrait. I hope not. It’s awful to think he might put his face onto that ironic, cruel character.

  * * *

  ART SATURATES ME quickly. Four hours, I’m done.

  * * *

  OUR ROOM IS a haven. High ceilings lift the spirit. Ed is reading about Renzo Piano. If only we could invite him to dinner! I’m reading the trusty Blue Guide to Liguria, then about Charles Dickens’s sojourn here. “Beautiful confusion,” he noted. When I fall into a nap, the iPad crashes to the floor. A hazard books don’t share.

  * * *

  BY THE MORNING of the third day, it’s clear that we are not going to see nearly all of Genova. This city needs you for a week, at least. We are not going to visit the aquarium, nor Piano’s biosphere of tropical plants, nor the Galata Museo’s history of seafaring exhibits. We are not going to climb to the top of La Lanterna, the second-oldest lighthouse in Europe, and we won’t be able to see the residential neighborhoods on the sea. I am especially sorry we can’t get to the cemetery of Sant’Ilario in the near-suburb of Nervi. Its nineteenth-century sculpture of mourning was on my list, as was an architectural attraction in another cemetery: Carlo Scarpa’s tombs for the Galli family. (Ed doesn’t share my interest in how the dead are buried. But what else is more revealing about a culture?) As the list of what remains to be seen lengthens, the desire to return takes root. When?

  * * *

  AT THE ERSATZ house of Christopher Columbus, a busload of German tourists crowds the entrance. Believe this was his home and you also can believe that Juliet’s balcony survives in Verona. But this may well be the right area; Columbus’s father is said to have been the gatekeeper at Porta Soprana, the entrance between two sculptural round towers in the fortified walls built in 1155. Turning away from the modest hovel, what we find nearby is the delicate cloister of Sant’Andrea, untended and unvisited, a haunting outline of delicate columns surrounding a weedy center. No trace of the original church remains but the cloister feels holy.

  * * *

  AS WE WALK, walk, and walk, we stop into various churches—and there are many. All the rolli families buried themselves grandly. Most are elaborate and dark: Ashen air hangs like cobwebs from high windows where light bursts in. By the time you’ve been in Genova a few days, you’re familiar with the names of local gentry; Doria, Pallavicino, Grimaldi, Spinola, Adorno, Brignole Sale are carved on palazzi, tombs, monuments, and plaques. The harmonious Piazza San Matteo memorializes the powerful Doria dynasty with a black-and-white banded church surrounded by several palazzi. The black and white signifies importance in the city; not just anyone was allowed that distinctive design. In Genova’s major church, dedicated to San Lorenzo, you come upon the Grimaldi and Fieschi tombs. San Lorenzo isn’t Genova’s patron saint (that’s John the Baptist) but he gets top billing anyway. Above the receding striped columns of the major portal, there Lorenzo lies on a grill, enduring his martyrdom. (Yes, patron saint of chefs.) At either end, two small figures appear to be ramping up the heat with anvils.

  San Lorenzo has been a cathedral since 1006 and fate since has brought a series of revisions. Major construction took place from 1118 until 1130: Romanesque, with interruptions of French Gothic. How impossible to absorb the church’s wealth of symbols, didactic programs, ornaments, and iconography. But the religious bookstore, Libreria San Paolo, on the same piazza, gets me started with a brochure called “Cathedral of Saint Laurence.” I spend a morning with this. I am thinking of something Margaret Visser wrote about another church in her brilliant book, The Geometry of Love: “Meaning is intentional: this building has been made in order to communicate with the people in it…The building is trying to speak; not listening to what it has to say is a form of barbarous inattention, like admiring a musical instrument while caring nothing for music.”

  Inside, I find paintings of San Lorenzo’s life, including one by local artist Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo. San Lorenzo restores sight to Lucillus, an imprisoned blind pagan. Especially bountiful are the many paintings of the Virgi
n Mary, capturing tender moments as when she holds the Child and John the Baptist leans over and kisses the tiny foot. Endless repetitions of religious images can engender numbness in the brain, but now and again, such as now, one makes you feel washed clean. Wandering this cabinet of curiosities, I love getting to know artists I was unaware of: Luca Cambiaso, Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco), Domenico Fiasella, Giovanni Battista Paggi. Genova! What astonishing flowering over a long period of time.

  The word overwhelming comes to mind again. From Byzantine frescoes to a crystal plate from the Last Supper—such a heritage. Who would expect to see a blue dish that held the head of John the Baptist, and an unexploded bomb that hit the church in World War Two?

  * * *

  ON THE EDGE of the centro storico, we walk into the shock of Piazza de Ferrari—a grand fountain, vast open space (sky!), opera house, arcaded shops, cafés, and the enormous Palazzo Ducale. Developed in 1870, after the unification of Italy, this area is where Genova joins the modern world. Cars, taxis, buses! Busy via XX Settembre branches off from here, a long street of small shops and the Mercato Orientale, which would drive even the most reluctant cook to the kitchen. The “Eastern” market is one of the greatest markets in Italy, a two-story structure packed with everything that swims in the sea, cheeses, armfuls of basil, meats. Mounds of endive, Jerusalem artichokes, primitive red radicchio with twisting white ribs that look plucked from under water, escarole, dozens of lettuce—all prove the appeal of the autumn kitchen. Worth bringing home: bags of dried porcini mushrooms and pine nuts.

  The grand bazaar—you can’t help but photograph piles of broccolo romano, tangerines, radishes, and black cabbage. Squid, fish flashing iridescent under the lights, slick calamari, cockles, mussels, alive ho! Although there are artichokes up from the south, missing this time of year are the coveted thorny, sweet, and tender artichokes of Albenga in Liguria. (We must come back in March.) We buy a few annurca, not local but brought in from Campania in the south. These apples are harvested when green; they can’t ripen if left unpicked. Because of short stems, they drop off. They’re set out on straw or hemp to ripen, and must be turned every few days. Ripe, they’re rosy and round, and smell like apple essence.

  * * *

  GENOVESE EAT WELL. Their food is fresh and true-to-source. I make a list of favorites from pasticcherie (pastry shops) and cafés so far:

  Almond panna cotta

  Tortina di patate e gorgonzola, a little potato and Gorgonzola tart

  Chocolate and orange tart

  Shellfish salad with puntarelle (a bitter, wild green)

  Salad of shaved raw artichokes with bresaola and Parmigiano

  Torta of rice and saffron

  Torta of escarole

  * * *

  WE FIND LA Buca di San Matteo, near the Doria complex. “Ah, a date-night restaurant,” I say, slipping off my jacket. Softly lit, high-backed upholstered chairs, a place for intimate conversation. For a few minutes, we pretend we are meeting secretly, he down from Milan, me in from Florence. A torrid evening ahead. But soon we fall to discussing what we will choose from the tempting menu. We share an order of very light pansoti (like ravioli) with rich walnut sauce, then Ed lights on the tuna with grilled polenta and I opt for chickpea purée with grilled shrimp.

  We’ve missed as much as we’ve seen. At least we have eaten our way across the city. We can’t possibly order dessert tonight but we do—who could turn away from creamy zabaglione semifreddo with a crunch of chocolate and hazelnut brittle? And we might as well taste the chestnut mousse flavored with orange as we polish off a liter of house wine.

  * * *

  AT ALL HOURS, as we come and go from our hotel, a violinist stands before the great portal of San Lorenzo. He’s good. He sends his music as a gift into the air of the ancient piazza. I think of his parents. All those music lessons, all the hope. And this is where he plays by heart—with exuberance and joy. We leave euros in his instrument case and he nods. We nod back. Grazie per la musica!

  In the Mugello, north of Florence, the landscape rapidly changes. Geometric lines of vineyards defining natural slopes, and iconic terraced olive groves reshape into rugged woods and open fields. Villages often are not as appealing as those to the south. But the Mugello is Medici country—their villas remain—and they selected it for good reasons. Trading routes, yes, but also dramatic hills, bracing air, sweet rivers, hunting, and surely these blazing yellow poplars brushing their plumes against the sky.

  On the way to Scarperia early this morning, we detour only fifteen kilometers to see the house we once rented for two weeks in Vicchio. Right down the road was the bridge where, so the story goes, Cimabue discovered Giotto, a shepherd boy drawing a sheep on the side of a stone. We find the bridge again. Nothing has changed in thirty years—the pretty little river Ensa still flows, as it must have when the artists met here. The house we rented only has a new coat of paint. The misty pastures are the same ones I walked in. Time warps, as it often does in Italy. My daughter might still be drying her hair in the upstairs bedroom. The boy might still be here, trying to render the bulk of a ram onto a stone with a sharp rock. Does the refrigerator still ice over like an igloo, giving a big shock when you try to pry open the door?

  * * *

  WHAT REMAINS OF travels when decades pass? “Remember, that’s where we picked string beans?” Ed slows in front of Villa Il Cedro.

  “And we helped a farmer catch his pig.” A ridiculous image of Ed, arms out, in hot pursuit of a grunting pig flashes in my mind. “What would you have done if you’d caught it?”

  We’re driving through the attractive and busy town of Borgo San Lorenzo, recalling with zest the rosticceria where rows of roasting chickens dripped fat onto potatoes below—forever after the paragon of crispy potatoes. We keep spotting shining kaki, persimmons, in bare black branches. Nothing says autunno more than these glowing orange lanterns in trees I never notice the rest of the year.

  * * *

  SCARPERIA. I’M COMING here to see Andrea Berti. He makes knives. Knives to covet. Handmade, balanced, honed to the nth. The town has been a center for knives, scissors, swords, and daggers since the 1500s. I met Andrea at a dinner in Cortona celebrating our local Chianina beef and our superb syrah. Famous chefs came from all over Italy. Andrea brought—what else?—knives. He said then, “Come to Scarperia.”

  We drop our bags at the thirteen-room Locanda San Barnaba across the street from a park where bright golden leaves pave the wet ground. Walking through the old town walls, we follow the straight road into town. In the Middle Ages, this was the main trunk road to Bologna from Firenze. Scarperia grew up on either side after the site was declared a fortification, along with Terranuova Bracciolini, Firenzuola, Dicomano, and others, protecting Firenze against invaders.

  We’ve planned the trip around the curtailed fall opening hours of Palazzo dei Vicari (1306) because we want to see its knife museum, Museo dei Ferri Taglienti. The palazzo—more fortress and castle than palace—was the seat of vicars who administered the district. The structure looms over the piazza. Stemmi, stone coats of arms, with a few ceramic ones from the della Robbia workshop, decorate the façade, each one left by a vicar after his tenure. On the right rises a tower with a huge bell. Before we go in, we stop at a bar for coffee and look across at Chiesa dei Santi Jacopo e Filippo, balancing the opposite side of the piazza, and at the corner the small oratorio where the Florentine vicars swore allegiance.

  The bar is full of joking men taking a mid-morning break. One, old, in an over-large black suit and sweater, polished black shoes, and a hat, takes his beer across the street into the piazza and sits alone at an outdoor table. The sun hits the yellow-peach wall behind him with a burst of molten light, outlining him as if he were drawn on the wall. All the light stops at his black shape. He’s squinting. His ears are long. His face, shadowed by his hat, is impenetrable. He belongs to no
one.

  * * *

  WE ENTER THE Palazzo dei Vicari as did the horses and carriages, into a courtyard, also covered in coats of arms. I imagine the clip-clop of hooves, the neighing. Someone in the office must unlock the museum. We’re pointed up the stairs where a large San Cristoforo fresco lords over the landing. Patron saint of travelers, Cristoforo is still my favorite, though he’s been knocked off the church’s saint list. He’s knee-deep in transparent water, the Baby riding his shoulders and holding out a ball. The world, of course. A tentacled sea creature is faintly visible beneath the river surface.

  Though there have been renovations and earthquake repairs over the centuries, nothing is over-restored. I can feel the palpable atmosphere of the time, even the chilly air. Designed by the Florentine architect Brunelleschi, the intricate mechanism that once drove the tower clock is on display in the first room, next to a Madonna and Child, which looks familiar. Ah, the tag says school of Ghirlandaio. Looking closely, I see that graffiti has been scratched into some of the borders.