A History of Italian Tiles - Part vi

An Idea Whose Time Has Come By Garreth Cruikshank

We ordered and soon began the serious business of eating, Patrizia returned to the subject of the photograph. “What does it mean?” she asked. “Several things, I suspect. That life keeps repeating itself, merely with stylistic variations. He could be referring to tiles or architectural styles, the enduring appeal of Classical forms. But I don’t think so. I think ‘L’ is hinting at something both eternal and at the same time very apropos. Consider when he wrote it - mid 1930, or thereabouts. Judging from Signora Poletta’s comments and Bodkin’s own journal entries, discreet as they are, it’s not at all impossible that ‘L’ was politically active, and not on the side of the government.

French Revolution inspired him by its example, the Industrial Revolution by its horror, and the bourgeois society, which emerged from both, transformed his very existence and modes of creation.” “He doesn’t sound very much like your average art connoisseur, does he?” “Not much”, she replied. “More like a revolutionary, or a Romantic.” “Exactly. He goes on, ‘That artists were in this period directly inspired by and involved in public affairs is not in doubt. Those who were uncommitted, the gentle decorators of rococo palaces and boudoirs were precisely the ones whose art wilted away.

“Why, indeed.” What could a young Italian political dissident have in common with a Cambridge academic researching the history of Italian ceramics, I asked myself?

“I don’t know. Maybe Signora Poletta can throw more light on that tomorrow, or maybe Bodkin himself,” and I tapped the cover of the battered journal.

“Listen to this and tell me what you think. ‘What determines the flowering or wilting of the arts at any period is, I find, rather obscure. However, there is no doubt that between 1789 and 1848 the answer must be sought first and foremost in the impact of the dual revolutions - French and industrial. If a single sentence is to try to sum up the relations of artist and society in this era, one might say that the

“Caró mio, you are going to have to learn Italian.” She peered at the wall, then put on her Trussardi designed occhiali, “Nothing in the world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

‘An idea whose time has come’, I mused. Though Hugo’s observation was true for any time or place it still had a potency which resonated now. What, if anything, would the journal have to say on the matter?

Patrizia leaned forward, almost conspiratorially. “Who do you think ‘L’ is?”

“Ah! Now that IS a question. Whoever he is, there is certainly more to him that meets the eye.” I opened the journal at the page I had been reading when Patrizia had startled me in Piazza Saffi.

After dinner we walked by an alternative route back to the piazza, where Patrizia had parked her car. Across the mottled surface of an ancient wall someone had scrawled a slogan in bright red paint. What caught my attention was the name - Victor Hugo. “Patrizia, what does that graffiti say?”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, immersed in our own private thoughts. Arriving at the car Patrizia and I discussed the arrangements for our next meeting. We kissed and parted, she to her home and family, I to my hotel and Bodkin. Bloody Bodkin!

“So why would he be writing to Professore Bodkin?”

“Who do you think Bodkin is?” she asked with disconcerting matter-offactness.

With that we abandoned our discussion of Bodkin and concentrated on the rest of our meal.

I flopped on the bed of my room and continued to read: figure a ‘The Triumph of Love’

“I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the more he writes the more political and less purely aesthetic his observations become. It’s not just that his interpretation of the history of tiles in particular and the arts in general is acquiring a more conspicuous political edge, a response perhaps to the material at hand, but Bodkin himself appears more politicized.” “If you are right, then Signora Poletta may not have been completely ... what’s the word ... ‘candid’ with us this afternoon.” “It’s possible. We should get a better idea tomorrow.”

After the Medici dynasty died out in 1737, Tuscany was assigned to Francis II of Lorraine, the Empress Maria Theresa’s husband. Though the reformist tendency of the new dynasty was evident, the true period of reformism in Tuscany began with the accession of Peter Leopold, who was steeped in Enlightenment culture. The reform programme aimed above all at the complete freeing up of the market, both of land and of produce. From the mid 1760s to the early 1770s free trade became one of the economic and political dogmas of the Tuscan landowners. Parallel with economic liberation, Peter Leopold completely restructured the systems of administration and

taxation, while the greatest strides were made in the struggle against ecclesiastical privilege. Modena too belonged to Austria and was subject to its enlightenment programme. The state was crisscrossed by new roads which made its position too important for Austria not to wish to control it. Therefore the reformist measures of the Austrian monarchs were applied to Modena also. Monastic schools were suppressed, war was waged against tax ‘farmers’ and a new land register was drawn up, and the tax system revised.

the market and the rise in prices were factors in the development of production in the southern countryside.

however enormous (there were 75,000 priests and monks in the Kingdom), were only a part of the ‘system’. Implacably pursuing them, almost exclusively, meant choosing the easiest The new King, Don Carlos of Bourbon, and most exposed target, while the who succeeded to the throne of main citadels of the ancien regime Naples in 1734, had an exalted view remained unharmed and unattacked. of his own position as a monarch. A descendent of Louis XIV, he inherited a taste for building on a monumental scale. He was the driving spirit behind the palaces of Caserta - a true southern Versailles - and

In the latter half of the 18th century Lombardy emerged as the economic leader of Italy, which she remained throughout the 19th century and up to the present. However this general development of production was not accompanied by any corresponding social advance; social relations and political institutional structures remained rigid. Most of the land belonged to great estates - the property of the nobility and the ecclesiastical orders. The starting point for all successive reforms was Maria Theresa’s land register, which, despite great opposition from the privileged sectors, was implemented in 1760. From this point till 1790 hardly any sector of public life or the structure of the state remained unaffected. With the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne (1780-1790) enlightened despotism entered its most intense phase. In 1786 Milan was overwhelmed by a torrent of innovations, including the reform of customs duties and the free movement of goods within the state. As it approached the end of its course, however, Austria’s enlightened despotism revealed itself increasingly enlightened, but also increasingly despotic. All the old established bodies within the state were abolished. The people of Milan felt this slight. In the Kingdom of Naples agriculture profited from the century’s favourable circumstances. Population increase, the consequent broadening of

figure C The garden behind Santa Chiara, Naples. The tiles, c.1740 on the columns are painted with swirling flowers and foliage, while the benches depict rustic landscapes.

figure B The Porcelain Room from the Palace of Portici is now installed in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples. The decoration in the ‘chinoiserie’ style was carried out in porcelain between 1754 and 1759 by the Capodimonte factory.

Very little was done to dismantle the privileges and feudal abuses of the baronage, to reform the fiscal and administrative apparatus, to attach the parasitism of the capital in relation to the provinces.

In the end the reform of Don Carlos and his ministers came to an end without having harmed the structures of the ancien regime or alleviated, let Capodimonte, and he encouraged the alone removed, its abuses. archeological excavations of Pompeii, one of the great cultural events of the During the 18th century the Papacy’s century. But Don Carlos had enough international prestige reached it’s political sense to realise that in the nadir. Napoleon had forced Pius VII enlightened age the glory of a king was into imprisonment and exile. He was measured by the breadth and depth of not the first pope of that period to his reforms, the most effective of which suffer humiliation at the hands of were those in the field of Church - state those who were, for the moment, in relations. The immunity of ecclesiastical power. Consider also the long litany property from taxation was reduced, of measures limiting the prerogatives the Inquisition suppressed, the wealth and privileges of the clergy, which the of the numerous monasteries popes of the 18th century had to suffer was confiscated and mortmain was from almost all of the governments of restricted. Europe and Italy, and which played a considerable part in aggravating the In the Kingdom of Naples, even more papal states already chronic financial than elsewhere, the privileges of the crisis. To add insult to injury, it was clergy and the ecclesiastical orders, universally held to be one of the most

backward and badly governed states in the country. Piedmont was the only one of the Italian states of the 18th century able to take an active and profitable part in the complicated diplomatic and political manoeuvres of the first part of the century. But its story is such a complex, confusing and contradictory one as to defy summary here. Suffice it to say that, as a whole, from the political and intellectual point of view Piedmont was a depressed area of Italy during this period, a fact which it is difficult to reconcile with the role it was to play in Italian history during the next century. By 1789 Enlightenment reform in Italy was virtually over, and some of the men who had supported it were moving towards more radical solutions. They did not hesitate to make the principle of the French Revolution their own. In periods of revolution and civil war the course of events can take unimagined directions, especially when such an exceptional personality as Napoleon Bonaparte is concerned. The new commander of the Army of Italy was not satisfied with the secondary role assigned to him by the Directory. Between May 1796 and April 1797 he achieved an unprecedented series of military victories, occupied the whole of Northern Italy, marched to the gates of Vienna and forced the great Hapsburg Empire into peace discussions at Leoben. Napoleon won from the Directory a liberty of movement and initiative which he used to promote his own personal policy in the peninsula. Seldom, until the coming of the 20th century, has the complexion of political thought affected the arts more closely than in the closing decade of the 18th century. In France, all that the ancien regime represented had been swept away, and the Revolutionaries, tiring of the rivers of blood flowing in the gutters of Paris, sought for a foundation on which to base the new society. Since the mid-century, Classical art and institutions in one form or another had been associated with radical thought in Europe, and it was on Roman institutions that France sought to form its government. The Consulate, which replaced the Directory in 1799 was directly inspired by that of ancient Rome. This survived until 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor. His identification with the Caesars dated back to his election as first Consul. This had a profound effect on the prevailing

fashion in interior decoration, which myself, had the man managed to stick was soon based firmly on Imperial the place for so long? He had been Roman styles. here for months! True, he came and went, but still, Forli, 1930. What was However, neo-classicism had its origins the attraction? in the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pompeii had first been I walked to the station to book my discovered in 1745, but systematic ticket. From here I could go south to investigation did not begin until around Rimini and then on to Ancona, or north 1755, and the impact on all aspects via Faenza, to Bologna. I opted for of society, the decorative arts not the the latter. From Bologna I could easily least, proved to be spectacular. get to Florence and Pisa where I had friends. After the ordeal of booking a The earliest manifestations of the train ticket I needed a coffee. Finding new classical revival were transitional, a small caffe I sat, ordered and opened during the course of which the newer the journal at random, for I had lost my classical elements occur on objects bookmark. which were predominantly Rococo in form. These elements owe much I was somewhat surprised to find that less to Rinascimento classicism than Bodkin had resumed his observations formerly, and were taken more or upon a topic to which he had not less directly from Greek and Roman referred in a while - mosaics. ‘The art. Formal Greek motifs such as the idea that an ancient work of art should key-fret, wave bands, and egg-and- be preserved as part of the cultural dart ornament appear increasingly as heritage which has come down to decoration on furniture and furnishings, us was established only in the 19th which gradually lost their Rococo curves century, post the discovery of Pompeii to be replaced by more severe lines. and Herculaneum, and partially in Ornament became far less profuse. response to the Industrial Revolution and the spirit of Romanticism. Until then a countless number of splendid mosaic decorations were destroyed and lost forever.

figure D A soup tureen and cover from the Erolanese service, Naples, c.1781, ordered by Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies, for his father Carlos III of Spain. The inspiration for the service came from the collection of bronzes found at Herculaneum.

At this point I decided to strip myself of ornament also and went to bed, exhausted. The next morning I woke from a dreamless sleep, showered, dressed and went to breakfast after which I strolled around the town, journal in hand. Pleasant as it was, I had grown weary of Forli and determined that tomorrow would be my last day. I would miss Patrizia, and even, curiously, the Signora. Tomorrow would be my last chance to discover the truth about Bodkin. How, I asked

In Rome, for instance, the mosaics adorning the ancient Constantinian church of St. Peter’s were torn down in the 16th century to make way for the new basilica. The Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, however, also provided local mosaicists with commissions including the decoration of the church’s interior and the execution of alter pieces in mosaic after famous oil painting originals, these being in a poor state of preservation. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church promoted the revival of mosaic as a means of formally reasserting the spiritual values of early Christianity, and undertook the establishment of a mosaic school dependent on the Vatican basilica. This project was only carried out in 1727 when the Studio del Mosaico Vaticano was actually founded. This studio is still active today. In order to become independent of Venice, which had been the centre of mosaic material manufacure since the 16th century, the Vatican’s own glass factory carried out a research programme which led to the production of no less than 28,000 colours. It was however, in the smalto manufacturing technique that the Vatican artisans attained their greatest achievements and fostered further developments. Ever since Classical Antiquity mosaic

decoration had employed square shaped tesserae, obtained by cutting either stone or glass material. In about 1775 a new type of manufacturing process was devised in Rome by which the molten glass was first thread into thin rods which were then cut into tiny tesserae in every possible shade of colour.

figure E A minute mosaic ‘butterfly’ by Giacomo Raffaelli, 1787. The diameter is a mere 7.2 cms.

This smalti filati technique made it possible for mosaicists to execute their copies of paintings on an even smaller scale and eventually even to produce actual miniature mosaics, which gained widespread popularity in the first half of the 19th century. Manufactured by independent workshops for a bourgeois client the minute mosaics were employed to embellish small, everyday objects and were often regarded as items of jewellery due to their exquisite refinement and technical virtuosity. However it was these very features that brought about a decline in this artistic technique in the second half of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution caused all activities primarily based on manual labour eventually to disappear. While in Rome mosaic work was undertaken less and less frequently, in Venice simpler, quicker and cheaper methods of mosaic manufacture were devised in order to meet the needs of the new scale of production. The so-called ‘indirect method’ made it possible to produce mosaics on what was virtually an industrial scale. The work, which was executed in the studio, entailed setting the tesserae upside down on a temporary paper base; the mosaic was then shipped to its destination and installed in-situ. This technique of prefabrication reduced time and labour costs, though at the expense of the

product’s artistic worth. These works are cold and dull in character since the smooth and over-reflective surface finish lacks the sparkling glow which was typical of Byzantine and Medieval wall mosaics, executed by setting each tesserae at a different angle and to a different depth.’ Coffee, cigarette and aperitif finished I resumed my walk back to the centre of town. As fascinating as Bodkin’s comments on mosaic were, I had the feeling that they were out of place at this point in the narrative. Did they serve some other purpose besides informing I went back to the text and read it again. Was that Bodkin’s intention? To use the ‘mosaic’ episode as a red herring to throw the mysterious scrutinisers of his journal off the scent? I looked again at the book, near the spine, and could see that more pages had been cut out, just at the point where Bodkin had been referring to Napoleon. First, a gap, and then the story resumed: ‘Initially the hopes of those Italians who had saluted Napoleon as the liberator of northern Italy seemed to be, at least partially, justified by events. In June of 1797 the Cispadane and Cisalpine Republics were merged. Despite its nominal independence however, this new republic never ceased to be subject to French military occupation, with all its burdensome consequences, including the plunder of its works of art. After so many French victories the fate of the Italian countryside was falling into the hand of the Austro-Russian army, who in 1799 spread across the Po plain, while Cardinal Ruffo was preparing to reconquer Naples. A few months later the French were driven out of Italy, aided and abetted by the widespread peasant guerrilla resistance which was general and savage. The fanaticism of the peasant bands who raged against the French, the Jacobins and the Jews contained the desperation and rage of those who had once again been disappointed, of men who vented their anger as they could, against whomever they could. The princes had spoken of the ‘public happiness’ and the Jacobin’s had evoked agricultural law, but in the end the century of enlightenment and revolution had passed without anything in the conditions of their lives having really changed. In the spring of 1800 Napoleon commenced his reconquest of Italy. He

no longer promised liberty, equality and revolution, but the stability and order of a modern, efficient administration. This prospect met with general favour from the public sick of revolutions and coups. The vast majority of Italians saw peace and stability as the essential prerequisite of progress and reform, and for almost 15 years Napoleon provided them with these things.

figure F The beautiful soft paste of Capodimonte porcelain was an ideal vehicle for the talents of the great Italian modeller Giuseppe Gricci. ‘The Rabbit Catchers’, c.1750, typifies the aristocratic taste, so widespread in Enlightenment Europe, for peasant figures and idealised rustic life.

From the point of view of economic development the life of the new Italian Kingdom was active. The cost of war had forced the government into selling national property on a vast scale, which, for the most part, consisted of confiscated ecclesiastical estates. Everyone, noble and bourgeois alike, invested in land. Public building and the provisioning of Napoleon’s armies offered alternative avenues of business and speculation for the new bourgeois Italian industrialist. The continental blockade against England, while damaging some sectors of production had little effect on others, such as wool and minerals, while for others the blockade may have acted as a form of protective barrier. Before the arrival of the French and the Napoleonic code it was difficult for any Italian who was neither noble nor fairly well-off to pursue an intellectual career. The easiest road was to enter the Church, and many took it. After 1796 things changed radically. For the sons of the nobility and the bourgeoisie there existed the chance of a glorious career in Napoleon’s armies. But other possibilities were also now open to the more gifted: the powerful universities, the academies of art, the

conservatoires, the administration and finally - journalism. A new breed of intellectuals was taking shape who took an active role in civic life and who were instrumental in creating a national public opinion which expressed itself in cultural debate and gave itself a political organisation - in this case one which urged towards national independence. When, at the end of 1812, news reached Italy of Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Russia and the grave losses suffered by the Italian troops in the campaign, it began to be clear to many that Bonaparte’s days were numbered. The principle of legitimacy proclaimed by the Congress of Vienna was applied to Italy with zealous and bureaucratic punctiliousness. All the previously dethroned dynasties were restored to their territories. As the old political frontiers were restored, so were customs barriers. Goods that came down the Po or via the Brenner Pass in the direction of Modena and Tuscany, were forced to pay as many import and export taxes as there were states which they had to cross. The Restoration was not merely political but also economic. Even so, there were limits to what could be restored. The policies of the Restoration governments oscillated between the unrealistic attempt to govern against the new classes and social groups that had emerged from the crisis and collapse of the old order, and the equally unrealistic attempt to win their trust and support. They succeeded only in giving proof of their weakness and in encouraged opposition. As could only be expected, during the Restoration the forces of reaction gained the ascendancy. Stendhal’s PROMENADES DANS ROME present a stagnant society, languidly waiting for things to change. However, one of the signs that this stagnation would not last long was that, as Stendhal and others observed, every person ‘in the least cultured’ was in opposition.’ I had been walking, reading and musing for nearly two hours. It was time to take a break. I entered the trattoria where I had lunched the previous day and ordered the risotto ai funghi and a small bottle of house red, but I could not get Bodkin out of my mind. The more I read the more elusive he

seemed. There were more questions than answers. His whole approach to his subject was so unconventional. Yet while it seemed inappropriate for him to concentrate on the political and economic circumstances of the period, it could be said that his elaboration of the wider context of the ‘earth, fire and water industry’, as he had described it, revealed how it had been affected more than many others by historical changes to which it had been subjected and which it has ‘ever sought to turn to its advantage’. He had undeniably cast his net very wide. I sipped my glass of tolerably good red, and read on.

sold widely in Italy. For the Rubbiani family they marked a move away from the manufacture of earthenware and ornamental items, and the beginning of the production of building tiles.’

‘In 1815 the Congress of Vienna put an end to the interlude of Napoleonic domination of Europe and, amongst other things, returned the dukedom of Modena to the Dukes of Austria-Este. Francis IV confirmed the Dallari heirs licence to manufacture fine maiolica for a further 10 years. In 1836, Count Giovanni Francesco Moreni set up the Old Factory, or ‘maiolica factory’ and produced a vast range of plainly decorated everyday objects at a low price. The Dallari’s kept the ‘New’ or ‘Red Earth’ factory in which, on the basis of the agreements with Ferrari Moreni, they could manufacture only pots and pans. Towards the middle of the century, another important family appeared on the scene: the Rubbiani.

Somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where now, Bodkin had noted down a conversation which had taken place in Rome, with ‘L’, that watershed Easter 1930. I flicked through the pages impatiently till I came to the place. ‘L’ was speaking, “In other parts of the world substance always takes precedence over form. The external aspect is considered useful but secondary. Here, on the other hand, the show is as important as, and many times more important than, reality. This is due perhaps to the fact that the climate has allowed us to live mostly outdoors, in the streets and piazze, or because we are naturally inclined towards arranging a spectacle, acting a character, staging a drama, or because we Italians are more pleased by display than other nations, to the point that we do not countenance life when it is reduced to the unadorned truth. It may be because the show can be a very satisfactory ersatz for the many things we lack, or because we love, above all, a good actor who can stir us, a good dramatic situation which can make us feel the emotions only art, or artifice, can evoke well.

Giovanni Maria Rubbiani, a tenant farmer from the Modenese Appenines, who had worked for years with his father and brother in the Sassuolo ceramics industry (such as it was), bought the ‘pots and pans’ factory from Costanzo Dallari in 1847. In 1854 he bought the maiolica factory from Count Ferrari Moreni. It was largely through the efforts of his two sons, Carlo and Antonio, who was a progressive priest and an excellent businessman, that Sassuolo ceramics became famous. The many prizes that they garnered at all the main Italian and European exhibitions ensured the fame of the company. The Rubbiani’s also modernised manufacturing techniques by introducing dry pressing from England, the first in Italy to do so. Despite the generally unfavourable economic climate, or perhaps because of it, they introduced plaques or PIANELLE in maiolica of different sizes and colours (blue or oxblood characters on a white background) to their ornamental products. These plaques were used for numbering and naming streets and public buildings and can still be seen in many of the streets in Turin. They were also exported to Brazil as well as being

I closed my book and ate my lunch. The waiters bustled around while handsome, well-dressed men and women came and went. From my table against the front window I could take in most of the piazza: the post office, the basilica, the banks, the row of Baroque palazzi which had been converted into offices with elegant shops at street level.

Whatever the reason, this reliance on symbols and spectacles must be clearly grasped if the rest of the world wants to understand Italy, our history, manners, civilisation, habits, and to foresee the future. It is the fundamental trait of our national character. It governs public and private life. It shapes policy and political designs. It is, by the way, one of the reasons why we Italians have always excelled in all activities in which appearance is predominant: architecture, decoration, landscape gardening, the figurative arts, pageantry, opera, ceremonies,”at which point he waved his hand dismissively at some passing priests, “and fashion.” Today, one might legitimately add to ‘L’s’ list: industrial design, cinema and ceramics.