Tag: devil

Postcard from Lecce, Italy: The road time flies upon offers no turning back

postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

“Via Irremeabile d’ell Eternita” labels a columned entrance to the Cimitero di Lecce. Loosely translated by the blogger who knows no Italian beyond words frequently encountered on menus, it means the road to eternity has no return.

Although we walked down that road, we fortunately were able to turn around. Noted for my taphophilia, my love of cemeteries is restricted to wandering in and out of them, not an eagerness to take up any permanent residence.

While the Cimitero di Lecce is not as impressive as the monumental ones of Bologna, Turin and Genoa, symbols most often associated with freemasonry make exploring it interesting.

Freemasonry mystifies me. As do its symbols, many drawn from ancient Egyptian art.

Interpreting with the same level of expertise as applied to the Italian above, the skulls and crossbones are not meant to intimidate but are a symbol of the new life to come. The eternal flame symbolizes enlightenment. There is the unblinking, all-seeing eye. A winged disk might represent a soul that has left its body on its way up to heaven; an acacia branch immortality. The owl, perhaps originating from the one always perched on the shoulder of the Goddess of Wisdom Minerva, represents knowledge and ability to see in the darkest night.

Sphinx
Egyptian-inspired winged sun with serpants on Stampacchia family mausoleum
War veterans from the Falco family
Mausoleum of the Pranzo family
For our mother crowned by an owl
Eternal flame of enlightenment on D’Elia family mausoleum
Interior of mausoleum
“The Road of Eternity Offers No Return”
Cemetery cats
Stigliani mausoleum
Michele Massari (1902-1954 is famous in Lecce for his Gothic Presepio, an elaborate nativity scene on display in the Castle of Charles V.
Owl
Mausoleum with eternal flames, family crest and winged globe
Angelo and Carolina
Eternal flame and skull on mausoleum
Alberto Montinaro (1902-1926)
Francesco Contantini’s mausoleum is packed with symbols: an hourglass, winged skull, etrnal flame, acacia branches and compass.
Owl on the mausoleum of the family of Francesco Chillino

For all of these, there are antithetical dark meanings assigned to the symbols by those who regard freemasonry as akin to worship of the devil.

Historically, masonic membership was prevalent. Among famous masons were George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Houston, David Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Its symbols are engraved in the design of our own dollar bill. Even the Mister’s Boerne-raised grandfather was a mason with a mantlepiece full of the wise owls he favored.

When the lights are permanently turned out for me and I am left standing in the middle of the road with no turning back, I would gladly welcome the appearance of a little owl to guide me along the dark path that lies ahead.

Postcard from Naples, Italy: Snippets shot in final four museums

postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

Detail of “The Devil and the Holy Water,” Salvatore Postiglione, 1887, Gallerie d’Italia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano

Inartistically and illogically clumping works from four museums in this one post – 15th-century religious paintings, a Joan Miro retrospective, a house museum, contemporary art. The museums are getting short shrift in treatment because they are the final ones the blog will visit in Naples before moving across the boot of Italy. The grouping does offer a glimpse of how diverse and rich the art offerings found in Naples are.

PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Gallerie d’Italia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano
“Shock Wave,” Mario Merz, 1987, Museo Capodimonte
PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Gallerie d’Ilalia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
“Museum,” Paolo Vetri, 1875, Gallerie d’Italia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano
Salottino di Porcellana, Museo Capodimonte
Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Museo Capodimonte
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Gallerie d’Italia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Carriage House cat, Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
devilish detail, Museo Capodimonte
Salottino di Porcellana, Museo Capodimonte
Gallerie d’Italia – Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano
“San Michele Arcangelo,” 1490, Museo Capodimonte
devilish detail, Museo Capodimonte
Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Joan Miro Exhibition, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli

As is oft the case, our camera lens seems to often focus on the devils lurking in religious art, but what dark thoughts were in the mind of Neapolitan painter Salvatore Postiglione when he conceived of “The Devil and the Holy Water” are unclear to me.

I never had thought of holy water as dangerous before. But, indeed in hindsight, it should have been obvious that the Coronavirus devil was lurking in fonts at the front of Catholic churches everywhere. Catholics always pause to dip their fingers in the communal pool of water and immediately raise them up to touch their face to make a gesture symbolizing the Holy Trinity and baptism.

March brought the draining of the fonts, but how many viral contaminants were shared by the faithful by then? So very, very sad to think of those who might have been harmed by turning to their religious rituals for reassuring comfort….

Postcard from Rome, Italy: When you start zooming in on the ‘wild things’

postcardsfromsanantonio2 Comments

We stayed in Rome 30 days and 30 nights. A church a day. A museum a day. We never came close to exhausting them. But it really hit me on a day toward the end. Temporarily, I was museumed-out. And you probably are as well because I have been dragging you through all of them.

The major symptom of this over-exposure was focusing on bizarre details like an adolescent, and I was stricken with this illness almost immediately upon entering the stunning Palazzo Barberini, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica. It was Lorenzo Lotto’s fault. Right there at the bottom of his “Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria” was an escapee from the “wild rumpus” of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.”

I went downhill from there, as though viewing art through Max’s eyes. Or through the eyes of the bad-behaving putti in Poussin’s “Baccanale.” There was a cute little rooster perched under Jesus’ feet nailed to the cross. Those limbo-like babies awkwardly cradled in Saint Michael’s scales, and the devil’s head spilling out over the frame under his red slippers. The devil wears polka-dots? Were those seemingly anachronistic stretch white undies added to Saint Sebastian later?

Those are the strangest little pink-winged angels catching cupfuls of Jesus’ blood. Who would park Baby Jesus naked on the bare ground of the manger, without even a bed of hay, with everyone else around him was comfortably clothed? How low did I sink? I am sorry, Lippi, but that plump little man in your Madonna’s arms appears trying to and capable of choking her. And, Caravaggio, Holfernes appears to be bleeding red plastic straws as Judith beheads him.

Forgive me for this major lapse. Maturity returned. I recovered my sense of cultural appreciation by the time we stood in the grand salon under Pietro da Corona’s “Triumph of Divine Providence.” On our way out, a velvet rope prevented us from getting more than a glimpse of Borromini’s spectacular oval spiral, or helicoidal, staircase.

“The Triumph of Divine Providence,” Pietro da Cortona, 1633-1639
“The Triumph of Divine Providence,” Pietro da Cortona, 1633-1639
the bees of the Barberini Family joined with the papal symbols of Pope Urban VIII
“The Triumph of Divine Providence,” Pietro da Cortona, 1633-1639
“Madonna di Tarquinia,” Filippo Lippi, 1437
“Baccanale con Putti,” Nicolas Poussin
“The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria,” Lorenzo Lotto, 1524
“Judith Beheading Holfernes,” Caravaggio, 1599

About the bees. You might have noticed images of a trio of bees appearing off and on in earlier posts of photos taken in Roman churches. The bees are the symbol of the Barberini family.

In 1623, Maffeo Barberini (1568-1644) emerged as the candidate selected by the conclave, taking the name of Pope Urban VIII. Customs of the times dictated a pope’s family needs a palatial presence in Rome, so Pope Urban VIII purchased a villa on the Quirinal Hill that had been owned by the Sforza family.

Incorporating the original villa into the design as one side of an H-shaped palace, architect Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) began work in 1627 with assistance from his nephew, Francesco Borromini (1559-1667). Barely two years into the makeover, Maderno died. Despite Borromini’s presence on the job, the pope commissioned a younger rival, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), as the lead architect for the project.

Some time during his two decades as pope, Urban VIII most have incurred the wrath of the future Pope Innocent X (1574-1655) of the Pamphilj family, whose palace we visited quite a few posts ago. Pope Innocent X confiscated the both the Palazzo Barberini and its artwork. The family feud must have reached a truce, with Innocent returning the palace to the Barberini family two years before his death.

The companion museum that is part of the National Gallery of Paintings with Palazzo Barberini is the Palazzo Corsini, also visited in an earlier post.