Il Mare (The Sea)
A restless environment from Ulysses to Le Corbusier, Cosenza, Rudofsky, and Gio Ponti.
One of the classicists here at the Academy told me over dinner that the ancient Romans thought of their food in three categories: that which came from the land, that which came from the sea, and that which came from the sky. I have observed in an earlier post that restaurant menus in Campania are often divided into dishes that come from the sea and those that come from the land. This includes selections of pastas with seafood (e.g. vongole) and those with meat sauces. We visited the fish market in Pozzuoli and discussed the growing of oysters in these waters in ancient times and muscles today.
I thought I would begin this last post from Rome with some thoughts on the sea, ocean liners, and modern architecture. I will have to complete this on the way home — but it seems a good topic — as the voyage of Odysseus home is one of the foundational if not the foundational story for this region. Odysseus’ travels home took him around the Mediterranean, including along the southern coast of Italy that is the subject of my work. The drive to get home that the epic makes manifest is that the sea is the pendant to the land (home).
The most dramatic depiction of parts of this epic that I have seen are the sculptures that were unearthed from a grotto at Sperlonga. These sculptures were found in the late 1950s in a cave that served as a grotto for entertainment — one can think of it as a dramatic triclinium, a sculptural version of the magnificent triclinium in the Villa of the Mysteries.
I arrived late in Sperlonga due to my extended visit with Bernabeis at their farm. By the time I had made the hour drive over the mountains it was almost dark. I checked into my Airbnb and then went straight to the museum. It had been suggested that I visit the cave and then the museum — but I had no choice but to visit the museum as the cave was closed. In the end I was glad to visit the museum and see the sculptures first.
A.F. Stewart describes the sculptures:
“All four major groups had, as their protagonist, Odysseus. First of all, at the mouth of the cave on the left, he was shown dragging the limp corpse of Achilles away from the battle before Troy, and on the right, standing thwarted of his plan to snatch the Palladian away from Diomedes; in the center of the pool the scene shifted to his wanderings, with his ship, its helmsman still clinging desperately to the stern enmeshed Scylla’s coils, while the dim light of the cavern at the rear to the right , he appeared for the last time to direct his companions in the blinding of a gigantic Polyphemus.”
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“From Conticello’s publication, and even more from an inspection of the sculptures in situ, it is evident that these present a unified programme, carved in the same marble (perhaps from Asia Minor) and by the same workshop. That they are not a mixture of works, originally diverse in origin is evidenced by the common technique and surface finish of the fragments, and by the clear fact that, although their sculptors were fairly even in quality and approach, no style is restricted to any one group or figure, but re-appears, here and there, throughout the whole complex. That the same atelier produced the Laokoon now seems beyond doubt. Besides the coincidence of names in the signature inscribed in the outrigger of Odysseus’ ship (Athanodoros son of Hagesandros, Hagesandros, son of Paionios, and Polydoros son of Polydoros the Rhodians made it’), and in Pliny’s remark that ‘rum (sc Laocoonota) ac liberos draconumque mirabiles nexus de consigliere sententia decree summi artifices Agesander et Polydoros et Aythrendorus Rodin’, stylistic comparison shows that not only were two or three of the Sperlonga sculptors responsible for carving of the Vatican group, but that there work was as uneven there as it was in the grotto. Whenever they are to be dated, then, the four Odysseus groups and the Laokoon may not be separated by more than a few years. . . At Sperlonga, as far as one can tell, the intention was to show, Odysseus in situations that would reveal the many different sides of his character: his “pittas” toward Achilles, his “Domus” toward Diomedes, his “virtus” in the fight with Scylla, and his “calliditas” in the blinding of Polyphemus. This goes beyond Homer, who treated two of these four scenes in his poem; the rescue of Achilles’ body is first heard of in Sophoclies (Perhaps drawing on the “Little Iliad” as a source), and the attempt to kill Diomedes in Aristophanes. All in all, the syntheses looks to be literary and Alexandrian, with the exaggeration of the hero’s chameleon like personality and its emphasis , over and above what is in Homer, upon the two extremes of his character - his courage and his perfidy. . . .
The view of Odysseus’ character presented here is a fairly extreme one, and the choice of situations to emphasize the contradictions in his personality is skillful. Skillful, too, is the way in which the settings of the four groups were used to enhance the drama of the scenes and the contrasts in the hero’s character that they reveal. Seen from the triclinium, the two groups to the left (Achilles and Scylla) stressed his valor, and the two groups to the right (Diomedes and Polyphemus) his deviousness. Of these, the most straightforward examples, his courageous rescue of the body of Achilles and his perfidious behavior towards Diomedes, were placed directly opposite each other in the foreground. Each group was also positioned in the cave in a location appropriate to where the action it depicted originally occurred: the two scenes on the plain before Troy on the flat in curving rim of the basin at the front, the Scylla group in the center of the pool, and the blinding of Polyphemus in the gloom of the small cavern at the rear - eerily illuminated, we may imagine, by the flickering light of torches on feast nights” (Pp 76-78).
The next morning I was able to go down and experience the cave with the memory of the drama of these sculptures in my mind. There is a reproduction of the Ganimedes above the cave. There are no reproductions of the sculptures in the cave, although I believe in the past there may have been.
At present there is a metal fence separating the beach from the sea, but one could imagine arriving by boat here or walking down the beach to the cave — whose mouth faces the beach almost like a theater production — it would have been very dramatic. Here the hero’s travels on his journey home are made manifest in the limited space of a cave on a beach between the land and the sea.
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On the exterior wall of the museum is a ceramic plaque which commemorates the connection of Sperlonga and Capri — both as sites of Villas of Tiberius. It is known that Tiberius visited Sperlonga because a portion of the cave roof is reported to have collapsed on him and nearly killed him in 26 CE (Stewart p. 77). Tiberius completed Villa Jovis on Capri in 27 CE and ruled mainly from there until his death in 37 CE.
Villa Jovis is the largest of the twelve Tiberian villas on Capri, “Apparently the main motivation for Tiberius move from Rome to Capri were his wariness of the political maneuvering in Rome and a lingering fear of assasination.”
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Capri sits majestically in the Bay of Naples with its sister island Ischia to the north — together these islands frame the bay — and are also worlds apart. Ischia was the site of the first Greek colony of Magnia Grecia. Tadema’s painting below captures the drama of being high on the cliffs of one of these islands — note the Roman triremes below — they are a world apart. The painting is conventionally described as a view from Capri toward Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, but having spent time on the Bay, it seems to me that the view is towards the Sorrento Peninsula with Capri off to the right. The important point is that these places were seen as apart.
The island of Procida sits between the mainland and Ischia. It is here that the architect Luigi Cosenza and Bernard Rudofsky came in the later 1920s. It is interesting to me that they came to study the architecture of this island shortly after Le Corbusier was writing about the architecture of Greece as a counter to the architecture of Rome in Towards a New Architecture (1923). In this book Le Corbusier also celebrates the “architecture” of the ocean liner.
Cosenza had designed the first public modern building in Naples in 1929 - 1934, the fish market. I had become aware of this building through the book the photographer Thomas Ruff had published in 2006 with photographs that he began taking in 2002. The market had recently closed, and his photographs provide an evocative portrait. In the years following the space had been used for an art exhibition, but it has been empty for over 20 years and has become the site of a homeless encampment. It also almost burnt down a number of years ago. I really wanted to see this building. I was intrigued that the first modern building in a city would have been a fish market — how could this be other than as a statement of the cultural importance of fishing.
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I ran into many dead ends trying to figure out how to visit the market — but I did find out that it would be possible to visit Cosenza and Rodofsky’s joint project — the Villa Oro on October 21st as part of a weekend in Naples known as Napoli Open House.
The Villa Oro is perched on the side of the cliff in the Neapolitan neighborhood of Posillipo. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photographs, so the original architectural drawings and photographs made shortly after its completion will have to do. The view out to the sea is like that from an ocean liner — including the presence of the deck outside the rooms — with its ship like railings. This Villa was designed and built by Luigi Cosenza in collaboration with Bernard Rudofsky in 1934-1937.
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It was on this deck that I met Luigi Cosenza’s grandson Andrea, who came up and introduced himself. Andrea told me that he had heard that I was interested in seeing the fish market his grandfather designed. He told me that he had been trying to get into the building — he is an architect — and that perhaps the interest of a foreign scholar might help. He asked if the Academy might write a letter. I said that I would ask, and we exchanged emails. Aliza Wong, the director of the Academy, kindly wrote a letter on my behalf and I forwarded it to Andrea.
Marian and I drove by the market on our way to Sorrento. I was struck by the market being like an overturned hull — like one sees a fishing boat pulled up on shore and stored so it is protected from the elements. Roof as ships hull.
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In Sorrento we stayed in Gio Ponti’s Parco dei Principi Hotel. Like the Villa Oro, the Parco dei Principi is built on a cliff and is ocean liner-like. Prior to designing the hotel (1962) Ponti designed the interiors for a number of ocean liners for the Italian liners in the 1940s and 50s. These liners were meant to be statements of Italian design to the world — they were the beginnings of international tourism from the Americas to Italy. Genoa and Naples were the major Italian ports of call.
The names of the ships, SS Andrea Doria, SS Cristoforo Colombo, SS Leonardo da Vinci, celebrated the iconic personalities of Italian seafaring. The crisp, white super structures of these ships in contrast to the black hulls made these large ships distinct in port and reinforced their separateness from the land. Ponti’s white Parco dei Principi similarly is a building apart. One only needs to compare it to the neoclassical pavilion that is adjacent and part of the original buildings on the site to see the difference between the two. A ship is meant to be unmoored — it is meant to travel.
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Modern architecture celebrated this disconnectedness. Le Corbusier wrote about the ocean liners before World War II. The post-war liners that Ponti designed in the 1950s were the last gasp of this type of travel before they were supplanted by the jet airplane. Interestingly, Ponti would go on to design for air travel with projects such as the Alitalia Airlines office in New York which used ceramic tiles by some of the same artists as the Parco dei Principi.
In 1938 Ponti and Rudofsky worked on a project for a hotel in Capri that was never built. It was interesting to sit on my terrace at the Parco dei Principi and look out to Capri and think of the Villa of Tiberius, the Rudofsky/Ponti project, the Villa Oro in Posillipo by Cosenza/ Rudofsky and then Cosenza’s Fish Market in Naples as all connected to the Bay of Naples.
Ponti had previously worked on the interiors of the Hotel Royal in Naples for the same owners as the Parco di Principe. The pool that he created for the roof terrace there is almost a Bay of Naples in miniature.
The water, not the land, becomes the figure. Like his pool for the Parco di Principe in Sorrento the view of the bay beyond becomes part of the composition.
Weeks passed and I did not hear from Andrea other than he had forwarded the request to the city. I finally wrote and said I would be coming to Naples for one last visit on this trip the first weekend of November. Perhaps we could go see the Darwin Dohrn Museum — a project that Andrea had designed in a building his grandfather had originally designed in the Villa Communale, adjacent to Dohrn’s Aquarium and the famous seafront road Via Caracciolo — I heard back that it might work out (visiting the fish market) and we could meet on Friday afternoon after I visited Sperlonga. The drive down the coast was beautiful — the view of Gaeta — the strips of summer resorts deserted in the winter that I was driving by too quickly to photograph. The drive into Naples was not for the faint of heart — either on the narrow freeways or, once on the streets, the distressed cobbled streets with potholes filled by the recent rainstorm. But I did arrive right on schedule at the Mexico Café to meet Andrea at 1:30. This café has been here since the 1980s and once served the fish market workers. The owner’s father started it, and he was anxious for the building to have a new life.
After a quick bite and a café we headed over to the fish market. As we were walking there we saw tow others — they were our contacts. They had not only a key but a set of tools to get the gate unlocked — apparently this is standard procedure in Naples. Over the next 20 minutes we were joined by twelve other people from the city agencies and the university as well as two police officers. I think that everyone was interested for various reasons to see the building and it did not disappoint.
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The vandalism was not as bad as I feared, and the majestic glass block ends brought in marvelous light. One can imagine how much more spectacular it was when its skylights that ran the entire length of the building existed. There were also glass blocks in the floor that provided light to the lower level. Each of the 14 vendors on the two sides had their own “back of house” refrigeration and office spaces — the dimensions of the two sides were different as the building section shows with the water side being more generous.
The ruins of these customized spaces with their individualized railings and star designs are poetic, as is the chapel at the northern entrance. It is a monument frozen in time. The street-side stair once was three bays wide. At some point this was reduced to one bay and one can envision how much better it was in connecting the city to the market. Stalls opened out onto the street and connected the building to its city. Consenza was clearly interested in this sense of connection because he established a particularly poetic visual connection on the waterside entrance (which was for truck deliveries) by framing the view of the tower of the Carmine Church with what would otherwise be a functional space.
Consenza’s design predates much of Italian modern architecture which was done under the auspices of Mussolini. It is interesting because it does not project authoritarian values — rather it seems to create a space for individual fish mongers in community. It enables the work of those who go to sea to provide food — a perilous occupation.
I gathered the group to take a photo with Andrea and me as we were leaving. I hope the interest of so many people in the city will signal a bright future for this special building.
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I have written about the Italian connection to the land. I am not sure I am in a position to judge the connection to the sea — but there is no doubt that they are a seafaring nation and that they draw great sustenance from it.
By an interesting coincidence Andrea and I visited the Darwin Dohrn Museum right after our trip to the fish market. The museum was designed as by Luigi Consenza in 1948 as the “Circolo Della Stampa” and converted by Andrea into the museum. It tells the story of the scientists who have researched the history of maritime life in the Mediterranean next door at the Naples Aquarium and marine study center — a model created by Dohrn in 1872.
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Luigi Cosenza’s design actually incorporated an earlier building. Among the most dramatic spaces is a two-story central hall that features a wall of maritime specimens. These specimens were prepared by Salvatore Lo Bianca, the son of the aquarium’s portiere, who Dohrn taught — he became world renowned for his abilities to preserve delicate specimens. So here in Cosenza’s other building knowledge is harvested from the sea.
Andrea hopes that the fish market might become a theater space. Certainly, it deserves a use that celebrates the great space and a theater could do that. But I hope at the same time it preserves the restless ship-like quality that somehow pervades these modern buildings that are so in dialogue with the sea — a restlessness that goes back to Ulysses voyage and the reality of seafaring.