Category Archives: Italy

Partisan Monument – Giacomo Manzù

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Monument to the Partisan - Bergamo

Monument to the Partisan – Bergamo

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Partisan Monument – Giacomo Manzù

In the Piazza Matteotti, just a few metres from the Porta Nuova in Bergamo’s New Town you come across the very moving and poignant Partisan Monument by the local, Bergamo born, sculptor Giacomo Manzù (the pseudonym of Giacomo Manzoni (22nd December 1908 – 17th January 1991).

It depicts a nearly naked, young anti-Fascist Partisan fighter hanging upside-down, having been tortured to death by the Italian Fascists or the German Nazis. Alongside him stands a young woman – presumably his girlfriend/bride – looking sadly at the broken body but unable to do anything to help him. The work of art was presented to the city by the sculptor and unveiled on 25th April 1977

On the reverse of the obelisk from which he is hanging is a short poem, by Manzù, a translation of which says:

Partisan!

I saw you hanging.

Unmoving.

Only your hair moving

gently on your forehead.

It was the evening breeze

that subtly crept,

in silence,

and stroked you

as I wanted to do.

Monument to the Partisan - Bergamo

Monument to the Partisan – Bergamo

Manzù was one of those hybrids which you find in Catholic countries, a believing Roman Catholic as well as calling himself a Communist. It’s been difficult, in the short time available, to find out a great deal of his life but whatever he may have called himself politically he was able to survive, even thrive, during the period of Mussolini’s dictatorship.

He was appointed to the chair of sculpture in the prestigious Accademia de Brera in Milan, a position he held until 1954. During the war he concentrated on religious sculptures, drawing the parallel between the suffering of Christ on the Cross with those who were suffering during the Second World War and but even this attracted the ire of some of the Fascists in 1942.

He survived this, possibly due to his relationship with the Catholic Church in Rome – many of his works were commissioned by the Vatican – and also his close personal friendship with Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who was later to become Pope John XXIII (who was also born close to the city of Bergamo).

After the war he continued to produce works for religious buildings, the most important of which were the doors for Saint Peter’s in Rome and Salzburg Cathedral.

And the religious influence that coloured all of his work can be seen in this representation of the young partisan – who could well have been an atheist Communist. He’s hanging upside-down but this is to all intents and purposes a crucifixion scene with the young woman standing in for one of the two Marys.

Monument to the Partisan - Bergamo

Monument to the Partisan – Bergamo

Fêted by the Vatican Manzù was also hailed in the Revisionist Soviet Union, being awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1965.

This is a very moving monument commemorating those who fought against Fascism and won’t be visited by many tourists even though it’s in the centre of the new town and not that far from the Teatro Donizetti. Anyone close to the important transport intersection of the Porta Nuova and with a few minutes to spare could do much worse than visit this quite unique modern sculpture.

Being a local boy there’s a small collection of some of Manzù’s smaller sculptures in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.

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The Campanone, Museum of the Venetian Age and Roman Archaeological Discoveries

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Campanone

Campanone

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The Campanone, Museum of the Venetian Age and Roman Archaeological Discoveries

The Campanone, the Museum of the Venetian Age and the Roman Archaeological area are all accessed by the same door, what would have been the main entrance of the Palazzo del Podestà (the Governor’s Palace) and so it makes sense to allow time to visit all three at the same time.

The information on the Palazzo bemoans the fact that, for some time in the past, it ‘became used for purposes which were not in keeping with its historical importance’ but when it was decided to renovate the building for tourist purposes important archaeological finds were made. As the Christians always built over, and very often using the worked stone from, older Roman buildings it wasn’t a real surprise when Roman remains were found.

Together with the excavations made underneath the Cathedral (which can be seen by visiting the Museum and Treasury) these, more recent discoveries give a fuller picture of what would have been the most important area in the Roman settlement, the Forum.

Roman Archaeological Site

Roman Archaeological Site

This is only a relatively small area but a lot can be seen and deduced about the city known as Bergomum, a name it held for close on 800 years. A fine section of wall was almost certainly part of the Forum and other walls indicate workshops and taverns, as well as gutters and sewers. What I found particularly interesting were a couple of lengths of lead piping used to supply clean water – I couldn’t understand why something so valuable had not been looted hundreds of years ago. Mixed in with the Roman ruins were remains of buildings from Mediaeval times – but no water supply pipes or sewers – the Renaissance period might be important for its artistic development but there was little in the way of civilising everyday life.

Information boards on the walls supply more details, in both Italian and English.

There are a few places where you can get a ‘bird’s eye’ view of the town but the Campanone/Civic Tower is one of the best (rivalled only by the Gombito Tower) as this looks down on both the Piazza Vecchia, with its 18th century Contarini fountain as well as the Piazza del Duomo with the Cathedral, the Basilica de Santa Maria Maggiore, the Colleoni Chapel and the Baptistery.

Colleoni Chapel and Maria Maggiore

Colleoni Chapel and Maria Maggiore

The name Campanone means Big Bell and comes from the biggest of the three bells at the top of the tower. This was originally used to sound the curfew in Mediaeval times and is still sounded at 22.00 each night to try to get the tourists out of the bars in the square below.

Campanone 'Big Bell'

Campanone ‘Big Bell’

There’s now a modern lift to take the pain out of the walk. I’m not sure how they got away with that. It’s all very well making these places accessible to as many people as possible but I’m not in favour of that if it means the destruction of parts of an ancient structure. You can still walk up and down but on modern, concrete steps and not the originals that would have been worn down over the centuries. It really changes the atmosphere as you go to the top.

I’m sure the lift wasn’t there when I first went up 4 or 5 years ago but couldn’t get the exact information as the lad in the ticket office wasn’t sure. World Heritage Status (which I don’t think Bergamo has) isn’t enough to protect the past – as I’ve mentioned elsewhere – but there surely has to be a limit to what can be done in the name of accessibility. And I’m cynical enough to think that these works are carried out more for the potential tourist Euros than anything else.

Piazza Vecchia

Piazza Vecchia

Try to go up and down on the steps, it’s probably better for your health, even if you take it slowly. At the top you get a fine view of the major buildings in the centre of Città Alta as well as the newer town in the valley and the snow-capped – there was still a fair amount of snow on some of the tops when I was there during the first week of May – Alps to the north.

The third place to visit in the Palazzo del Podestà is the very new and high-tech Museum of the History of the Venetian Age. To me this was a huge disappointment. It advertises itself as ‘interactive’ but I found myself being assaulted by information in a way I’ve not experienced at any other museum I’ve ever visited.

It uses the most modern aspects of computer graphics, it’s imaginative, it’s very clever but it did nothing for me. The interactivity comes from: moving your hands over different names; opening drawers to operate a projector to show contents; placing blocks into slots to initiate information about the development of printing during the height of Venetian economic and political power. There’s also a very clever presentation about the sort of recipes that were created with the arrival of all the new foods and spices in Europe from the Orient due to Venice’s role in international trade.

Museum of Venetian Age

Museum of Venetian Age

There’s a audio-video presentation which follows a timeline from 1450 to 1600 showing how the rest of the world became known to the Europeans with the travels of Marco Polo by land and then Megellan, Vasco de Gama, Columbus and Vespuccio, amongst others, by sea. This is informative and does provide a visual picture of how the world seemed to be getting bigger for the Europeans.

When it comes to the victory of Cortes over the Aztecs and Pizarro’s over the Incas it becomes more political than I’ve seen in any such presentation in what would be considered a museum for general consumption. Central America becomes splattered with blood as does the north-west Pacific coast of South America. This trail of blood then goes back across the Atlantic to land on Spain’s door step, with the commentary that this was all due to the thirst for gold.

Now that’s all true and it’s good to see it being presented as such. However, I doubt whether that would have been presented in the same way if it were the Italians who had first landed on Hispaniola. By holding a virtual monopoly over trade with the Far East Venice had, more or less, encouraged other countries to get into the world exploration game. Instead of investing in the future Venice stuck with what it knew and controlled and therefore not going out into the unknown.

There’s also an element of sour grapes as this gold, paid for with so much indigenous American blood, was what eventually kicked started the economic development (and ultimately the industrial revolution) in the UK and northern Europe – aided in a not insignificant manner by the activities of ‘El Pirata’ Francis Drake.

However interesting that particular section might have been I honestly felt there was a lot missing. To have gained much more you would have had to have invested a lot of time and energy in playing with the technology. Perhaps someone brought up on computer games might find it interesting, it was probably designed by such people, but it left me cold.

Also everything was in Italian although English language tablet computers and earphones are available.

Practical Information:

Opening times:

November to March

Tuesday – Friday 09.30 – 13.00 and 14.30 – 18.00

Weekends and public holidays 09.30 – 18.00

April – October

Tuesday – Friday 09.30 – 18.00

Weekends and public holidays 09.30 – 20.00

Closed: Mondays, except for holidays.

Entrance:

Archaeological Area – Free

Campanone

General €3

Under 18 – free

Museum of History of the Venetian Age

General €5

Under 18 – free

There’s a Joint Ticket that covers these three locations as well as the La Rocca – the museum of the 19th century; the Donizetti Museum; and the Former Convent of San Francesco which costs €7.

Entrance to all these places are free with the Bergamo card.

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The Adriano Bernareggi Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art

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Saint Lucy

Saint Lucy

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The Adriano Bernareggi Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art

The Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra Adriano Bernareggi (Adriano Bernareggi Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art) is only a short distance from the Cittá Alta. Based on the collection of a Bergamo Bishop (who gives his name to the museum) from the 1930s onwards it contains exhibits not really seen elsewhere in the city.

Located in one of the old palazzos it has a somewhat eccentric arrangement of rooms but if you try to visit the rooms in their numbered sequence you should see all there is. There was obviously no specialisation in the collecting process – basically if it was religious it was in. There are the normal objects and paintings that you might have seen in other Italian museums but there were a few objects that were either new to me or which I consider worthy of mention due to their unusual characteristics or a piece of information that made me think in a slightly different way.

Before mentioning them there’s one point I’d like to make. The collection is curated in a way so that it’s a theme that dominates a room, not the period or even the type of object. To the entrance of the room there’s an introduction to the theme then you’re left on your own. There’s no information about the exact period, if a known artist or any guidance of what the object might be depicting. To get a better understanding of the collection you need to call on your own knowledge or experience.

In the room of the Saints there are paintings from different epochs but what they all have in common, that is if the Saint had died a martyred death, is that they either appear holding the instrument of their demise, almost always with a serene look on their face, or else an almost surreal depiction of the ordeal they went through. Whenever I see them, or indeed Christ on the cross, I think of the comments on this idea of remembrance by the deceased American comedian Bill Hicks. He used to wonder what Christ think if, on the second coming, he was surrounded by people with images of his torture around their necks.

As neighbours on the wall were a small group of female saints. Saint Barbara (or it could be Saint Agatha – misogyny in the early – and not so early – Catholic Church meant that female saints suffered a litany of tortures before their end), during her ordeal, had her breasts cut off and she is depicted with a pair of breasts, looking more like the polenta e osei sold in the cake shops in Cittá Alta, defying gravity and sticking to a bloodied sword.

Saint Barbara

Saint Barbara

In the same group is Saint Lucy who had her eyes gouged out and they are depicted threaded onto a stiletto like knife which she herself holds. A third in the group, at least the ones I thought I recognised, was Saint Agatha (or Saint Apollonia) who was recorded as having her teeth pulled out. It really gets quite confusing and some indication of the intention of the painter, at least, would have helped.

One thing I learnt in my visit to this museum was the fact that the cross, and more especially the crucifixion, as a representation of Christ was something that developed in the 4th/5th centuries as the religion became more organised, more structured, more hierarchical. Before that the early Christians had used symbols such as a fish (which I knew about before as a Catalan friend had brought that to my attention), doves or loaves of bread to represent God/Son/Holy Ghost. As the religion was supposed to one of peace and the love of mankind these images make much more sense and even give an impression of caring. However, they lost out to the failing Roman Empire which hitched its horse to a rising movement and, effectively, took it over and slotted in an imperial structure and bureaucracy. It worked. It’s still there in Vatican City.

Something I’ve only seen in Bergamo (although I’m open to the fact that they appear elsewhere) is the so-called ‘macabre’ paintings. These are basically paintings of skeletons in various forms of dress as it they are, perhaps not living in the sense that’s generally accepted (before the banal vampire films and TV programmes became ubiquitous) but at least taking part in daily life. In Room 15 there are 8 large paintings covering all social classes, but with an emphasis on the rich and powerful, including kings and popes, presumably with the argument that death is the only true leveller but society would be a more civilised if we did the levelling prior to the appearance of the Grim Reaper. The only other place I’ve seen these ‘macabre’ paintings is in the church of Santa Grata Inter Vites, also in Bergamo, in Borgo Canale.

'Macabre' Pope

‘Macabre’ Pope

I must have now seen hundreds of Romanesque, painted, wooden statues of the Madonna and Child. They are charming and always interesting as their evolution from the early Romanesque period up to the Renaissance shows a re-learning of the skills lost with the too rapid destruction of the Roman Empire. The small group of wooden statues in Room 17 are unique as far as I’m concerned.

The information supplied by the museum stresses the fact that these statues were massed produced but most of them must have ended up as fire wood as I’ve never come across them before. They are incredibly modern. Although the Madonna is dressed in the fashion of the 18th/19th centuries they have aspects that wouldn’t look out of place today.

They are, roughly, two-thirds life-size, standing (which was very rare in the Romanesque period when these statues had their heyday) and very life-like. As well as the dress the hairstyles were of the period so it seems an attempt to place the Madonna in the ‘now’ and not making her something apart from ordinary women. In a way going back to the ideas of the early Christians before the religion was formalised.

And sexy – in the Jessica Rabbit sort of way. One, in particular, has a very slim waist and curves that were emphasised in fashion models – before ‘size zero’ and androgynous became the norm.

For people new to such a museum I’m sure they would find more of interest. By now I’ve seen a lot of this art and, perhaps, am becoming too blasé.

A smallish but nonetheless interesting and worthwhile place to visit if in Bergamo.

Practical Information

Address: Via Pignolo, 76

Opening hours:

Tuesday – Sunday 09.30 – 12.30 and 15.00 – 18.30

Closed Monday

Entrance:

General €5

65 plus (with ID) €3

Free entry with the Bergamo Card.

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