Madonna del Parto - Celia Rees

Madonna del Parto - Piero della Francesca

This is my favourite painting in the whole world. It is by the Italian Renaissance painter, Piero della Francesca and is housed in the Museo della Madonna del Parto in Monterchi, a small hilltop town in Tuscany.

By the time you read this blog. I will be there. One of the first things I will do is go and visit Piero's fresco in the Museo just outside the gates of the town. She is the only occupant. the whole building is devoted to her. In a way, this is right, because she is so special, but she seems strangely out of context in this small, unprepossessing modern building. She should be in a church and, of course, she once was but her original home, the church of Santa Maria di Momentana (Santa Maria in Silvis), was destroyed by an earthquake. She was then moved to a cemetery chapel which fell into decay and so finally to her own museum in 1992. 

If you spend any time in Italy, visiting churches, art galleries, museums, you will see plenty of Madonnas, with child and without, annunciations and assumptions, even a few where she is pregnant, or giving milk (as here), but few have the transfixing quality of this one. I am in no way religious, brought up stoutly C of E, but I find Piero della Francesco's fresco peculiarly moving.

She looks like a real woman, and a young one, heavily pregnant, with one hand at her hip to ease her back. She has none of the rich trappings of other Madonnas. She is dressed simply, the beauty of her face lies in its humanity, its ordinariness. There is a strangely long suffering weariness about her (one with which anyone who has ever been pregnant can identify) but hers is so much greater, for this is the face of a young girl, a peasant girl, gravid with a God.  I find this fresco awe-inspiring in the true sense. She is flanked by two angels who have a solidity about them, dressed in a symmetry of colours, in no way ethereal, grave, beautiful young men with wings.

 The canopy that they are holding open is decorated with pomegranates. This has been interpreted as a symbol of Christ's passion, and the Madonna certainly has the expression of one who can read what is to come, but the pomegranate also evokes much more ancient, pagan goddesses: the lost Persephone and her mother Demeter, the goddess Hera who is often shown with a pomegranate in her hand as the emblem of fertility, blood and death.  Perhaps this is an indication of a much older tradition. Legend has it that a local stream was sacred to the goddess and into modern times women would bathe there hoping either to conceive or to protect the child within. Certainly, offerings are left in front of the Madonna del Parto, bunches of flowers, more often than not picked from the fields or the garden, simple offerings left by ordinary women asking for the blessing and intersession of this most human of Madonnas.

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com 

An afternoon’s march through Venetian history - Michelle Lovric

photo by Miko Sinkovic

You never know what you will find when you set out to do some location research in Venice. So one sun-drenched afternoon not long ago I threw off my crutches in an appropriately miraculous fashion (broken foot recovering), took my new fountain pen and my camera, and set off to find some mermaids, saints and street Madonnas for my work-in-progress.

 

The capitelli or  mini-chapels of the Madonna are to be found all over Venice. They are usually inside a stone frame on a wall. I don't know why the Madonnas often look so tetchy, but they do. This one, in mosaic, is appropriately sited at the back entrance to the supermarket Simply, where many a modern-day Madonna bears her baby and her burdens with saintly sad patience. Some capitelli have structures that resemble the Tardis.

 

This one in the Calle Larga off the Misercordia in Cannaregio turns out to contain what seems to be a Saint Francis, apparently blowing raspberries on the Christ Child’s cheek.

 

 

A little further along, we reached the triangular Campo dei Mori on the Fondamenta della Sensa for another visit to my old friend Signor Antonio Rioba, who features in The Undrowned Child and The Mourning Emporium.  Signor Rioba is known for his iron nose, and has also served as a symbol of popular subversion in Venice, ‘voicing’ scandals with his own news sheet. For the next book I am more interested in his less-famous brothers, Sandi and Afani Rioba who also fled from political troubles in Morea in 1112, so I recorded their worn features, sadly noting that they are more eroded each time I visit them.

 

Sandi or Afani, still trying to find out which

 

The next Madonna was a disappointment. The original image inside this handsome stone frame has been replaced by a miserable sub-Modigliani Madonna Dolorosa from a doleful period of the twentieth century.

 

But, to cheer her – and me – not far away is this excellent example of a dancing bear rendered in stone. He's flanked by two dragons with corkscrew tails and supervised by a saint. Tassini tells me that the Calle della Fonte, where the bear lives, is named after a merchant family from Bergamo who bought their way into the Golden Book of nobles in 1646 but sadly died out in 1766. And the bear is the ‘stemma parlante’ of the Orso family, which became extinct after the last male perished from a dog bite.

 

It is always worth peering into the grates that protect the ground floor windows in Venice. In Cannaregio, there are some strange and wonderful things. Here is an eerie bambi in a deserted building on the Sensa.

A little further along, at 3355, is a strong arm carved in stone. It is the symbol of a family cittadinesca called Brazzo or Braso who came from Tuscany and had many holdings inside and outside Venice.  One Goffredo di Brazzo founded the famous Scuola di San Marco at SS Giovanni e Paolo in 1437. The Brazzo family is also extinct. In 1641 Alessandro da Brazzo married Cecilia, a daughter of Giulio Maffetti, husband of Maria da Brazzo … the sister of Alessandrio himself.  Confused? Draw a diagram! Maria was constantly lamenting the ‘extravagant temper’ of her husband until her brother, in 1643, discharged an archibugiata (isn’t that prettier than the yapping ‘arquebus’?) into the face of his brother-in-law and killed him. Alessandro was then exiled along with his sister. All his worldly goods were confiscated. Their mother campaigned for their pardon and return. But on the journey back Alessandro was found dead in a stable with his head in the manger. Maria married again, a foreign official, but this marriage was no more fortunate, and she soon died. The wealth of the Brazzo family passed, along with the name, into the house of the Maffetti. The strong arm of the Brazzo family is all that remains.

 

Among many roadside attractions in Venice is the plethora of little markets selling sweets. I love this one because of the long arms of the scoops. I have absolutely nothing of historical interest to add to the scoops.

 

And here is an historical cakeshop (one of the antichi pasticceri venexiani) with chocolate owls, near the station. The religious significance of owls is deep – one is usually seen with Saint Jerome the hermit. But I am not sure of the relevance to chocolate. Just grateful.

 

The mermaids of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli need their own blog, but here is a glimpse at their sleek and writhing forms, so unexpected in a Catholic church, but with an interesting story to tell (eventually).

And finally a walk in the sunshine in Venice is never complete without a deviation to the Acqua Alta bookshop in Castello. And the owner Luigi has made some improvements, adding this staircase made of books that leads up to a beautiful view of the canal.

He’s also made two walls of books on the way to his new annexe at the back of the shop.

The cats of the shop were on full parade, as usual. Pirro (Pyrrhus, mad son of Achille) is particularly interested in literature and headrubs.

And, after a hard day's location research, who isn’t?

 

Michelle Lovric's website