Posts Tagged “Italy”

Those last couple of posts seemed kinda eggheaded, so here’s Pizzeria al Puffo in Muggia. “Pizza a taglio” is “pizza by the slice” but I have no explanation for ether the smurf or the wheelbarrow. Right here in Cambridge, there’s a place that serves puffo (”smurf”) gelato. Go figure.

This dramatic statue in Ferrara depicts Girolamo Savonarola, a fiery reformist Dominican priest of the 15th century. Still somewhat controversial today, Savonarola organized the “Bonfires of the Vanities” in which Florentines burned their books, fancy clothes and other too-materialistic possessions. This crowd might or might not have included Michelangelo and Botticelli tossing their own work on the pyres.

After some disagreement with the Medici pope Alexander VI, Savonarola was excommunicated and subsequently arrested, tortured and executed in Florence. To deprive his followers of any relics, the authorities threw his ashes into the Arno. Despite that, there are statues today, and some even call Savonarola a saint.

In the short time that I loitered in this piazza, several people had their photos taken in front of the statue, but despite my urging, none struck Savonarola’s pose. I wonder how many knew even as much about him as I’ve gleaned.

The Italian word of the moment is campanilismo.

Translated by BabelFish as “parochialism,” campanilismo refers to local pride or patriotism, sometimes very local. If you ask somebody where she’s from and she says “Boston” or “New York” that’s not campanilismo. If she says, “Southie” or “Washington Heights” you’ve got a campanilista on your hands.

Campanilismo is derived from campanile, which is a church’s bell tower like the 14th Century one pictured below in Florence, the work of Giotto.

Britannica suggests that the name sticks because it’s from local boosters bragging that their bell tower is taller than the one in the next town over, but this piece from L’Italo Americano indicates that the campanile is a symbol of a locality, like a church is the symbol of its parish.

I was talking to a colleague about Italy and he described a sense of unreality visiting there, how every street looks like a movie set and every vista like a postcard, and how it takes a honking car or beeping cell phone to break the spell and re-locate your head in the present time. I don’t know if I feel this way all the time, but here’s a view in Florence, looking South across the Arno at dusk, more or less the same time and place as these pictures.

I got the film back from Italy and fell in love with the grain all over again. I think it happens every time I get back a batch of vacation film, see also here. Can your digital camera do this?

Yes, I know the highlights are blown out and the shadows are gone. I’m not interested in perfection, I’m interested in art, in chemistry, in magic. Can any digital camera do this?

Full disclosure: Tri-X negative scanned to hi-res JPG then cropped and level-corrected, but just a tiny bit. Sure, you probably can get that from a digital photo with more manipulation, and sure, you can see the artifacts along with the grain. But just you wait ’till I scan some of those negatives to uncompressed formats…