Italy Part 4: Plate Tectonics

The landscape around Bassano-Del-Grappa in North Italy is formed on a phenomenal scale. We were only in the foothills of the Alps, and yet a zigzagging car journey (many thanks to Jon and Danielle) took us 6000 feet up mount Grappa (about 2000 feet higher than Ben Nevis) to the fortification where the Italians repelled an Austro-German attack during the First World War. This battle, fought in an epic setting, deserves a bit more than the stub page it has on wiki.


The gorges and valleys (carved in metamorphic limestone I think) were far bigger than anything I’ve seen in England, making Cheddar Gorge and the Derbyshire Dales look like rabbit scrapings. No surprise I suppose: Derbyshire was carved from a gentle doming effect caused by subsurface magma. The Alps, which continue to form, are the result of a massive collision of continents and the long drawn out earth quaking tumult of that collision continues to this day.

Bassano-Del-Grappa

Italy Part 3: The Final Solution

The Italians seem to have the ability to indulge their baroque architectural fancies without incurring that tacky and tasteless look. Perhaps it’s just as well that English architects gave the baroque period a miss and stuck with the clean Palladian, otherwise I wonder if the English could have carried it off as successfully as the Italians.

Anyway, here is a picture of the interior of Farrara Cathedral, lavishly Baroque at least in the sense of being sumptuously carved and painted (since it is actually structurally Romanesque), and yet it still succeeds in conveying a sense of lightness and elegance.

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Coming to this Catholic temple cold one might have expected amidst all this lavish detail to find somewhere an effigy to a gloriously towering confident god, awesome and fearful to behold. However, in spite of the encrusting layers of religious elaboration that the Roman Catholic faith has accreted over the years it nevertheless retains the peculiarly Christian image of God, an image that never ceases to bring the genuine God seeker up with a jolt; the cruel image of a suffering, emaciated and humiliated God, the God of the cross. This is the God who gave up all for human salvation, even his claim to the Godhead. It was here in Farrara Cathedral that that image was centre stage:

Somehow the irony of finding this epitome of desolation and pain at the centre of a palace of décor fit for a king makes it all the more compelling. I’m no fan of Popes, priesthoods, processions and pomp, but piercing the accretions of many years of tradition, here we have it, the core of the faith – the God who in suffering and sacrifice leads from the front, the God who for a while made Himself lower than the worshippers who come to his Temples so that those worshippers might be raised up.

Italy Part 2: Perspective

Our day in Venice was one of those hyper-reality experiences, an experience very reminiscient of my one time visit to old Jerusalem: Both cities are a complex warren of narrow streets and both are so familiar as a consequence of their prolific media representation that I suffered a slight sense of disconnection and a pervading feeling that I was not really there - the hyper-reality experience.

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For me Venice will always be the home of 'perspective'. Italian architecture, or at least what I have seen of it, is, like the latin language, very consistent and regular. The regularity and cubism of the architecture, means that when ever I see paintings of Venice the perspective lines running through it jump out of the picture. The ubiquitous water table provides a natural horizon, reference points, vanishing points and an x/z plane that pervades the whole environment. In order to implement a sketch all one needs do is visualise a cartesian system parallel with this plane and then construct the necessary perspective lines. The details are then served up automatically by the logic of perspective. Once I had grasped the principles of perspective when I was young, it always seemed to me to be a miracle the way my drawings sudddenly became three dimensional.

Italy Part 1: Field Systems

On a recent holiday in Italy I noticed the very different aspect the field system presents to the 'eye in the sky' when compared to the equivalent English aspect. See the two photos above taken in descent. The first photo shows the field system in north Italy and the second the field system around Stansted airport. The Italian field system is far more linear than the English system; the Italian component fields are linear strips.

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Why does this difference, which is so striking to the eye, exist? Both countries, I assume, had feudal strip systems. In both countries the feudal system began to break up after the Black Death - at least it certainly did in England and the up and coming Yeomen farmers made a grab for strips that were no long tilled by a depleted population. My guess is that these farmers expanded their fields until they hit the more irregular boundaries described by the hedgrows, woods, and roads. So why does Italy retain a strip system? What is it about the Italian history and setting that is so different?