The Noble Castle and The Ideal City: A Perfect Envisioning Of Something Deficient And Bleak? A Textual / Pictorial Wandering.
Originally shared: Wednesday 9 December 2020
"We came unto a noble castle's foot,
Seven times encompassed with lofty walls,
Defended round by a fair rivulet;
This we passed over even as firm ground;
Through portals seven I entered with these Sages;
We came into a meadow of fresh verdure."
Inferno: Canto IV
The Noble Castle of Limbo, as described in Dante’s ‘Inferno’, is a 'Locus Amoenus' (link) - an idyllic place. The place where people rest, relax, and stop. A place to pause for the hero of many quests. Ironically the Locus Amoenus can also be one of the most dangerous of environments. This is often the point in literature and myth that an enemy appears as the hero is off guard, being not in a space of vigilance but of distraction. Limbo is seductive, it is a possible false ‘safe’ place. In Inferno, Dante can see himself passing the rest of his time there, thereby ending his quest for his recently deceased Beatrice who is the focus of Dante's journey.
Remember, all here are unenlightened. Though cultured and worthy to be honoured, everyone here exists outside of God's literal purview. Heathen and pagan scientists, poets, philosophers, et al, debate for all of time in a space absent of any sun or starlight. They do, however, exist with the illumination of a huge constructed fire nearby that cuts through the darkness and surrounds the area with a hemisphere of non-divine light.
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When considering the Noble Castle of Limbo in Canto IV, I'm always drawn to the idea of an austere, enduring architecture. I think of it being built in Classical terms (link) of order, clean lines, and mathematical precision. I would not immediately consider a contemporary housing block or a middle class suburb as being representative of this enclosed 'safe' city that exists within the first ring of Hell. Maybe I should reconsider?
The 3 paintings of imagined 'ideal' cities that follow sit fairly close to what comes to mind in my imaginings of the Noble Castle.
The paintings above are beautiful meditations on order and design but don't they feel strange? What is it that makes these scenes flawless, ideal but also eerie and uncanny? There's a clarity of vision here that requires an absence of people. A sterile perfection.
These architectural representations haunt me. My much younger ‘mathematical’ self enjoys the cleanliness of line and form, my older, humanist side, rejects the fascist-like purity of vision and intention. In a need to make an ordered rational world do we have to remove, if not erase, the unordered and irrational? Frightening stuff to consider when taken to an extreme. We may want the world to be clean, disciplined and organised, but in actuality we have to recognise it very much is not. People are inefficient and messy. Reality is messy. Is there an element of this uncomfortable conflict I am unconsciously portraying in my own work?
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For those familiar with my work 'kenopsia' is a word that should be recognisable. For those unaware check out this following link to my blog post from my "Uncertain Spaces: Kenopsia", 2019, show where I introduce the term. (Link to 'Kenopsia' and 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' post).
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The Ideal City paintings appear to be illustrations of the thoughts of the 'Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer', Leon Battista Alberti (link). It was his phenomenally important work, 'De pictura' (circa 1435 - link), that established in western culture, the relationship of nature to rational organised space using linear perspective through geometry. It was his work 'De re aedificatoria' (On the Art of Building, 1452 - link), where he encouraged an investigation of Classical styles and techniques to be incorporated into then contemporary Renaissance building styles and presented a sociology of architecture. De re aedificatoria, remained the classic treatise on architecture through the 16th all the way into the 18th century for most of European building.
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Harvard Professor K. Michael Hays "The Architectural Imagination - The Ideal City". [For a full playlist of Harvard architecture introduction talks see link]
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This painting above, 'The Flagellation of Christ', by Piero Della Francesca, is believed to be a perfect example of Leon Battista Albertis' writings on perspective, architecture and art theory. There is a belief that Francesca may have met Alberti in Rimini circa 1451. It was circa 1474 that Piero della Francesca released his own treatise on perspective, 'De Prospectiva Pingendi' (C, 1474, 'On the Perspective of Painting') the first text to solely be devoted to the use of perspective in art. (link)
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Sebastiano Serlio (6 September 1475 – c. 1554) (link) was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau circa 1528 (link). Serlio helped establish the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise known as 'I sette libri dell'architettura' ("Seven Books of Architecture") or 'Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva' ("All the works on architecture and perspective"). Part of what he is remembered for is establishing a theory of design for stage sets of the Italian theatre. He describes 3 types of scene - [top left] comic, [top right] tragic, and [bottom] satiric. [Public Domain - Moma link1, link2. The Met, ‘Serlio's books on architecture’ - https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/356967].
Again, I find that familiar strange uncanny emptiness pervades these stage set illustrations.
Comic.
Tragic.
Satiric.
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Giorgio de Chirico (Jul 10, 1888 to Nov 20, 1978) (link).
Top left: 'La Tour Rouge', The Red Tower, 1913. Height: 39 5/8 in (100.5cm) Width: 28 15/16 in (73.5cm). Oil on canvas. Peggy Guggenheim Collection (link). Public Domain image, Wikipedia (link).
Top right: 'The Nostalgia of the Infinite', 1911 (link). Height: 53 1⁄4 in (135.2 cm) Width: 25 1⁄2 in (64.8 cm). Oil on canvas. The MOMA (link). Public Domain image, Wikipedia (link).
Bottom: 'The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street', 1914 (link). Height: 33 1/2 in (85cm) Width: 27 1/6 in (69cm). Private Collection. Public Domain image, Wikiart (link).
Giorgio de Chirico, ‘The Enigma of the Hour’, 1910. Height: 21 1/2 in (54.6cm) Width: 28 in (71.1cm). Oil on canvas. Public Domain image, Wikipedia (link).
For a long time I've had a strong connection with Giorgio de Chirico's Metaphysical paintings (Pittura Metafisica) (link). Interesting point - De Chirico is considered to have made the first conceptual artwork before Marcel Du Champ and Malevich, where an artwork’s idea took precedence over the idea’s artistic representation.
The Enigma of the Hour [link], painted by Giorgio de Chirico in Florence in 1910, can be considered the very first conceptual artwork in the history of art. In creating this artwork, the artist did not seek to find a new way of rendering that which is visible, as Picasso did, or to express an emotional state through abstract forms and colors as did Kandinsky; rather, de Chirico’s aspiration was to translate a thought or philosophical concept into the forms of the plastic arts. He did this before Duchamp, Man Ray, or Picabia—artists who are often considered the precursors of Conceptual art.
Paolo Baldacci "Giorgio de Chirico, The Enigma of the Hour (1910): The First Conceptual Work of Art" - brooklynrail.org (link)
De Chirico's spaces are absent of life yet filled with tension because of the absence. Though empty these are not tranquil paintings. The perspective lines are 'off', the shadows seem wrong. The chosen colour palette is a a bit too bilious, a bit too garish whilst paradoxically subdued. There's a harsh heavy heat of the Mediterranean sun in the paintings but this light doesn't illuminate, it obscures by the creation of dark opaque shadows. The people that occupy these spaces are not identifiable they are 'other', existing as cut outs, silhouettes and shades. There's an extra component, he entices us with half formed elements. If only we could see round the corners to see fully the objects casting suggestive shadows. There's a large element of things being left purposefully unresolved that through closure we can't but help resolve these forms in our minds creating something extra to what is visible.
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Video: "Giorgio de Chirico: Argonaut of the Soul", 2010 (link)
A documentary film that explores the enigma of De Chirico's metaphysical paintings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUkC9wEBvYQ
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Giorgio De Chirico as well as being a Metaphysical painter and proto-surealist was also part of an Italian movement, The Novecento Italiano (link). The Novecento Italiano (lit. 'Italian 1900s') was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the Fascism of Mussolini. And this is the thing, in pre Second World War Italy many very well known artists were in the thrall of 'Il Duce'. it's well worth reading the Wikipedia article at this following link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novecento_Italiano to get an idea of the stated intentions of the quite disparate group.
Why do I bring the above up? Because of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (The Palace of Italian Civilisation - link) [pictured above], an iconic example of Italian Rationalism and of Fascist architecture. Designed by the architects Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto Bruno Lapadula and Mario Romano and constructed between 1938 and 1943. The resonances with De Chirico are uncanny. It is cold, austere and very, very white. Think of the whiteness of bleached animal skulls in a desert wilderness. Imagine the blinding whiteness as it sits in the mid-day Italian sun. It is purposefully designed to emit a very specific sense of power, purity and alienation. There is nothing irrational, out of place or unordered here. I find the whole structure fascinating and when given the context of its original intentions to promote the ideals of Italian Fascism absolutely haunting and terrifying.
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External Links and References
