Visiting Florence

 

Visible from everywhere in and around the city: the Florence Duomo and Baptistery

“The single most compelling reason for coming here is to see Florentine Art” [Rupert Scott]. That’s certainly why I set out to visit Florence, although closely linked to the art is to think about the economic and social circumstances that enabled such art to be created.

Not all Florentine

This visit involved staying in Fiesole, and so it made sense to visit the archaeological site and museum. This wasn’t Florentine art, but Etruscan temples and, astonishingly, a 2,000- or 3,000-capacity amphitheatre (the figures depend on which guidebook you read). Nor was the Pitti all Florentine – it included a vast collection of ancient sculpture. Nonetheless, Florence is perhaps unique in the world for being able to have several collections, not to speak of churches, containing art created locally. 

Guide books

Any visitor to a major city will be aided, or hindered, by several guidebooks. I focused on two:

The Touring Club of Italy Guida d’Italia (known as the Guida Rossa), volume on Florence, all of 911 pages. This book provides the essential dates and attributions for pretty much everything you can view in Florence, up to around 1945 (the station is mentioned, as is the airport, from 1986, but the guide is not really intended for the modern buildings). It tells you who did what in exhaustive detail, very occasionally awards a star rating (the Pitti, overall, gets a star). Everything is there, if you can find it.

Florence, a walking guide to the architecture (Richard Goy, 2015) – Goy tells you openly this guide provides an English-language version of the best Italian guides, but nonetheless I was disappointed that he frequently repeats the Guida Rossa text without comment. He uses a lot of architectural terms without explaining them, although he provides a glossary of Italian terms, such as “duomo”. There are good reference photos, although not in situ with the text where they are mentioned. All in all, this is a lost opportunity: Florence should be the dream city for illustrated walks.

As often happens, while there I discovered two much more interesting tours:

Rupert Scott, Florence Explored (1987) – this was a real find. A short, opinionated book looking only at a few major works. But this is its strength, because in Italian cities it is so easy to get bogged down in trying to identify everything you are looking at. There is simply too much to see. Scott includes some good quotes from Ruskin, below:

Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (1875– 77) - this was such a contrast to the boring guidebooks. You may intensely dislike what he says, but his text is compelling, and it is clear he has looked at what he describes! Confronted by the amazing Ghirlandaio frescoes in Sta Maria Novella, he is dismissive: “it is all simply – good for nothing … Ghirlandaio was to the end of his life a mere goldsmith”.

Does it make any difference if you see something or not?

As usual, many of the things I came to see were not visible. The Masaccio Trinity was being restored, but for an additional €1.50 you could see parts of it through the scaffolding. In truth, however, for many of the works, you recognise they are there, but you learn about them at home, when you can see them in reproduction much more clearly. Ruskin, of course, would fume at reading this.

Highs and Lows

The low point was visiting the Pitti Palace. It contains an art collection of the top rank, yet it was almost impossible to see any of it. First, all the art was displayed in 19th-century style, with pictures piled on top of each other. Result: you couldn’t see the ones at the top. Secondly, and much worse, the pictures remain in situ from how they must have looked when the Medici last inhabited the Palace. Captioning information is out of date or simply missing. Third, and most important, the lighting came from large windows that meant there was a lot of glare on the pictures, making them either too dark to view, or with too much reflection to be intelligible. The impression I came away with from the Pitti was overwhelmingly one of grotesque tastelessness – room after room of 17th, 18th- and 19th-century ostentation, displaying wealth but little taste. In these surroundings, no painting could survive.

The Pitti collection should be entirely rehung in a better, and separate, environment for conservation and for viewing. The state rooms could I imagine be filled up with plenty of art from the store – paintings by the yard, as it were.

Tips for visitors

“The single most compelling reason for coming here is to see Florentine Art” [Rupert Scott]. That’s certainly why I set out to visit Florence, although closely linked to the art is to think about the economic and social circumstances that enabled such art to be created.

Not all Florentine

This visit involved staying in Fiesole, and so it made sense to visit the archaeological site and museum. This wasn’t Florentine art, but Etruscan temples and, astonishingly, a 2,000- or 3,000-capacity amphitheatre (the figures depend on which guidebook you read). Nor was the Pitti all Florentine – it included a vast collection of ancient sculpture. Nonetheless, Florence is perhaps unique in the world for being able to have several collections, not to speak of churches, containing art created locally. 

Guide books

Any visitor to a major city will be aided, or hindered, by several guidebooks. I focused on two:

The Touring Club of Italy Guida d’Italia (known as the Guida Rossa), volume on Florence, all of 911 pages. This book provides the essential dates and attributions for pretty much everything you can view in Florence, up to around 1945 (the station is mentioned, as is the airport, from 1986, but the guide is not really intended for the modern buildings). It tells you who did what in exhaustive detail, very occasionally awards a star rating (the Pitti, overall, gets a star). Everything is there, if you can find it.

Florence, a walking guide to the architecture (Richard Goy, 2015) – Goy tells you openly this guide provides an English-language version of the best Italian guides, but nonetheless I was disappointed that he frequently repeats the Guida Rossa text without comment. He uses a lot of architectural terms without explaining them, although he provides a glossary of Italian terms, such as “duomo”. There are good reference photos, although not in situ with the text where they are mentioned. All in all, this is a lost opportunity: Florence should be the dream city for illustrated walks.

As often happens, while there I discovered two much more interesting tours:

Rupert Scott, Florence Explored (1987) – this was a real find. A short, opinionated book looking only at a few major works. But this is its strength, because in Italian cities it is so easy to get bogged down in trying to identify everything you are looking at. There is simply too much to see. Scott includes some good quotes from Ruskin, below:

Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (1875– 77) - this was such a contrast to the boring guidebooks. You may intensely dislike what he says, but his text is compelling, and it is clear he has looked at what he describes! Confronted by the amazing Ghirlandaio frescoes in Sta Maria Novella, he is dismissive: “it is all simply – good for nothing … Ghirlandaio was to the end of his life a mere goldsmith”.

Does it make any difference if you see something or not?

As usual, many of the things I came to see were not visible. The Masaccio Trinity was being restored, but for an additional €1.50 you could see parts of it through the scaffolding. In truth, however, for many of the works, you recognise they are there, but you learn about them at home, when you can see them in reproduction much more clearly. Ruskin, of course, would fume at reading this.

Highs and Lows

The low point was visiting the Pitti Palace. It contains an art collection of the top rank, yet it was almost impossible to see any of it. First, all the art was displayed in 19th-century style, with pictures piled on top of each other. Result: you couldn’t see the ones at the top. Secondly, and much worse, the pictures remain in situ from how they must have looked when the Medici last inhabited the Palace. Captioning information is out of date or simply missing. Third, and most important, the lighting came from large windows that meant there was a lot of glare on the pictures, making them either too dark to view, or with too much reflection to be intelligible. The impression I came away with from the Pitti was overwhelmingly one of grotesque tastelessness – room after room of 17th, 18th- and 19th-century ostentation, displaying wealth but little taste. In these surroundings, no painting could survive.

The Pitti collection should be entirely rehung in a better, and separate, environment for conservation and for viewing. The state rooms could I imagine be filled up with plenty of art from the store – paintings by the yard, as it were.

Tips for visitors

• Fiesole is a good place to stay when visiting Florence. It is much quieter than the centre, and has its own (rather contrasting) appeal.
• The Uffizi becomes quieter during the afternoons, unexpectedly.
• Allow twenty minutes to find the entrance to the Uffizi, quite apart from buying the tickets.
• The archaeological museum is a well-kept secret, full of Etruscan remains from across Tuscany.
• Trying to cross the historic central area is a slow and exhausting process. There are tiny electric buses, which defy credibility in squeezing through impossibly small alleyways alongside tourists and parked cars – and they take almost as long as walking as they have to follow a circuitous route.  The tram, where available , is a great bonus.
• Booking for restaurants is usually necessary. 

Wagner, The Flying Dutchman

From an 1876 production - this is how I imagined the opera would end [image: Wikimedia]

The story and how it ends

It might seem churlish after being overwhelmed by this opera full of damnation and redemption, but you have to ask the essential question: is the Dutchman saved or not? And is Senta saved? It’s not entirely clear in the libretto, let alone this production.

The story is an amalgam of various sources. The Dutchman, who is actually “fleeing” rather than “flying”, has a pact with the Devil, by which he is allowed to return once every seven years to see if he can find a woman to redeem him from his endless wandering. Everything seems to be going well, in this opera: the Dutchman finds a man (Daland) with a daughter, Senta, and Daland is happy to exchange his daughter for some treasure that the Dutchman offers. She is happy to marry the Dutchman; in fact, she knows all about his plight before even meeting him. She even has his picture in her home.

Nonetheless, the Dutchman expects the worst, even after she has agreed to marry him. This is where things get slightly complicated, and, for me uncertain. According to the script, even if Senta does not sail off with the Dutchman, she is saved from eternal damnation, because she didn’t plight her troth to the Dutchman in church: 

You plighted your troth to me, but not

Before Almighty God: this saves you!

Just to clarify, the Dutchman then states that those women who break their vow after making it are subject to eternal damnation. But in the same speech (Act 3 Finale) he states:                                                           

Learn the fate from which I save you!

I am doomed to the most hideous of lots …

From the curse, a woman alone can free me,

A woman who would be true to me till death.

So that’s clear, then. Her being true to him till death will result in his redemption. So does she have to die for him to be saved, or simply declare her love for him? In the end, according to the libretto, she “flings herself into the sea” and the two of them “rise transfigured”. I was waiting with anticipation to see how the director of this production handled that moment, but the actual ending was something of an anticlimax. It was quite inconsequential – and separate. The Dutchman crawls away by himself, ignoring Senta, while Senta puts her arms up seeming to implore heaven for some kind of conclusion, and by a simple coup de theatre, she disappears  -she is surrounded by the chorus and slips out without anyone seeing, so when the chorus members separate, she is gone – not, in this production, with him. This doesn’t make much sense to me – if there is any redemption, it’s not conveyed  

 

Is Senta too passive?

Many productions have worried about this aspect, according to the Overture Opera Guide (2012), Yet it is quite clear this is not simply one human submitting to another. Senta understands the story, and stares repeatedly at the image of the Dutchman hanging on the wall in her home. This is not, then, a response to human behaviour; she seems to have identified herself as the agent by which her sacrifice can bring about redemption. In other words, it’s not about him; it’s what he represents. This appears to be confirmed by the script, and certainly by this production.  The Dutchman is marked by his passivity. He makes no effort to seduce or even to appear welcoming. His attitude throughout seems barely concealed weariness and exhaustion. Senta’s willingness to sacrifice herself for his redemption is perfectly self-aware, and part of the world of myth rather than the world of the present-day. In a way, this devotion could be closer to what people do for immigrants. You don’t know them, but you can be compassionate.

This production

As usual, this was a mixed bag. I greatly enjoyed the set, which make little attempt to show a ship or even anything remotely resembling it,  the first two acts. Act three was set in a kind of surreal nightclub, which was a surprise.  

For the most part, the costumes were great. The Dutchman looked suitably crazed, as if he had just arrived from another world. He was dressed in a floor-length grey greatcoat and matching coloured hat that made him resemble a hippie who has been without sleep for six weeks. However, that excellence was dissipated somewhat. Senta, when she sings her big ballad, puts on an equivalent coat and hat, so stressing that she belonged in the Dutchman’s world, but when they come to sing an aria together, they looked like his and hers versions of the same outfit, which was cute, almost cosy, but not, I suspect, quite the intended effect.

I enjoyed the movement of the chorus. They grouped to resemble the movement of a ship, then, in Act 3, in the nightclub, they danced with a crazed stylized set of gestures, that collectively looked manic but which communicated the party-like atmosphere that the story intended, and from which Senta and the Dutchman were clearly excluded. 

The world of myth and the bourgeois world

It seems rather strange to have Wagner depicting present-day reality, but that is what seems to be the case with Daland and the sailors around him. There is a terrific contrast between the comfortable bourgeois world of Daland, Erik, and the chorus, compared with the wild, other-wordly (but threatening rather than pleasant) world of the Dutchman. The music switches powerfully from one to the other, most notably when Senta sings her ballad, in Act 1, and when the chorus taunt the newly wed couple in Act 3, until the couple themselves arrive, and the atmosphere changes utterly.

 

Disastrously, this production once or twice mixes up the two incorrectly. Daland is seduced by the prospect of a payment by the Dutchman in return for marrying his daughter. In this production, he takes a necklace that the Dutchman has given him, and places it on Senta, who then puts it in her pocket! It’s as if she accepts payment for the marriage, which is completely at odds with the opera and with her action, unconnected with money.

 

Sexual vs fairytale love

This opera straddles the world of myth and bourgeois reality quite effectively. However, the production makes some egregious errors. Senta’s love for the Dutchman is not sexual, at least, not in the way shown here. Senta wears hot pants (admittedly, she has the figure for it) but writhes on the table in front of him orgiastically, as if she is offering herself for one night, rather than for a lifetime.

 

Supporting displaced people

I am all in favour of trying to link art to contemporary issues. It is wholly commendable that Opera North makes a stand on behalf of displaced people, and you can see the link between the wild sea of the story and the terrible tales of people trying to cross the Channel by boat. So in principle I was happy that each act was introduced by a presumably autobiographical quote from a would-be immigrant to the UK. Unfortunately, the character on stage, who appears to be the personification of the person whose voice we hear, is clearly white, while the voice sounds African. This gesture doesn’t work.

At the start of the opera, someone from Opera North describes the displaced people as “our collaborators” in the programme “who have shared their life experiences”. I can see the link between crossing the sea and the Dutchman; but it should have been possible to have involved some of the displaced people to participate in the production in some way, rather than being recorded and then mimed by one of the cast. Art exhibitions are doing this kind of community engagement all the time, e.g. getting local people to participate in an collective project such as a tapestry.

I didn’t grasp, and I suspect that many people in the audience had similar problems, understanding why the opera opens with what appears to be a group of financial traders. According to the programme, they officials in the UK Home Office dealing with displaced people. According to this reading, therefore, the Dutchman is an immigrant seeking refuge  - but I don’t think the Dutchman strikes me as a displaced would-be immigrant .

Conclusion

 Fascinating opera, production with some good elements, but ultimately not helping to elucidate what is going on. It was such a shame to see the theatre only half-full for this unique night of Wagner in Hull, perhaps the most appropriate opera venue in Britain to perform a tale of wild sea journeys and endless wandering.   

Did the city-state create great art?

 

Raphael's The School of Athens: the triumph of philosophy. But was it partly the result of Athens being a city-state?

City-states continue to fascinate world history commentators. Two of the most famous cultural cities in history, Athens and Florence, were city-states, and it is tempting to try to ascertain if, and to what extent, their status as independent entities was an influence on their cultural production. Like many tourists, I visit these cities with their stunning artefacts and marvel that a city could produce such art, architecture,  literature – and that’s just the start of it.

Of course, to answer this question turns out to be far more complicated that envisaged. One immediate problem is that of timing. The peak period for the political influence of the city state does not appear to correspond to the peak periods of artistic output. A widespread (although perhaps less fashionable today) view, for example by art historian Sydney Freedberg, is that the peak of the Italian Renaissance, at least for visual art, was the period 1490 – 1510, in Florence, when Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael, and others were producing art in Florence. Then Leonardo moved to Milan and thence to Paris, Michelangelo and Raphael to Rome, and Florence fell under the control of the Medici (not for the first time) in 1512 – it’s tempting to associate the end of any kind of collective decision-making with a decline in art. But reading about the Italian city-states more widely suggests that their peak for collective decision-making was well before 1500. According to Daniel Waley (The Italian City-Republics, 1969), the city-states achieved political independence as early as the eleventh century, and were largely taken over by individual tyrants from the 14th century onwards.

Similarly, the “golden age” of Athens, the fifth century BCE, the age of Pericles, the Parthenon, and Socrates, was thought to have coincided with the peak of the Polis, the Greek city-state. But, it turns out, from a recent book by John Ma, Polis (2024) that the fifth century was a low-point in terms of government; the most successful period for the Greek city-state was the Hellenistic period, when Athens had lost all its political power and was under the control of the Roman Empire, yet retained its stability, prosperity, and collective government.

So what is the relationship between art and political systems? Is it simply facile to think that great art was created in periods of some kind of representative government, or should we recognize that the relationship is more subtle, that there might be hundreds of years between the two peaks, yet in some undefinable way, the effect of collective government lingered on and bore fruit in the creative output? I’m not the first to ask these questions, but I will certainly be thinking again about them when I next visit Florence. 

Examining slavery at the Fitzwilliam

 

A "trade token", used on a British ship to vouch for the "integrity" of the slave trader (1788)

Hot on the heels of the last slavery exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, here is another show on a similar theme (Rise Up: Resistance Revolution Abolition), co-curated by Victoria Avery, who was also responsible for the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in 2023. This exhibition is the result of a study commissioned by the University to identify its links with Atlantic slavery “and other forms of forced labour”. This explains why there are so many references to Cambridge alumni in the exhibits and catalogue.  

The themes of the exhibition appear to be:

• Anti-slavery campaigners with links in and around Cambridge, notably Olaudah Equiano.
• The anti-slavery campaigning movement in Britain.
• Resistance and rebellion in early Black states, primarily, Haiti. The curators state the exhibition focuses on “acts of resistance” rather than “narratives of white abolitionism”.
• Resettlement, comprising a fascinating section about the 3,000 British Black loyalists who fought in the American War of Independence and were offered resettlement in Nova Scotia, and some coverage of an attempt to “repatriate” African slaves in Sierra Leone.
• Some early Black students at the University of Cambridge, specifically, a composer and an actor.  

This is a lot for one exhibition. Is it an art exhibition, a history presentation, or an act of expiation by the University? It sits uneasily somewhere between all three, with some muddled messages as you proceed around the exhibition.

What unites the exhibition, if anything, is a strident tone of injustice, with many heavily pedagogical captions. You will be told the correct interpretation of these exhibits, just in case you missed it; for example, a medal celebrating William Wilberforce is sternly labelled:

Medals like this one  - adopting the individualist conventions of the medium – ensured that abolitionist success was associated for decades to follow with a single white man. This has contributed to the neglect of countless other stories of resistance.

This hectoring style of captioning reminds me of recent exhibitions at the Tate Modern.  

Undoubtedly there are some fine exhibits, but overall the effect is weakened because of the very disparate themes and their wildly differing importance. To remember the first Black actor to play Othello is undoubtedly worth celebrating, as is one of the earliest Black composers as a student at a Cambridge college, but where does that fit in this exhibition of resistance and revolution?

Haiti

Haiti is justified for inclusion as the first successful rebellion by a slave population. Yet the focus here is rather strange. While the story of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the initial rebellion is well known, Haiti after the revolt is not a very edifying tale – as is shown by images in this exhibition. It looked to me there were more objects in the exhibition relating to reaction in Haiti than to revolution.

Dessalines, leader from 1804, introduced “serfdom” (as opposed to slavery, now banned), with all labourers bound to a plantation. The use of a whip was now forbidden, so estate owners used thick vines instead. Before this exhibition, I had no idea that Haiti had ever had a king. Now I know that Henri Christophe, one of the leaders of the rebellion, created a kingdom for himself, with a vast palace, using forced (not slave) labour, “using the corvée system, where people worked without pay instead of paying taxes”. Is this the rebellion we want to celebrate? Do we want to see details of the heraldic arms of the newly created (and short-lived) Haitian nobility?

Links to Cambridge

This is a mixture of significant and trivial. Certainly it is interesting that “the contradictory intertwinement of abolitionism and slavery existed at multiple levels from individuals to institutions to the country at large” [p134]. But does that justify mentioning all possible references to Cambridge alumni, for example that “Cambridge University educated … the heirs of British planters from Barbados, Jamaica and other British colonies long after slavery had ended”? Several references have an unintended effect: “Around 13,000 enslaved people rose up on sixty plantations, including some with connections to the University of Cambridge.” [catalogue, p144]

Contemporary art

One of the common practices with recent exhibitions that take place in an art gallery, but on a historical theme, is to invite contemporary artists to present their interpretation. This is the principle behind, for example, the recent Hew Locke show at the British Museum. However, some of the art seems to be chosen for its compliance with the exhibition theme, but to be in harmony with the message does not always produce an effective piece of propaganda – or art. A collection of hessian sacks by Karen McLean, for example, depicts enslaved women “via their reproductive organs rather than their faces to highlight enslaved women’s resistance and defiance through the control they took over their wombs.”  Sadly, I think that’s just how the slave owners saw the women: as reproductive agents to create more slaves. It doesn’t appear very defiant to me.

Some of the most effective recent art in the exhibition appears to have  little connection with the themes. There is a great picture by Rosmarie Marke (Which One, No Choice – Fleeing) of the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1997, but what is its connection with the rest of the exhibition?

Conclusion

It seems clear that the British Act of 1807 did not end the UK’s involvement with slavery, and I would have welcomed a more nuanced approach. Instead, there is a mixture of central and peripheral topics. The Atlantic slave trade is a fundamental and justified theme; it’s just a shame this Fitzwilliam show dilutes the message.

The Great Mughals: was it really paradise?

 

The carpet described in this exhibition as “The Ilchester carpet” ... but what has Ilchester got to do with it? It is Mughal in origin. 

The slogan (by a famous Persian poet) “If there is paradise on Earth, this is it”, is used to describe The Great Mughals exhibition (V&A, London): we are invited to see the period as an earthly paradise of tranquillity and beauty. We hear recorded sound of fountains and birds singing. We see object after object of spectacular wealth – jewellery, carpets, ironware, decorative weapons (not intended to be used in anger), as well as illuminated manuscripts, clothes, and paintings. But it turns out, not that you would learn this from the exhibition, that the three Mughals (Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Jahangir) who form the focus of this exhibition were perhaps not so great after all.

Clearly the V&A thought they were great, and that was sufficient. But everything was presented as an example of conspicuous consumption, and (at least walking round the exhibition) it was never clear where all this money came from, and whether the rulers spent it wisely. It looks like they had huge amounts of it, and spent it lavishly. As far as I could see, the paintings  (including the illustrated manuscripts) and the architecture were magnificent, and the textiles (hangings, clothes, and carpets) had wonderful detailed designs, but I wasn’t in a position to judge the many other objects on display (jewellery, ironware, glassware). It looked, well, expensive. Our criteria today are rather different to that of the 17th century.

What the exhibition didn’t tell me was:

• How none of the items I could see in the exhibition are actually held today in India? Does India have any collection of its own history?
• Where did the money come from to pay for all this stuff at the time of its creation?
• Were the Mughals (in 1066 and all that parlance) good kings or bad kings?
• More about the artistic quality of the items exhibited. What makes Mughal art distinctive?
• More about the various styles that the Mughals incorporated – not just the occasional (and easily identified) links to European art, but art of other Asian regions, plus more about what was being produced before the Mughals conquered the north of India.
• More about the Taj Mahal, rather than just a running video with dramatic shots of the building at sunrise and sunset

The catalogue, although lavishly illustrated, like the exhibition itself, answered few if any of these questions. The historical presentation is minimal – for example, the story of how Akbar reconquered much of North India is reduced to two sentences:

In 1556 the control of Hindustan by Babur’s descendants was precarious. Yet by 1571 Akbar’s territory could reasonably be described as an empire.  [Catalogue, p35]

It sounds like magic, and presented in this way, it is. You feel that there is probably more that could be said. In stark contrast, standard historical accounts of the period describe many years of warfare often with the family fighting among themselves. From the history books, Akbar doesn’t appear to be the nicest of rulers. He came to power aged only 13, and the de facto regent, Maham Anga,

overplayed her hand by promoting her own son, the ambitious Adham Khan, who in 1562 recklessly assassinated the kingdom’s leading minister of state. This so enraged the nineteen-year-old Akbar that, although the youth was his own foster-brother, he threw him over a palace balcony to his death. [Eaton, p180]

The contest to win control after Akbar’s death is described as “a bloody, fratricidal contest” [Eaton, p235]

As for Jahangir, after his son Khusrau fomented a rebellion, Khusrau’s supporters “were impaled along both sides of a road, while their miserable leader was placed on an elephant and mockingly made to receive his supporters’ ‘homage’ as they writhed in agony.” When Khusrau rebelled again, Jahangir partially blinded him. [Eaton, p204]. Jahangir’s end was not so illustrious, either:

in the last five years of his life, from 1622 to his death in 1627, the emperor became so incapacitated by drink and opium that Nur Jahan [his wife] took many administrative matters into her own hands. [Eaton, India in the Persianate Age, 2019]

That is not the image depicted by this exhibition.  

Catalogue

I had hoped that the catalogue would give me some more answers, but I was disappointed in this respect. The catalogue comprises three parts, one for each reign: Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Each part has a very short general introduction by Susan Stronge, followed by much shorter and more detailed essays on individual works or genres (coins, Chinese porcelain). That leaves the catalogue, and the exhibition, short on historical background; perhaps 5% of the text is historical background. The curator, Susan Stronge, recently edited a publication on jewellery from India, so it is to be expected that she would have an interest in this aspect.

Like the exhibition, the catalogue seems to exist in an art-historical bubble, seemingly independent of politics, economics, and the wider social context. This show could have been a much more educational experience; we no longer look at artefacts and just admire the beauty, however stunning they may look. We ask questions.

Rajeev Kinra, in the introduction, stresses the non-sectarian nature of Mughal rule in India (he uses the term Hindustan to mean the northern part of India ruled by the Mughals). All religions were tolerated as long as they promoted the Mughal empire. I’m not so sure; Guru Arjun, one of the early Sikh leaders, was put death by Jahangir, and Guru Hargobind, his successor, was imprisoned for seven years. I don’t think I will be looking to the “great” Moghuls for guidance on how to run an empire any time soon. 

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)

 

Edith Wharton at The Mount, the country house she designed and had built in 1902

This was a very disappointing read. I read two or three books by Wharton when I was much younger, but perhaps I am more discerning today. What was wrong with this book? I can think of several reasons.

Lack of characterisation

I couldn’t believe that the main characters, May Welland, Newland Archer, and Ellen Olenska, could carry the weight of thought that Wharton tried to invest in them. In fact, of these three, only Newland Archer’s thinking is revealed. The novel could have been written in the first person by him.

Perhaps this lack of characterisation is a problem with a genre where if you decide to write about boring characters trapped in their environment, the book risks being boring itself.

The book attempts to present a Jamesian moment of decision: will Newland Archer desert his wife for an adulterous affair with Countess Olenska? But we feel he is too slight for us to bother much either way.

I was fascinated by the minutiae of New York life for the super-rich around 1890. At that time, it appears that if it didn’t happen in New York society, it wasn’t worth thinking about – at least, for the lucky participants. A social whirl of balls, opera, summer houses in Newport (where Wharton also had a house) but a life of complete philistinism, a cultural desert. Plus the way the men were able, if they wished, to run a double life with the tacit acceptance of their behaviour, clearly known about by the women, but not mentioned.

I was not impressed by Wharton’s feeble attempt to depict a bohemian artist, the tutor M. Riviere. Clearly she has a fondness for things cultural and presents this as a foil to the empty lives of the rich – but  Riviere’s character is as shallow as the main three roles.

The love scenes descend into romantic fiction, and resemble romantic fiction in that these characters are no better drawn or believable than the heroes of Mills & Boon.

How is Countess Olenska so notable, so individual? Newland is struck that she calls one of the wealthy relatives’ houses “gloomy” (“the words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy”). In contrast, he states, of her rented house “It’s delicious – what you’ve done here”. But we never hear quite what she has done; she remains shallow, as are the other characters, since we have no evidence otherwise.

Nor was I impressed by the plot. It is very unlikely that as a lawyer, Newland Archer would be given a case involving his own family. But his legal work seems so undemanding of his time that perhaps it doesn’t really matter. There is no problem in him having time off for his emotional life,

Perhaps the lovingly detailed description of East Coast life  is to be expected. Wharton was born into a rich New York family; she privately published a collection of poems, and “came out” as a debutante. For much of her life she lived financially secure, from a legacy and her husband’s income. I would have imagined her experience in the First World War would have hardened her, yet this novel was only published in 1920.

Nostalgia?

Perhaps the book is, as some have claimed, an exercise in nostalgia, for a world that would never return. However, if this was New York in the 1890s, I want nothing of it. This is an existence totally dependent on slavery; Olenska’s visit to Boston is noted because she did not have a servant with her. She states it wasn’t worth it for only two day: “For two days it was not worth while to bring her”. Newland sees this as “unconventional”. Olenska is unusual in having a named servant, but one maid in the novel has no name except the description “mulatto”: we first hear of a “a mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban”. There is no description of the ethnic background of any of the other slaves, except for Olenska’s Nastasia, so why the repeated mention of “mulatto”? It must have some significance that escapes me (and escapes the World’s Classics edition editor).  

Aragon and Catalonia: are they Vanished Kingdoms?

 

Museum of the History of Catalonia (MHC), founded 1996, one of several lavish Barcelona museums presenting the Catalan interpretation of history

When you visit busy, industrial Turin, you are surprised to discover a royal palace in the middle of the city; the Italian monarchy is a relatively recent phenomenon. But this is the Royal Palace of the House of Savoy. There is no House of Savoy today; there are regions labelled “Savoie” in France, but nothing similar in Italy. Compare that to Barcelona, where Catalan history is omnipresent in street names, museums, art galleries, and even children’s games. Why does the House of Savoy not have a separatist movement in Turin, while Barcelona is shouting Catalan messages at every street corner? That’s a question that interests me.

Sadly, Vanished Kingdoms (by Norman Davies, 2012) does not answer the question. It is a study of 15 former states, none of which exists today. Of course, there is a fascination in forgotten areas of history. What could be more romantic than the study of disappeared kingdoms? It’s a bit like coming across an old railway line in the middle of the countryside. When was it built? Who built it? How can things change so much that it was important then, but of no significance today? Clearly, a book entitled Vanished Kingdoms raises an interest of the forgotten-corners-of-history variety. And, indeed, there is a chapter on the House of Savoy. However, my immediate question was to see what Davies says about Catalonia, which could be described as a vanished kingdom, but one that has spent the last hundred and fifty years trying to recreate, or even reinvent itself. What intrigues me is that there is a chapter in Davies’ book about Aragon, but not for Catalonia. Perhaps I am seeing things from a Catalan perspective, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider one without the other.

Davies’ method for each kingdom, one per chapter, is to examine it in three parts:

1. A view of the European location today
2. A narrative of the vanished kingdom
3. The extent to which the vanished kingdom has either been remembered or forgotten.

The emphasis is clearly on the second part, the narrative, comprising (I would guess) 80% of the material of each chapter. Hence, for the Aragon chapter, Davies begins by visiting present-day Perpignan – although what he finds is present-day references to Catalonia, not to Aragon. His narrative section covers the historical kingdom of Aragon, but in many respects this is also the history of Catalonia. Part three, potentially the most interesting, is the skimpiest and the least satisfying. He notes that one of the songs popular in Perpignan mentions “the Catalan girls” – not the Aragon girls.

Perhaps I was expecting too much; Davies ends his introduction with a romantic view of the historian as “a beachcomber and treasure-seeker”. So this really is the historians’ equivalent of writing about old railway lines! I wished the Aragon – Catalan discussion were considerably longer, and that Davies had spent less time describing mythical events in Aragon history. What I wanted to see is an exploration, not of Vanished Kingdoms, but of how some kingdoms reinvent themselves – while others do not. Catalonia would be a perfect case study of this phenomenon.

Sadly, Davies’ interests are elsewhere. His tone suggests a light-hearted rapid coverage of many different areas, with no attempt at a solid history (there are no chronologies or biographies in the book). Davies’ writing style can be summed up by the expression on the first page of the Aragon section, describing Perpignan:

As the corbeau flies, it is situated 510 miles south-south-west of Paris..

Who is this wordplay aimed at? The French don’t say “as the crow flies”, so this is an amusing joke for British readers. It would be largely unintelligible to anyone who is not a native English speaker. The intended audience throughout is an English reader who is familiar with British history. It’s not a tone that is appropriate for dealing with current political situations. The coverage of events seen as major in other books is very different here. In discussing the 1348 plague, seen by other commentators as a significant factor in the decline of Catalonia, there is a lengthy description in Davies, but no indication that this was a major factor in the 14th-century change of fortunes.

Here is his one-sentence overview of recent Catalan history:

Since 1978, after painful experiences under General Franco, the province has enjoyed autonomy within Spain, and has successfully reinstated the official status of the Catalan language.

That is hardly a measured appraisal of the Catalan situation. “Enjoyed” makes it sound as if the Catalans are all happy with the current situation, which is by no means the case. There is a fascinating article to be written about why Catalan nationalism became so popular, but at the same time is resisted by many of the inhabitants. The vanished kingdom of medieval Catalonia is used as a weapon in this struggle; but that’s not something that Davies seems interested in. In his bibliographical note to this chapter, he writes:

But the inclusive approach is signally lacking, especially in work inspired by national Catalan or regional Aragonese perspectives. Readers seeking introductory matter need to explore books on the Iberian peninsula as a whole …

I would have liked to see a more inclusive account from Davies, not one that features only the Aragonese side.