architecttrice

My most feminist hobby of all is looking for (and sometimes happily finding) and learning about female artists of history. I taught a survey of women artists for several years at a women's college, and even when I can't teach that level of topical focus now, I insist on highlighting the work of women in other courses.  Although I have taught this material in one way or class or another for a long time, I took an online course offered through the UN agencies for all of us chilling at home during lockdown last Spring. I expected to already know much of what was taught in that course, but was happy to learn more about select artists and eras. 

Several months ago I posted an entry about our trip to Milan to see an exhibition addressing an impressive number of Italian female artists. So much more is known about them than when I first began brushing up on the subject before teaching my classes, years ago. This is only proof that like science, history is an evolving discipline. More information comes to light, and it is embraced, incorporated, and sometimes put in place of whatever was previously established as a truth.

Yesterday, we went to Palazzo Corsini, a museum featuring mostly 15th and 16th century Italian art, for the second time...because they are hosting a new exhibition of works by and related to Plautilla Bricci (1616-1705), Italy's first female architect (and also an artist, which deserves a bit of explanation).

'Portrait of a Woman (as the Allegory of Architecture),' presumed to portray Plautilla Bricci (plow-TEE-lah BREE-chee...be sure to roll that r like a proper Roman!) 

I had just learned in March and April about where in Rome I could find some lesser works of several women artists I already knew about, but Bricci was more or less unknown to me. Only very recently is she getting more airtime. One of the more exciting facts from that online course? Bricci created both the large painting AND designed the chapel to house it in the church directly behind our apartment (which is far more known for its Caravaggios, naturally). This exhibition at Palazzo Corsini featured that painting and also plumbed the depths of a few other institutions - as well as a private owner's collection - for the few remaining Bricci works in paint and on paper that exist. 

Cleverly, Palazzo Corsini's arrangement of this exhibition is peppered throughout its 8 rooms of collection works, typically hung in a salon style (meaning, from ceiling to midway down the wall, in rows and/or columns). An innovative solution for an otherwise small feature show that might have simultaneously seemed too small and yet still a consumer of precious little space in this relatively small museum, this arrangement enabled the visitor to always be able to enjoy the collection works. This provided important context, since the collection is largely contemporaneous with the career works of Bricci. Additionally, this unique installation enhanced the context of supplemental, borrowed works meant to expand upon concepts introduced through the exhibition. For instance, these three works - like all others curated for the show, identifiable as such by their bright blue labels - all portray allegorical portraits of women artists as the art of painting and/or architect/astronomer (scholars remain undecided on that third image). Artemisia Gentileschi fans will recognize the center painting, which is arguably attributed to her. 

A case in point for how the Corsini's permanent collection benefitted from this special exhibition peppered throughout the rooms: here are four pastel portraits by another Italian female artist of the 18th century: Rosalba Carriera. These two images feature personifications of the elements of air and water. Having seen an emphasis placed upon allegorical imagery in the Bricci exhibition, these personifications relate as well as compare. 

Bricci was, like so many female artists of the era, the daughter of a painter. She therefore was able to receive training in techniques and media and observe both her father's and his colleagues' careers as she matured in the arts and crafts-rich neighborhood surrounding Piazza del Popolo. 

It seems that the reason Plautilla Bricci was able to excel in not just painting but also architecture was her chance introduction to an abbot who functioned as an especially arts-savvy agent for the cardinal and prime minster of France, Elpidio Benedetti. He saw Bricci as a young artist worth promoting, but in a way that would seem a bit curious to us today. Put simply, he mostly employed her for her drawing and painting skills to help illuminate many of his ideas. At the time, so the exhibition text explains, it was not uncommon to claim credit for both the idea AND its execution, even if the latter portion was not necessarily your hand. He was trained and skilled - in embroidery (a common skill for male artists as well as female), painting and etching - and a very small sampling of his work was on view at Palazzo Corsini. However, he must have seen a greater talent in Bricci, and therefore promoted her for commissions when he wasn't directly collaborating with her to realize drawn plans for ideas that in some cases came to fruition and in other cases, remained only plans that he fervently and ceaselessly promoted. 

While it would be easy to leap to the conclusion that Bricci's few existing works are so small in number because the abbot was busy using her for her skills and claiming credit for it, the problem with this premise (which is justifiable against the collective history of women artists) is that very few of Benedetti's works remain, as well. 

Madonna of the Rosary, with Saints Domenic and Libero, 1683-7

I rather like the inclusion of this dog holding a lit candle.

It is also worth noting that Bricci - introduced to us in the first piece of wall-text of the exhibition as 'not a nun,' and 'not a wife' - occupied a tiny gray zone in the Venn diagram of 17th century Italian society, its art world, and womanhood. Despite the existence of more women artists in the Baroque era (far exceeding the number from the preceding Renaissance), they were still looked upon as unusual. Women were expected to instead be married and mothers or, if not that pair of roles, nuns, and Bricci avoided being both. The exhibition text mentions that during the time she crafted a painting for a convent, she undertook an oath of chastity, thereby cementing her choice to remain unmarried and yet also not committed to a cloistered life. It was this, plus the constant endorsement of the abbot, that kept her working and living independently.

Rarer still in this era was a woman who would design structures and buildings. Compared to the hyper-specialization of artists and designers of today, it was not uncommon for an artist to have several skill sets in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was a sculptor, first and foremost, who accepted commissions for architectural work quite frequently. Michelangelo also considered himself to be a sculptor in his heart of hearts, but honored the requests of popes who wanted ceiling frescos, basilica dome designs and plans for elaborate tombs. And while I differentiated those two giants from the artists and designers of today, who among us as contemporary creatives haven't made brave attempts at working outside of their wheelhouse because a) the request came from someone we just couldn't disappoint, or b) the money was needed at that very time or c) we thought to ourselves 'I don't know why I CAN'T do that, so why not try?'

How Bricci was familiarized with the principles of architecture is not firmly known, but her brother was both a painter and an architect, and there is speculation that she may have been trained within a circle of artists who benefitted from the patronage of Cassiano del Pozzo, who supported the artistic training of women. 

Assisted by her brother (to what extent exactly is not certain), Bricci the erstwhile painter designed a major palazzo that would still stand today were it not for the 1849 French siege of Rome. Bricci also painted wall murals inside the villa, but those images are now gone.

Below are the drawings for Villa Benedetti, otherwise known as Villa Valscello, because it resembled a kind of ship posited on the crest of a hill. 

All original architectural plans by Bricci. Her lovely, spidery handwriting labels various components. 

A little loupe magnification of the central elevation of the palazzo facade. 

The appearance of the palazzo after French canon fire destroyed much of it (with a dead soldier in the foreground for historical context, I suppose).

Numerous other works by Bricci - commissioned frescoes, other paintings, etc - no longer exist. 

On my way home today, I stopped by San Luigi dei Francesi, the French national church of Rome, to visit Bricci's chapel. Although the city is crawling with people for the holidays (mostly Italians, but some European and American tourists too) and they were flocking inside to see the Caravaggios that sit approximately 10 meters from my bedroom, Bricci's chapel - just two chapels away from those famous Caravaggios - designed for Louis IX (1214-1270) was completely free of spectators. 

Bricci designed and oversaw the construction of the chapel (1672-1680) itself, created reliefs and other architectural features to celebrate the martyr King Louis thanks in large part to the promotion of the abbot, who had demonstrated his fidelity to France by staging a funereal display for Louis XIV's mother, Queen Anne of Austria, at the same church just a few years before. 

Bricci's centerpiece painting portrays Louis carrying a martyr's palm, bearing a sceptor and clad in the well-known fleur-di-lis cape. Despite collaborating with the abbot on contriving this emblem of the absolute monarchy with a deeply faithful connection to the Church of Rome, Bricci's signature on the bottom of the painting contains the letters 'INV,' indicating her claim as the inventor of the concept as well as the executor of the image.

In so doing, she adopts the bravura of the masters. 

 

The chapel itself is full of typical Baroque resplendence, with gilding, polychrome marbles, curvilinearity of forms, gravity-defying figures and a delightful cupola with white stucco reliefs that lead the eye upward and help reflect the natural light emanating from above. 

Perhaps Bernini would have been proud to see how she incorporated some of his innovations - with the use of natural light, the figures inside the little dome, and the highly dramatic synthesis of upwardly moving forms. 

Perhaps Plautilla Bricci - pittrice (painter), architecttrice (female architect), and invenit (inventor) - did not particularly care whether he was proud. 

I would like to think so. 

What Pandemic?

If being in SW Virginia for about a week taught me anything, it is that American agnosticism about the ongoing pandemic is alive and (un)well. Signage in storefronts and restaurants amount to: would you pretty please think about wearing a mask if we say 'strongly recommend' in our signage? No? Well, ok. We will force our employees to do it, but forget about the whole 'over nose and mouth' part after some time passes. No big. 

A man far older than me working the cash register at a grocery store, sporting one of those infernal plastic shields, which are the protective equivalent of licking a doorknob, working with more than a few other staff members sporting masks that they have pulled down to their chins for one reason or another, and have just left them in place. When an item I had planned to purchase wouldn't scan properly and another poorly masked staff member was asked to go looking for it in the vast expanse, they then came back and asked if I could remember on what aisle I got it (as if I worked there), I said, hey, I don't need it that badly. Thanks anyway. 

A school bus driver with whom I was in a laboratory waiting room - as he waited for his random drug test to be performed (and hey, props to whoever is really doing that, because it's what parents want to believe happens), and I waited for my Covid test in order to fly - stated that he was due to schedule his second shot soon. SECOND shot? And you're a BUS DRIVER? Let me guess: you didn't make a move toward vaccination until your employer forced the issue. Routinely subjected to random drug testing (no complaints there), and yet, reluctant to submit to a safe vaccination...and you work every day with children...are you crazy? 

Also at home, I learned about an alien thing that no one in Europe has seen in forever: a buffet. Those were eliminated in 2019 and show no signs of returning. And yet, it is alive and well at an Italian restaurant in my American hometown. When the option came up for a family luncheon - buffet or menu? - you know I chose the menu. 

I realized way too late that the person who prepared my burger in one of my favorite hometown places to dine was completely maskless. It was when she came to deliver my otherwise missing pickles. And she decided to chat me up at my table, and I just sat there, leaning as far backwards as possible in my booth, horrified. Gosh, she was friendly, and also....freaking me out. 

All of the Americans who flew with me from Atlanta to Rome a couple of days ago failed to notice the imposition of signage on the floor at Fiumicino baggage claim, instructing people (in ENGLISH) to stand at dedicated places, a meter apart, while waiting for the bags to roll out on the conveyor belt. I kept having to move away from fellow passengers who just crowded in to look for their bags, standing cheek by jowl. 

And as I write from the comfort of my sofa here in Rome, I am seeing posts on social media: one from a recently retired art professor who posted video from their university's holiday gathering, featuring a choir singing in front of its conductor. All maskless, standing within non-social distance proximity to one another on risers. 

Another academician posts a picture of the drive through Covid testing line she has been sitting in for one hour, and she is not quite halfway through. 

Thanks to my recent visit, here are my fundamental takes on what's wrong with this whole scene:

1. Y'all are WAY late to the party on boosters. The middle-aged guy who handled my father's cremation at the local funeral home indicated that he was scheduled to get his booster the day we spoke in person. Um, what? Your business involves direct dealing with people every doggone day. And you aren't requiring that they be vaccinated before entering your premises, so dontcha think it'd be a good idea to GET AS VACCINATED AS POSSIBLE?

The sentiment is not isolated to any single country. 

2. Not unlike the U.K., the business of testing is like Wild West capitalism. It is TERRIBLE. Because arrangements for my father and his estate are way more extended than I anticipated (due to Covid, one way or another, believe me), I found that I had no need to change my return flight. There was simply no more that I could do. So I wound up scrambling for a Covid test in order to be, as Delta Airlines put it, 'fly ready.' No appointments were available at select local pharmacies (because not all pharmacies do it....why? WHY?) for the only day I had to do this before boarding a plane. Any of those appointments would have been free. But since they were gobbled up, I had to then look into quick care facilities. Aha, I found one. Drove to it so early that there was still frost on my windshield. Police tape surrounded the building. No one was inside. Turns out that they had a fire several weeks ago and...um, I don't know. No one bothered to, for instance, post any signage on the door to help those looking for a testing center that required no previously booked appointments. I finally wound up at a lab with school bus drivers joking about taking their randomly assigned drug tests. That antigen Covid test cost me $100. 

To complete the Wild West picture, here's what happened as I was in transit from my hometown to a major American hub for my airline. Italy changed her entry rules, requiring an antigen test within 24 (instead of 48) hours of arrival. For this purpose, my $100 test had expired. But there was another lab in an international terminal at this airport. Only PCR tests, they said. Fine, I replied, but how much will this cost? 

$250

That's approximately $240 more than the test costs to produce. 

But see, I was captive. I had no choice. No at-home tests were available in my entire home town. No appointments at pharmacies. No choices that were reasonable and fairly affordable. 

This is untenable. One crucial thing for success in this pandemic is to have some degree of accuracy of reporting for the sake of contact tracing. So that means that you must have readily and widely available testing that is affordable and accessible for all. A reduction - if not a complete elimination - of barriers to testing is SO VITAL. (Another barrier, in my opinion, is the ream of paperwork you have to complete before getting the test. This is required because of course everyone is loathe to participate in a nationwide vaccination record system, which would be easily accommodated if we weren't so hung up on ideas about privacy. And I say 'ideas' about privacy because it would be very easy to protect privacy AND maintain a national health network if America wanted it to streamline lives and medical support. Where there is a will, there's a way. But instead, it is easier to imagine the untold horrors and thwart progress)

But barriers to testing are par for the course in America. While I find plenty of things completely infuriating about the place in which I currently reside, a few important differences on the Covid front strike me as, dare I say about anything Italian, imminently sensible. 

I can go to any pharmacy with a white pop-up tent that is labeled with bright red letters: COVID. And most pharmacies have one (or two, as you see in this photo below) of those tents. I can call to make an appointment, but I can also walk in. I go into the pharmacy to pay ahead for my antigen test. It costs 22 euros (about $25...and it is 60 euros for a PCR test...this is true everywhere in the country, as far as I know). I take my receipt outside to the tent and get swabbed. I wait 10 minutes. I leave with certified documentation of my results, good enough for travel requirements or entry to a hospital for surgery (I've done both). And get this: the results are even written in English. 

While it's entirely possible that some people here can't spare a $25 fee for a test, there is a far greater proportion of the populace that is capable of undertaking this cost vs. something that is 10 times greater. 

And the only justification I can come up with for this American (and Anglo, just to be clear that is not  only one country) wreck of a situation is that capitalism reigns. 

3) As Nick Cho (YourKoreanDad) recently reminded his followers, wearing your cute fabric masks - emblazoned with messages and sports teams' insignias - and thin surgical masks (and Delta Airlines, I'm sorry, but this is what you elected to distribute to all of your customers on the departing flight from Rome...and what on earth are you thinking??) might make you feel cool and comfortable, but neither of them make a difference, particularly against the Omicron variant. It's N95 or...stay home. The bandannas and scarves and plastic shields...and the same mask (with stretched out ear loops and stains) you've been wearing for the last three months...are USELESS. Do yourself a favor and get your hands on something like the NY Times' recent article on how to double mask, in fact. My physician insists that the way to go is to place a surgical mask OVERTOP the N95. 

This elegant lady has it right: double masked. Neutral heels optional.

While it seems that the Omicron variant is so very wily and speedy, mask wearing is still advocated. Here, we are back to wearing them outdoors in crowded areas as well as all types of interiors (fun fact: since the inception of mask advocacy a very long time ago, we have never been allowed to go maskless in public access places such as grocery stores, restaurants, shops, transit, etc.) Restaurants check our green passes for proof of vaccination that is not older than 9 months. Police are on buses and trams and trains, doing the same. 

As recently as today, I continue to see footage - of both American and English citizens being interviewed by news gatherers, reporters and the like in both interiors and exteriors, with people in their midst, talking about Covid transmissions, case numbers, and the potentiality of refreshed restrictions, and no one...is...wearing...a...mask. 

While the person walking in this photo is masked, and that's great (it was taken last May), I feel the need to post this one more time, because shortly after I took the image of Rome's rose garden that she just happened to be in, she approached me and asked me to delete it because as a model, she felt that she should have control over the portrayal of her face. 

Her masked face. Occupying a tiny fragment of the entire photo. 

Because of course, I must have been photographing her and not the rose garden.

Of course. 

So here is my pictorial equivalent of flipping her off. 

Finally, I'm pretty tired of seeing and hearing about public perception of any of political leader being directly related to the fact that pandemic is far from over. To be blunt, this is ridiculous. None of them started this, and none of them will end it. Some of them may be overreacting in attempts to stop something that has already begun (shutting down borders is pointless now, and amping up specific testing requirements for border entry is clearly becoming a fantastic boondoggle for pharma and its purveyors), and some of them may be under-reacting in attempts to placate the 'Covid fatigued' by withholding from imposing Covid restrictions until after Christmas (looking at you, Boris, and while you can't take credit for starting all of this, you will have credit for helping it perpetuate by choosing paths of least political resistance). But this is science unfolding around and literally in us. Attributing causality to a few people in suits is utterly misplaced. 

If we want to end this, we do have to act like it. We know how. We just have to do it. 

Commitment

My father died yesterday. 

I had just spoken with him the prior evening. The conversation was prompted by his partner who had written me earlier, terribly worried about the alarming symptoms Dad had been experiencing for 5 days. And indeed, they were alarming. 

Only more alarming than those symptoms was his persistent aversion to emergency rooms, hospitals and physicians. 

I had concluded that call with this parting shot: you really should go to the emergency room now, but if you insist on seeing your physician tomorrow morning, I can't make you do otherwise. 

The Spouse mused: I wonder why he is so distrustful of medical practitioners? 

I know precisely why. The formula for producing a person like this is to take one mother - his, of course - with an utter reliance on a general physician who was well past his prime when he was advising her to use folk or low impact remedies when more serious interventions were required. And let's not forget that once upon a time, your primary physician was the person you saw for almost everything. That person held a lot of sway, rightly or wrongly. 

Later, as cancer ravaged what remained of her body, my father witnessed the terrors of at-home hospice care. She wanted to die at home, she insisted. It was a horrific experience. 

The equation requires the addition of my sister, who at the 9 month mark in utero was in breach position. In the mid-70s, doctors did not automatically resort to c-section deliveries in such cases. They took their chances. In this case, the chance yielded a brain-damaged baby, issued into the world with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. During her infancy, multiple tests were performed to determine the extent of the damage. Terrible predictions of no walking or talking or who knows what else (I was 5, in the beginning, so forgive my gloss) unfolded with one specialist after another. Despite this, she lived to be 35 before dropping dead (from a free, standing position, after saying "I don't feel good") of either a neurological or a cardiac issue. We will never know what precipitated what. 

And lastly, we have to factor in my mother, who went into the hospital with pneumonia in 2017, and never successfully emerged from the induced state she was placed in so that she would no longer fight the mechanized assistance for breathing. Every time there was an attempt to bring her back to consciousness, she had seizures. One hospital threw up its collective hands and transferred her to another. An attending physician said to Dad: I don't know what exactly is going on, but your wife has significant health issues that may prevent easy rehabilitation. At the two week mark, while no one could manage to bring her safely out, her heart stopped. My father theorized that mistakes must have been made by - you guessed it - practitioners. Something was administered in the way of a too-strong sedative or...well, you could spin this a variety of ways. But for him, the cause was always going to be the same thing: medicine is a practice, and in his estimation, it is too often practiced poorly.  

He would fight with his own physicians if he didn't agree with their advice or declarations. He grumbled about his ultra-healthy tee-totalling primary care physician asserting that he should stop drinking beer. He had atrial fibrillation, but he hated taking blood thinners and finally, when a specialist retorted - OK, stop taking them if you hate them so much - he did. He took plenty of vitamins and his blood pressure medications. He rationalized that he, and not genetics or the plain fact of aging, was still in charge.  We pseudo-argued (hard to explain, but in this family, a discussion sometimes sounds like an argument, when it isn't) for the last month over whether he should consider undergoing an outpatient procedure to help thwart his high potential for stroke, particularly given his discontinuation of blood thinner meds. He veered between claiming that he'd never heard of the procedure before (as if that alone indicated that it was inappropriate for him) and talking off the ears of anyone in (or out, I can testify) medicine about whether it was a good idea for him. No one but his overworked cardiologist would make the hard sell. My father would inform his own son-in-law - a public health specialist and a veterinarian - what was what in the worlds of disease and medicine, telling me privately that he thought my Public Health Specialist was a know-it-all. Because three degrees and years of experience didn't amount to a hill of beans for him. 

He was infuriating and exhausting, in this regard. He would rare up like some kind of cobra, always at the defensive, ready to go full-on in the ring with anyone who had the temerity to suggest that he needed medical intervention. His loving partner grew accustomed to calling on me - the only equally stubborn person he might listen to? MIGHT? - to help with coercion for a sleep study to see if he had apnea (he did). Finally outfitted with his breathing machine and after surmounting difficulties and complaints and sheer orneriness, he expressed simultaneous bitterness and wonder (how is that possible?) at the prospect of sleeping deeply and awakening rested. 

And there was no 'I told you so' on the tip of my tongue. Because another battle would come up, most assuredly, and I would need to have his openness, if there was any. 

The night before last, I argued alongside his paramour on that online call, looking at a man who was miserable with symptoms that he had rarely ever had before. But here is where he still had reason to distrust medicine: he had been to an urgent care facility two days prior, because he had agreed with her that yes, he was not feeling well at all....where they tested him for Covid and flu, informed him he was negative for both, and he was sent home to 'treat his symptoms.' 

The last things we said to each other, once the battle to get him to go to the emergency room appeared resolutely unwinnable, were 'I love you" and that we would 'talk tomorrow.' 

We will not do that. 

To be utterly and totally fair, that same bullheadedness was another kind of shaping force in my life. 

It drove his sense of unwavering commitment. 

As a child, I recall summer after summer of babysitting my sister while my mother was at work and Dad was driving us across our small town between three different yards to mow and gardens to tend. His parents divorced sometime during those years, and like every confounding family member I have, practically, they kept vegetable gardens. Dad kept one (and produced so much yield that neighbors would sometimes have to waive him away, claiming an existing surplus of tomatoes and zucchini from his last giveaway). My mother complained that almost all of the trees, and it was apparently a great number, in the back yard came down so that the earth could be tilled, plants could be staked and weeded and tended. That man was committed - to making things grow, to keeping a tidy yard, and to taking care of his estranged parents' gardens and yards. It was a seemingly endless repetition of bi-weekly visits, with me situated in the cab of a Ford pickup, my sister to my right, my shirtless, denim cut-off wearing father to my left. Brown as a nut from the sun. These arduous tasks kept him fit and busy. Right up to the point that he changed clothes and went to work as a welder on second shift. 

Commitment came also in the form of simply staying close to his mother. And later, keeping his promise to her to take care of his little brother. Of sticking it out in a challenging marriage, with a handicapped child who would never leave home on her own. Of paying for - with small loans and extra work shifts - his oldest daughter's college degree, leaving her debt free and in possession of a diploma. 

Commitment came in the form of hanging upside down in impossible positions to perform welding tasks at General Electric. The ultimate result, decades later, was a spine riddled through like Swiss cheese, and constant, unrelievable pain that he simply lived with, because medicine would fail him on that count, too. 

Commitment came in the form of loving someone new when the time was right. First was Charlie, a mature tabby supplied by the animal shelter as, per Dad's request, 'the one who was too old for anyone else to want to adopt.' And second, more importantly, was a Rose, with a wicked sense of humor and the strength to take on his most stubborn qualities. The love of a lifetime squeezed into just a couple of years. I am so grateful to have as a lasting memory the sight of those two, walking hand in hand. One tall, one small. Such big, warm and raucous love. 

Busy taking care of others. Not always taking care of himself. Exhausting. A force of nature. Hellbent on doing the right thing. 

That was Dale Clayton Looney. A curmudgeonly paragon - and paradox - of commitment. 

I have to pack up and go home now. I have to do all of those expected and unexpected things. Some day I will stop being angry about this. 

I will never stop being his daughter. 

Four generations: Me, months old, in the lap of my father Dale, his grandfather Ryan Gordon, father Ryan Gray, mother Ruth, and wife, Barbara.