Finding Solace in Pictures
In these days I have found comfort in reviewing photographs taken by my grandparents, and of my grandparents, from 100 years ago when they first arrived in Rome. I see a Rome which was busier than our quarantined one (we are now day 27 of lock down.)
I see a Rome where every woman covered her head (now we cover our noses and mouths), where most of the figures photographed are walking singly (just as today), and where the social distance between parties is nearly always more than 1.5 meters.
Surely with almost no cars (in 1913 there were 2000 cars built in Italy) the air must have been limpid, as it is now, and the sound of bells and spring time swifts just as audible in the quiet city as they are today.
And when I tire of studying our family albums, I turn my attention to the webcams which send out 24 hour a day images of Italian public spaces. In the evening, when I am especially melancholic for the Roman squares I most love, I follow a sort of self imposed rite that I began a few weeks ago. First to clear my head I look at the gentle waves lapping at the town beach in Atrani(Amalfi) https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/campania/salerno/atrani-spiaggia.html.
And then I move on to Piazza di Spagna.
Since the days of the Grand Tour, Piazza di Spagna has been a concentration of international humanity.
But visit https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/lazio/roma/piazza-di-spagna.html today and fall into a scene of such soft gentleness, where by day you hear the green parrots squawking in the two palm trees. And always, mesmerizingly, the musical flow of water from the exquisite Barcaccia fountain, sculpted in 1627-29 by Bernini’s father, and through which flows Acqua Vergine, low calcium, so desirable to early 20th century English tea drinkers that they sent their servants there to fetch demijohns of it for their kettles. When have you ever seen the stairs so clear of people, and had a chance to admire the magnificence of the staircase itself without a human wave ? If you visit around 11 PM, you will see the thin young man with the little black and white dog. You will see the two blue and white cars of the Roman municipal police parked close together, while their occupants share a conversation that always ends at around 11:15, when they take off in two opposite directions of the square. You will hear a heavy Roman portal or two slamming — at that hour, only a dog walker carrying an official justification form (fourth edition) has any excuse to be in motion. You will hear a cat in heat yowling loudly (is she on a terrace ? is she prowling the streets ?) The small rubbish truck rumbles through, and parks near the newsstand, and you will see a man in an orange suit making his way on foot across the square to empty the two surely-empty bins. If you stay past midnight you will see a shutter or two being closed, and lights turned out. Did you know that all night long, the seagulls call out to one another over Rome ? You can watch dawn break on the square. You can hear the 7 AM bells peeling, most loudly from San Carlo del Corso. The day — another surreal day — has begun in Rome.
Via webcam you can travel all across Italy : to Siena’s Piazza del Campo, where you can in your mind’s eye create the thundering gallop of the horses of the Palio. Or in my case, find the column where you sat waiting for your parents to find you, flushed with the pleasure of innocent independence, after wandering off excitedly from them when you were four.
My husband, for whom Florence is a spiritual home, finds solace on the Ponte Vecchio (https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/toscana/firenze/ponte-vecchio.html), shown here in a way you may never see again. To visit Venice’s Piazza San Marco like this https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/veneto/venezia/piazza-san-marco.html is a remarkable privilege, an opportunity to study its design and architecture without human crowds, one that you’ll not have again — unless of course a pandemic returns.
Visits to these webcam sites remind me of the fabled Alinari photographs of the 1860s – 1920s, reproductions of which I have always kept in my office. Taken usually at mid-day, and often in the summer, these scenes, often of iconic views, are peopled with a scant number of men and women who seem to be on errands : tradespeople on bicycles carrying parcels, household help toting large carafes, two men pushing a wooden cart, a horse-pulled wagon brimming with stout wine barrels.
On my webcams, in Roman piazze I know as well as my hand, I see the same sort of purposeful activity. Romans go about the small domestic errands that they are allowed to conduct, this before quickly making their way home.
The truth is that I cannot keep away from these webcams. I think I could, if you put me before them in a line up, pick out from a crowd the two ladies who every day meet at the fountain at the north end of Campo de Fiori and then immediately proceed together to the Campo de Fiori forno. In my mind of course I am with them too, and can taste the pizza, thin, warm, fragrant, with not-too-much olive oil, with sweet tomato, and crunchy flakes of salt. I am quite sure that this pizza is in the parcels the two ladies carry out of the forno.
May it be soon that I am one of them.
May we all, within short weeks, raise our sights from these screen images — the awe inspiring, thunderingly beauty but eerily silent images on Italian webcams — because we have, together we all have, flattened the curve.
And then, when all-clear is called, may we prove ourselves worthy of Italy.