We can intuit victory, but who? Where? Why? And there are also several “when”s to keep track of.
This imposing pillar presides over the entrance to the Giardini, studded with curious protrusions. It’s big, it’s slightly forbidding, and although one can interpret certain components, the whole calls for some explanation. That’s my cue.
Part 1: The monument itself. Part 2: Some context on what it signifies. Be warned, there is a great deal of fascinating (to me) information ahead.
The column we see today is a trophy of the Italian victory in World War 1, installed here to honor the then-Royal Navy. It had been commissioned by the Austro-Hungarian navy in honor of Vice Admiral Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, and inaugurated on October 29, 1876. The column stood proudly in Pula (formerly Pola) Croatia, Austria’s primary military naval base in the Adriatic from 1853 until 1918, and a mere 84 miles (134 km) from Venice.
Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary on November 4, 1918, Italy occupied the Istrian peninsula, where Pula sits. In the grand tradition of victors, on February 1, 1919 admiral Umberto Cagni offered this bit of booty to someone on his side — specifically, the city of Genova, though this idea seems to have evaporated somehow. So the column was taken down and sent to Venice, a city which in any case had more shared history with Istria than Genova did. It was installed where we see it today, then modified in a few noteworthy ways.
This archival photograph shows how the column appeared in its original setting. Notice the medallion in the base, which carried the profile of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. That space now contains the lion of San Marco.Our guy.
As for why the column was designed this way, all the world knows that Pula is extremely famous for its many Roman relics, including one of the largest Roman amphitheatres still extant. Perhaps wishing to imply a connection between imperial Rome and Austria-Hungary, the creators of this monument may well have remembered the impressive column of Gaio Duilio.
This reconstruction of the “Colonna Duilia” of Gaio Duilio is displayed in the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome. He was the first Roman commander to win a naval victory (over the Carthaginians in 260 B.C.), which established Roman domination of the Mediterranean. The obvious points of similarity with the column in Venice are the nautical symbols in the center and the reproductions of the rostra along the sides.These rostra represent the articles removed as trophies from captured enemy ships. Attaching a bronze spur to the bow of the warship at the waterline — a stroke of genius first attributable to the Greeks — was what gave the term “ramming speed” real meaning.A rostrum recovered from an ancient shipwreck near Messina (Aqualadroni).“Olympias” is a reproduction of a Greek trireme; the bronze rostrum is a copy of one in the Piraeus archaeological museum and weighs 440 pounds (200 kilos).So why do we say that someone giving a lecture is speaking from the rostrum? That was the name of the large platform in the Roman Forum from which orators spoke to the people; it was originally bedecked with the six rostra taken from the enemy ships at the Battle of Antium (Anzio) in 338 B.C. Shown here is a rendering of how the space looked at that time, and today. (researchgate.net)On the left side of the base of the column as you face it is: “Erzherzog Ferdinand Maximilian von Osterreich K.K. ViceAdmiral.” Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria Imperial and Royal Vice Admiral.On the right side of the base as you face the column is this message: “Questa colonna rostrata, eretta a Pola dalla Marina Austriaca, per onorare Massimiliano Arciduca, la flotta Italiana, vindice di Lissa, porto’ come pegno di vittoria a Venezia. Oggi e’ simbolico dono dei Marinai d’Italia alla Regina dell’Adriatico a ricordo dei compagni caduti per la redenzione del nostro mare. 4 novembre 1918 4 novembre 1929 A.VII.” (Translated by me): “This column with the rostra, erected at Pula by the Austrian Navy to honor Archduke Maximilian, the Italian fleet, avenging Lissa, took as a token of victory to Venice. Today it is a symbolic gift of the Seamen of Italy to the Queen of the Adriatic in memory of their companions fallen for the redemption of our sea. 4 november 1918 – 4 November 1929 Anno VII (Fascist Year VII).” The Battle of Lissa (July 20, 1866) was fought by the Austrian and Italian navies in one of the first great naval battles between steam-powered warships, and the last in which ramming was used. It was also, as you might have gathered, a major Italian defeat. Touches of irony: The Italian flagship was rammed by the Austrian flagship named “Erzherzog Ferdinand Max” (he of the column), and commanded by Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff. “Tegetthoff” was a dreadnought named in his honor (1912) that was assigned to the Italians as spoils of war in 1919, and demolished in 1924. So we’re even?
Victory! It’s an event, obviously, but you might not have known that she was also a goddess, analogous to the Greek Nike. A major difference, however, was that while Nike represented victory and triumph, she did not grant victory, but only confirmed it by placing the laurel wreath on the victor’s head. She was depicted hovering over the winner of an athletic or poetry competition; the obverse of every Olympic medal bears Nike’s figure, with palm frond and laurel wreath. An altar and statue dedicated to Victory was placed in the Roman Senate by Augustus in 29 B.C. to commemorate the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Defending this altar was the last great conflict between paganism and Christianity in Rome.
This is the fully-equipped Roman divinity: Wreath of braided laurel, symbolizing wisdom and glory, and olive representing peace and victory. A palm frond (or sometimes a staff) in the left hand, and wings. Over time, Victory became a symbol of victory over death, and was understood to determine who would be successful in war. Over time she came to symbolize political victory, until the time of Augustus when she was seen as the base of the emperor’s military power. The assembled Senate made a sacrifice to her statue of solid gold every morning.
Winged figures representing victory, and referred to as “victories”, were common in Roman official iconography, and represented the spirit of victory rather than the goddess herself. They were depicted on silver coins of varying value, generally called vittoriato. After the Christianization of the Roman Empire they slowly were transformed into Christian angels.
Figure of Nike excavated at Vani, Republic of Georgia. The Kingdom of Colchis, in today’s southwest Georgia, had extensive contacts with Greek culture through trade. Colchis began to be settled in the 8th century B.C.The Berlin Victory Column commemorates the Prussian victory in three wars in the mid-19th century; the gilded bronze figure of Victory was added in 1873.Of course I like ours better.
Part 2 will relate a few of the Italian Navy’s feats in the Adriatic during World War 1, in order to clarify why this monument is somewhat more than just a towering granite cylinder.
The installation of a “stone” in front of San Polo 2305 on January 28.Giovanni Gervasoni belonged to the Waldensian Protestant denomination and was active in the Resistance (“arrested as a politician,” that is, for political reasons). That was two strikes against him.
It may seem that I have decided to dedicate my blog to war memorials (and it does begin to seem that way), but I promise I will be broadening the scope and lightening the atmosphere very soon. But not quite yet, because the other morning I joined a large group of people who came to witness the installation of a so-called “stumbling stone” (Stolperstein, in German; pietra d’inciampo in Italian). At the risk of appearing frivolous, let me mention that plenty of Venice’s masegni, or paving stones, are fully capable of tripping people up all by themselves. It happens every day. But these are different.
The “stones” on display the day before their installation. The sixth stone replaces one in remotest Cannaregio which was hacked out and taken away — stolen — by unknown hands last year. (veneziatoday.it)
These “stones” are concrete cubes 10 cm (3.9 inches) on each side which bear a brass plate inscribed with the names of persons who were deported to the Nazi death camps; they are placed in the pavement in front of the house from which that person was taken (usually their home).
The majority of the victims were Jews, but you also risked deportation if you belonged to any of the following categories of non-ideal humans: Romani people, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, blacks, members of the Communist or Social Democratic parties or the anti-Nazi Resistance, the Christian opposition (Catholic and Protestant), Freemasons, military deserters, International Brigades soldiers from the Spanish Civil War, escape helpers, conscientious objectors, capitulators, “habitual criminals,” looters, persons charged with treason, military disobedience or undermining the Nazi military, as well as Allied soldiers.
The first “stone” was placed on December 16, 1992, in front of the City Hall in Cologne, Germany; it is inscribed with the first lines of Heinrich Himmler’s orders for the beginning of deportations on December 16, 1942. (photo: Willy Horsch)
German artist Gunter Demnig began this project in 1992 — he hand-makes each “stone” — and as of October 23, 2018 there were 70,000 in more than 1,200 towns and cities across Europe. The first 12 in Venice were put in place in 2014; the city now counts 78 (including the Lido and San Servolo). For anyone wishing to see any (or all) of the stones in Venice, here is a map.
But why set the memorial into the street? One would expect to see it discreetly placed on a wall, perhaps, but the setting deliberately recalls an anti-Semitic saying in Nazi Germany when someone tripped on a paving stone: “A Jew must be buried there.” Furthermore, as Nazis destroyed Jewish cemeteries they would break up the tombstones, using the pieces in the sidewalks where countless passing feet would desecrate them.
Six “stones” were installed on January 28. The first was near Campo Sant’Agostin, and I estimate that about 50 people were present for the ceremony. First, the speechmaking: (L to R) Paola Mar, city councilor for tourism; Ermelinda Damiano, President of the city council; an unidentified woman who might be representing the German Center for Venetian Studies; Paolo Navarro Dina of the Jewish Community (and ace reporter for the Gazzettino), and Mario Borghi of the Istituto Veneziano per la Storia della Resistenza e della Societa’ Contemporanea (IVESER).The representative of the Waldensian community (left) gave a brief speech outlining Gervasoni’s life. Mario Borghi (right) reminded onlookers of the possibility to contribute to the project by “adopting” a stone, paying the 120 euros cost of its creation and installation.Everyone listened very closely, when they weren’t checking their phone.
Giovanni Gervasoni was born into a modest Venetian family and studied to become an elementary school teacher. In 1930 he converted to Protestantism, joining the Waldensian Methodist community and working tirelessly in a group which distributed anti-Fascist publications.
Arrested as “a subversive” for the first time in 1932, he began a life of fleeing, hiding, and being under constant surveillance. “His political activity caused him to travel frequently between Venice and Padova,” recalled Alberto Bragaglia, a journalist and Waldensian, quoted in an article on nev.it. Bragaglia’s father, who was then an adolescent, told him that he remembered “a tall, lanky man who would suddenly appear at home and stayed as a guest for several periods of time.”
In 1935 he founded, with some men from the congregation, another group dedicated to the clandestine distribution of material from Giustizia eLiberta‘, an anti-Fascist Resistance group. Just a few months later, in April, he was arrested again and sent to the island of Ventotene, one of the regime’s best-known penal colonies for political prisoners. There he began, with fellow-prisoner Dr. Romola Quarzola, to try to secretly send anti-Fascist tracts to the mainland. Discovered, he was sent to prison in Rome and then Civitavecchia.
In December, 1938 he was sent to the island of Ponza, a prison island near Ventotene; after an extension of his sentence, he was finally liberated in July, 1943, the conclusion of eight years of incarceration. Undaunted, he returned to Venice and began to work as a partisan in collaboration with the Anglo-American forces. Arrested again on January 3, 1944, he was sent to Dachau and killed on February 17, 1945.
The orange-colored countries are those where “stumbling stones” have been placed. (Cirdan, Wikimedia Commons)
I hope this summary hasn’t bored you; I’ve given it to demonstrate the central point of all the thousands of “stones” across Europe. Gervasoni was only 36 when he died, having spent 15 years, roughly half his life, working against the Nazi-Fascist regime. What this small brass plaque represents, brightly and bravely, isn’t his death, but his life.
The first time I saw this, I concluded that it must be symbolic, and that the symbolism was beyond me, and furthermore I couldn’t interpret the image in mosaic below it. The inscription “Il Veneto alle sue partigiane” translates as “The Veneto to its (female) partisans,” so I knew it was, or had been, important.
(For some reason this post registers as having been published several days ago, but it has yet to appear in the world at large. Clearly it was intended to precede the post about the women themselves, but here we are. I am attempting to publish this now.)
Anyone who has walked through the Giardini has almost certainly seen this ruin. As much as any fragmented Greek temple or scattered Etruscan fort, this chunk of cement represents a number of stories: Political, social, artistic, all of which are, lest we forget, human.
The story of the now-invisible monument is made of people and events stretching from World War 2 till the 1960s; it concludes in 1969 with the addendum of the contorted, algae-covered bronze woman perpetually drowning in the water just beyond. The algae-covered woman is fairly easy to interpret, whether you happen to like her or not, but the mute chunk of cement just stands there like some prehistoric stele.
This post will be about the monuments, and the following post will be about who they represent, much of which has faded by now into the middle and far distance in the general memory (spoiler alert: They represent the Italian women who fought in the Resistance during World War 2).
The back of the pedestal is inscribed “Nel X anno dalla Liberazione.” On the tenth anniversary of the Liberation.
Venice was occupied by the German army from September 8, 1943 till April 28, 1945; there were 17 Nazi command posts in the city. And, as in the rest of Italy, resistance movements flourished. There are plaques on a good many Venetian streets to the memory of male partisans who were caught and executed, victims of the “German lead” (bullets). But the dramatic and crucial participation of the women of the Veneto region is officially recognized only in the Giardini.
A typical plaque honoring a male partisan is found on the wall by the bridge connecting Campo Manin and the Calle de la Mandola.“That night of November 18 1944 Luigi Giacopino falling under the German lead hastened the hour of the liberation of Italy from the tyrants from within and without. By subscription the people the Comune.” The dates and names change but the wording is always the same and notes the double mission of the partisans to fight, not only against the occupying German forces, but also the Fascist dictatorship.
Let me say at the outset that I do not represent myself as an expert on Italian social and political evolution of any epoch; it is fiendishly complex, and what we don’t know will always be more than what we do. Added to this is the inevitable (I guess it’s inevitable) gloss of romance that is so easy to spread across the dauntless souls, men and women, who undertook terrifying risks and, when things went wrong, faced hideous torture and death.
The women who aided the Resistance in myriad ways worked — obviously — as secretly as possible, so it was a great thing when it was decided to commemorate their toil, resourcefulness, determination, and overall courage and grit. The result was a statue in painted majolica by sculptor Leoncillo Leonardi. This work was installed atop a cement pedestal designed by Carlo Scarpa, the renowned Venetian architect.
The statue in 1960, photographed by Giovanni Melagrani Its vivid colors (not shown here) didn’t do much to make it easier to comprehend. (blog Partigiani ANPI).
This statue had a fairly short life and, not unlike some of the women it celebrated, it met a violent end. On the night of July 27, 1961, a neo-fascist group set off a bomb that blew it to bits. The pedestal survived, though I don’t know if that was merely by chance.
The story begins in 1954, when the Institute for the History of the Resistance of the Three Venices (or Triveneto, the regions of Venezia Euganea, Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina) decided to dedicate a memorial to all the women of the three regions who had participated in the Resistance, some of whom had also posthumously been awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor for their actions and, too often, ultimate sacrifice.
The plan was to unveil the monument in 1955 to mark the tenth anniversary of the end of World War 2. This was to be the first monument in Italy, and in Europe, commemorating the women partisans. (There have since been a few others.) To appreciate this decision, one should know that after the war the women were typically described as having “contributed” to the partisan struggle, and not as active participants sharing the risks and hardships as much as the men. (See the following post.)
Leoncillo Leonardi was chosen for the commission, a sculptor and former partisan known for having already created monuments to other civilian victims of the Resistance. He chose to work in ceramic, his favorite medium, and the vividly-colored result did not meet with universal enthusiasm even though the neo-Cubist style was a nice poke in the eye to the Fascist government which had forbidden it.
The original statue, shown here, is displayed at Ca’ Pesaro, the Museum of Modern Art in Venice. It is identical to the statue that was destroyed but with one small difference: the kerchief at her neck is red. Before the statue’s inauguration, some of the partisans’ associations strongly objected to this color, interpreting it as special recognition of the Resistance fighters of the Italian Communist party, so Leoncillo produced a copy which bore a brown kerchief. This accounts for the delay which finally saw the monument inaugurated in September, 1957, two years after the tenth anniversary of the Liberation.The statue is fairly chaotic from any angle, but the important point is that it represented the partisan woman as strong, determined, and armed, no less. In fact, the committee intentionally commissioned a strong work to celebrate the “heroic participation” of the women partisans. As one commentator remarked, she avoids two of the major cliches, being neither a mother nor a victim. Showing her as a warrior –a typically masculine pose — was unusually audacious.Not at all ingratiating, but that was certainly part of the message. The statue exalted, among other things, the feeling of triumph felt at the defeat of the dictatorship. Although the city commissioned a completely different statue from another artist after the explosion, it did buy the rejected red-kerchiefed statue which till then had just been sitting in the artist’s studio.Now that we know what the statue looked like, we can more or less make it out in the mosaic. I have not discovered who made it.
After the 1.5 kilos of explosives (one source says dynamite, another says TNT) pulverized the statue, the enraged Venetians staged protests against what was universally seen as neo-Fascist aggression. What pieces remained were gathered up and dumped in a pile with other trash and detritus behind the city’s “Serra,” or greenhouse, which was itself neglected over time till it reached a state of impressive deterioration. The fate of the fragments was forgotten for some 50 years, but when the Serra underwent a major restoration a few years ago, the garbage collectors carting the debris away discovered the bits of the statue. The largest and most important piece was the chest and head of the woman (the majolica layer of the face had been obliterated by the blast), an arm with a hand, and a number of other pieces, though the lower part of the statue is essentially gone forever.
The concrete pedestal had been recovered (I lack details here) in 2003 and set upright again by Roberto Benvenuti, the supervising architect. My sources say that the pieces were given to a restorer to be reassembled in some way, but there the trail goes cold.
To return to 1961: In the aftermath of the attack, a new committee was formed to commission another statue. Why didn’t they just install the original red-kerchiefed woman? There seem to be two reasons. One, apparently nobody ever liked it. Down deep, people felt it was just too different — not so much for the militant character of the woman as for its exceptional modernity (read: Cubist colored clay is just too weird). It must have been a blow to Leoncillo, not only to see his statue exploded, but not to be asked to make a new one (he died in 1968, seven years after the event).
The second reason for a new work, however, appears to have been a radical change in viewpoint toward the women partisans themselves. Even as plaques and street-names in their honor were being put up around the Veneto, many of these women were no longer seen in their triumphant aspect. Reflecting this revision, the new statue (in more-traditional bronze instead of ceramic) would represent, not the resolute combatant, but the martyred victim. This new statue was as full of feeling as the first, but it was a different feeling, focused on sacrifice and suffering.
” La Partigiana” by Augusto Murer, 1969. Something of a dramatic difference from the already dramatic monument by Leoncillo. It certainly shows the woman’s agony, but there’s not even a hint of her courage. Perhaps we’re supposed to imagine it, as the lagoon washes over the figure, sometimes nearly submerging it. As an aside, the multi-layer pedestal was also designed by Carlo Scarpa and was supposed to rise and fall with the tide. Everybody realizes that something went wrong and nothing is being done to correct it. If I were a world-famous architect I’d be plenty mad — that’s two of my pedestals gone kaflooey. I’m sure that neither he nor Murer anticipated she’d end up like this, though that’s beside the more important point of the figure itself. (Flickr, Jacqueline Poggi).One notices also that the earlier statue was dedicated to the partisans of “the Veneto,” while this version names only Venice and “the partisan.” Perhaps it is intended as a blanket recognition by Venice of all the women partisans everywhere ever.
There were undoubtedly as many political as aesthetic reasons for this change, and I cannot plumb those depths here. I merely note, as one journalist put it, that by 1969 the city “preferred to convey a different image of the woman in war. What’s striking is the willingness to substitute for a strong image, alive, of a woman who reacts and resists, a more traditional one, of a woman defeated by war and not even easily identifiable as a partisan.” In the ten years separating the two statues, the image of the dynamic woman who fought had regressed, in a way, to that of the tragic woman who was courageous but who just “helped” the men.
The following post is dedicated to the women themselves.
If you were looking for a statue of a famous Venetian, it’s unlikely you’d have thought of finding it here. Was this its original position? Because there couldn’t be a more vivid way to express “Nobody cares — we’ll just work around it.”
Sharp-eyed readers, no matter how well-read, probably wouldn’t associate “Modena” (MOH-deh-na) with a man, but rather with the city which is the fountainhead of balsamic vinegar. A slightly curious last name, for someone born in Venice, but there’s a man in Modena with the last name “Venezia.” Seems fair.
Gustavo Modena (1803 – 1861) appears by now to have been consigned to corners — of libraries, of artistic and political discussions, and even of the Giardini Pubblici in Venice. But he was front and center in Italian artistic and political life in the mid-1800s — arguably the premier Italian actor of the 19th century — and active in the secret revolutionary society known as the “carbonari” which was a driving force in the efforts to unify Italy. When he wasn’t acting, he was being followed by the police. Clearly, activist-actors aren’t a recent phenomenon and he was equally amazing in both roles (sorry).
Judging by the pedestal alone, this was quite the man. The statue is by Venetian sculptor Carlo Lorenzetti (1858 – 1945).
“Like so much else in the arts,” the Cambridge Guide to Theatre tells us, “the early 19th-century Italian theatre was dominated by the struggle for national independence and unification, all the more fuelled by the sentiments of the romantic movement which in Italy was a revolt not only against French-oriented classicism, but against foreign domination, political fragmentation, economic retardation, and intellectual obscurantism. More, perhaps, than elsewhere, romanticism too had strong nationalist and popular emphases.”
There is no way for us to experience his acting, unhappily for us, though contemporary reports state that it was powerful and highly naturalistic. His writings may have been equally eloquent, but when read today can’t possibly evoke the same responses as they did when Italy was in turmoil. However effective he may have been in his lifetime, only faint reverberations, if any, reach us today. I have no reason to doubt commentators who state that he achieved “strepitosi successi” — sensational successes — on the stage, but we can’t feel them. The statue looks earnest, nothing more.
The white stain is regrettable.
As for his fervent and unceasing labors to liberate his countrymen from their assorted overlords, I don’t presume to recount all his adventures, because I don’t presume you’d be inclined to read them. That whole historical period requires concentration.
But he isn’t completely forgotten. There are theatres named for him, as well as streets –“via Gustavo Modena”s are scattered across Italy: Rome, Milan, Padua, Florence, Bologna, Treviso, Perugia, Vigonza, and of course in Mori, his father’s home town near Trento. It’s great that he is so honored; it’s just too bad that he now seems as distant as Pharaoh Sneferka of the First Dynasty.
In Venice, though, he’ll always have that plinth.
He’s much less imposing when he’s not on his pedestal (or stage), but much more appealing. Here he looks more like your tenth-grade geometry teacher than either a famous revolutionary or dramatic actor.The inscription reads: GUSTAVO MODENA NELLE TORMENTOSE VIGILIE DELLA PATRIA / L’AUSTERA E LIBERA ANIMA / NUDRI’ DELLA FIEREZZA ANTICA / DA LUI CON INSUPERATO MAGISTERO D’ARTE / RISUSCITATA SULLE SCENE. “Gustavo Modena In the harrowing vigils of the fatherland / the austere and free spirit / nourished by the ancient boldness / with insuperable artistic mastery / revived on the stage.” If I could manage a better translation, I would, but meanwhile just remember the most important words: “boldness,” “insuperable,” “artistic mastery.” It’s an impressive effort to honor his talent in the theatrical as well as political sphere but there’s no question it sounds better in Italian.On the western side of the pedestal is the simple notation NATO A VENEZIA IL 13 FEBBRAIO 1803 MORTO A TORINO IL 20 FEBBRAIO 1861. “Born in Venice 13 February 1803 Died in Torino 20 February 1861.” He died not quite a month before the Kingdom of Italy was declared (March 17, 1861), the fruit of his lifetime of struggle. I can only hope that before expiring he was able to confirm that the nation would finally be founded.Venice wasn’t alone in commemorating him: “To Gustavo Modena Dramatic Artist and Patriot Florence 1903.”On the via Tornabuoni in Florence is another plaque: “In this house Gustavo Modena in the year 1849 directed the journal ‘La Costituente’ (The Constituent). A daily promotion of Republican unity to lift the people of Italy to the dignity of a nation.” The Brotherhood of Artisans of Italy place this in memory on November 22, 1903.”A memorial to Modena in Torino, by Leonardo Bistolfi (1900).A bust of Modena belonging to the Civic Museums of Florence.Modena on the Janiculum Hill in Rome.The Gustavo Modena theatre in Palmanova.
All these monuments in his honor — not bad for a man hardly anyone remembers anymore.
