April 4, 2004
Deceptive Beauty on the Italian Riviera
By CAROLINE SEEBOHM
AT a pretty seaside town called Nervi on the outskirts of Genoa, a pedestrian walkway follows the coast for about one and a quarter miles southeast to the village of Sant'Ilario. Called the Passeggiata (Promenade) Anita Garibaldi, its stunning views of the rocky Mediterranean coastline on one side, and the parks, gardens and monuments on the other, make it a popular place for local residents and tourists alike.
At the end of the passeggiata, where the path turns inland, you come upon a house. It is tall and narrow, four stories high, with dark green shutters and a terra cotta-colored facade, all typical characteristics of Ligurian architecture. But look more closely and you will see something astonishing -- the central windows on the third and fourth floor are not real. They are painted.
Pediments, shutters, window frames, white curtains, even the flowering window box, are all painted on the facade. The trompe l'oeil was so brilliantly perpetrated, even down to mimicking precisely the way a real curtain hangs in a window below, that every time I saw it I had to stop and smile.
Liguria, in northern Italy, is probably best known for its Riviera -- the glamorous shore-hugging villages where one expects to see Rex Harrison step off a yacht and give his hand to some beautiful woman swathed in chiffon. Liguria is also mountainous, with important inland communities dating back to medieval times. Its most subtle charm lies, however, not in the dramatic natural landscape, but in the equally dramatic man-made beauty of its exterior decoration.
Last May, I was a fellow at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, a village between Genoa and Portofino. I was overwhelmed by the variety and originality of what was so flamboyantly displayed -- in front of my eyes, right on the street, with no entry fees.
In response to space constrictions, many houses in Liguria are built high and narrow, often six stories or more, and share exterior walls, attached in a continuous line. Painted in pastel colors, washed in the Mediterranean sun, their effect is both subtle and jewel-like, transforming a row of facades into a necklace of colored stones.
But the decoration doesn't stop there. From the grandest palazzo to the most modest cottage, visual tricks abound. Some of the decoration is simply detailing -- painted garlands along a roofline, curlicues under eaves, or ribbons of color over doorways. The rest is magic of a more skilled nature. Arches, architraves, sills, portals, capitals, lintels, transoms, balustrades, pediments, pilasters, porticos are all rendered in the most ingenious trompe l'oeil. Medallions, niches for statuary, quoins, bricks and friezes dazzle the eye with their elegance and artistry.
In the village of Camogli, on the Golfo Paradiso, northwest of Portofino, I admired one of the many handsome six-story houses as an exemplar of Baroque ornamentation, before realizing it was almost entirely fake. Only the washing, hanging on lines in front of the windows, was real. Well, I think it was.
But the decoration is not only painted. The unusual black and white stripes of the facades of San Lorenzo Cathedral and the Church of San Matteo in Liguria's capital, Genoa, that were later copied by architects of several of the great 16th- and 17th-century urban palazzos, send a message that exterior decoration is, for these Northern Italians, an essential element of a building's beauty. (In many places, the black has faded to grey, giving the facades a pearly appearance.)
Other Genoan examples abound: the famous painted mansions of the Via Garibaldi, each one different in color and decoration, some with trompe l'oeil, others with statuary and relief work: the frescoes on the exterior of the Palazzo Doria Spinola (now the Prefecture); the black and white facades of the Doria palaces in the Piazza San Matteo; the courtyard of the Palazzo Reale, with its ornately designed pebble floor rescued from a monastery.
My favorite Genovese expression of this infatuation with decoration is the deconsecrated church of Sant'Agostino, whose conical tower is a Bridget Riley-style artwork from the 15th century. It is covered in hundreds of squares of black, white and brown majolica, with crisscrossing bands that make you dizzy. Four small cones at its base are similarly accoutered. The Romanesque roundels decorating the sides of the tower are inset with black and white squares like tiny checkerboards. The columns of the church's medieval cloister have black and white horizontal stripes. Facade is everything.
In the countryside, this delight in decoration is unquenchable. Even in the smallest hill villages, the houses have their painted quoins, pediments, flower boxes, statuary. Most striking are the gray-and-white pebble piazzas, arranged like mosaics in swirls and circles.
In Santa Margherita Ligure, north of Portofino, the pebble courtyard in front of the Villa Durazzo is as elaborate as a Persian carpet. Graceful waves of pebble art break in front of the church of St. Michael the Archangel in Pieve Alta, above Bogliasco.
In Nervi, south of Genoa, I found a shop that specialized in trompe l'oeil. Going inside, I was surrounded by faux cats sitting on faux window sills, faux statues in faux niches, faux bowls on faux tabletops. It was clearly a thriving business.
I asked the owner if he worked on exteriors as well as interiors. He shook his head. But somewhere in Genoa, Camogli and Bogliasco live house painters who surely bear very little relation to those we hire.
There are interesting historical precedents for this tradition of decorative illusionism, according to Richard Spear, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland who specializes in Italian painting and who was a scholar with me at the Liguria Study Center.
''The painted facades of modern Liguria remind me that their roots indeed are in northern Italy, as far back as the Renaissance,'' he told me. ''Some benchmark examples are Mantegna's illusionistic frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, Correggio's proto-Baroque domes in Parma, and Veronese's optical tricks in the Villa Barbaro, Maser, in the Veneto.''
''As in the Ligurian facades,'' Dr. Spear added, ''the key to their trompe l'oeil success is mastery of perspective.''
Some historians support the notion that the citizens of Genoa have always been somewhat parsimonious, and that painting the facades of their houses was much cheaper than having a sculptor or mason mold actual architectural ornamentation on them. In some of the palazzos now open as art galleries, like the Piazza Spinola, the ''frame'' of a painting was painted on the wall, another ''cheap'' use for trompe l'oeil.
''The Ligurians were a pragmatic people, and built houses of unrepentant solidity,'' says Mitchell Wolfson Jr., a former United States vice consul in Genoa who founded the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, a decorative arts museum in Miami Beach. ''They used cosmetic exterior decoration on their facades to create the illusion of beauty.''
As a consequence, added Mr. Wolfson, whose collection of early 20th-century Italian decorative arts will be on permanent exhibit in the restored Modern Art Museum that is to open in September in Nervi, ''their applied art became far more sophisticated than their fine art.''
Is this obsession with illusion a sign of frivolity or fraudulence? I was told a story by a Genoa resident that gave me pause:
The prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, visited Genoa in 2001 to check on the city before holding the so-called G8 meeting of world leaders that July. On passing through the center, he spotted an unattractive facade opposite the Palazzo Ducale, where the meeting was to take place. He immediately ordered the city to cover the eyesore with a temporary facade made of painted fabric for the duration.
Bella figura, indeed.
Tricks and treats for the eye
For general information about Liguria, consult the Web site of the Regional Tourism Promotion Board in Genoa, at www.turismoinliguria.it, or contact APT Genova, a tourism organization with offices at the main (Principe) train station, (39) 010-246-2633, and the Cristofo Colombo Airport, (39) 010-601-5247, and a site at www.apt.genova.it.
What to See
Three churches in Genoa should not be missed: San Matteo, Piazza San Matteo; Church and Convent of Sant'Agostino, Piazza Negri; San Lorenzo Cathedral, Via Reggio 17, (39) 010-265-786. Churches are generally open 8 a.m. to noon and 4 to 7 p.m, but San Lorenzo is open 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
In the heart of the city, the Via Garibaldi has rows of mansions with splendid painted facades. Nearby is the Palazzo Doria Spinola, now the Prefecture, at the northeast corner of the busy Piazza Corvetto. The jewel-like Piazza San Matteo is just north of the Palazzo Ducale. The Palazzo Reale is on the Via Balbi near the Stazione Principe.
Three nearby towns particularly rich in houses with painted facades are Nervi, Camogli and Santa Margherita Ligure. All can be reached within an hour by local trains from Genoa. Timetables are available at .
In Nervi, the park that is almost adjacent to the station contains two grandly decorated villas. The Villa Grimaldi Fassio, an art gallery, is open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; admission $5, at $1.24 to the euro. The Villa Serra is being restored as a museum of modern art, to open in September. Information: (39) 010-557-4700.
The Anita Grimaldi Promenade is a wonderful walk of 1.25 miles along the coast, from Nervi to Sant'Ilario, with a painted charmer at the end.
Camogli is a fishing village whose colorful shorefront houses are decked out like slightly faded showgirls. Its most famous facade, belonging to a six-story private house, can be found between the Passeggiata Garibaldi and the Via della Repubblica.
In Santa Margherita Ligure, the Villa Durazzo, (39) 018-520-5449, has a park, gardens and a splendid pebble ''carpet.'' From April to October, it is open 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.; closed Monday.
A Bus Option
To see other painted houses and churches in mountain towns nearby, it's fun and perhaps safer than driving (vertiginous hairpin turns) to take a bus that runs only on Sunday. These modest hill towns have beautiful tiny Baroque churches with pebble-decorated courtyards and/or painted houses, and from the bus the views are stunning.
The local bus stop is opposite the railroad station in Bogliasco (on the local rail line between Genoa and Portofino). Tell the driver you want the round trip Bogliasco-Pieve-Alta-Sori-Teriasca-Sussisa. The 1:50 p.m. bus is usually empty and the light is lovely then. Tickets cost $2.50. Round-trip tickets can be bought in advance at tourist offices at railroad stations (they are closed Sunday).CAROLINE SEEBOHM
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