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'WITH PLEASURE':  MORE ON  'CORTILI APERTI'  IN PIENZA

23/8/2012

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In my 17 August posting, I wrote about the remarkable annual occasion in Pienza of 'Cortili aperti', and how it is organized and achieved by Francesco Dondoli with his friends and fellow volunteers, combining highly professional results, élan, imagination, sheer hard work and impeccable good taste.  Well, there is a good anecdote here -- and new photos .


First, the photos are of the 2012 'Cortili aperti' in the lovely quattrocento cortile of the private Palazzo Ammannati.

Second, the anecdote.  The group of friends who collaborate to achieve 'Cortili aperti' every year have adopted the collective name and motto 'Non Sine Iocunditate', a Latin phrase.  Why, and what does it mean?  

The phrase comes from the famous memoirs or Commentaries of Pope Pius II, the renaissance humanist Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini who rebuilt Pienza as an architectural jewel.    The pope writes of watching  in 1462 the games and races celebrating the new town on the 'festa' of Saint Matthew, a town patron.   After describing the races with some gusto, with amusing anecdotes,  he concludes: (in the words of the Gragg translation*):  'The Pope watched these contests from a very high window with a good deal of pleasure though while they were going on he was consulting with the cardinals on public business'.    'Non sine iocunditate': literally, not without pleasure or good cheer.

Ironically,  when the Pope's Commentaries were first published and printed in Counter-Reformation (Catholic Reformation) times of the later sixteenth century, it was deemed unseemly, even damaging to the reputation of the Church, for a pope to recount such amusing anecdotes and actually to express enjoyment over these doings.  So the anecdotes and the unworthy expression of enjoyment, 'non sine iocunditate', were censored (along with many other passages, phrases,  individual words).

Francesco explains that the phrase seemed to express well the purely personal effort and pleasure motivating him and his evolving group of friends, volunteers all,  so the phrase has been adopted as their collective name.  And, of course, because it is associated -- amusingly, I would add -- with Pope Pius II himself, Pienza's founder and builder.


* Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope:  The Commentaries of Pius II, translated by F.A.Gragg in an abridgement edited by L.C.Gabel (1959; Capricorn edition 1962, pp.

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PIENZA STREETVIEW

21/8/2012

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So, Pienza is next up for Google StreetView filming -- this Thursday, August 23.   Coming soonThe streets will have contrada (neighbourhood) flags out, for the upcoming Festa dal Caccio -- with pecorino cheese-rolling competition:  Pienza's humane and humourous version of Siena's Palio, but still very competitive!!   And surprisingly historic, too.  Think a hybrid of curling with bocce or lawn bowling, played on an uneven brick piazza.

But for the StrretView filming, should we dress up or dress down, should we stand and wave or hide?
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Fireworks and the Assumption in Pienza, August 2012

18/8/2012

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Yesterday I wrote about the unique and remarkable annual 'Cortili aperti' occasion and exhibition in the evening of August 14: but there is a second celebration the same evening -- ever-popular fireworks!    

There is a long tradition in the Val d'Orcia of bonfires being lit in the countryside after dark to burn into the early hours of the Assumption 'festa' on August 15.  In more recent years, fireworks were let off from a podere below and some distance away from Pienza itself, which Pientini viewed from the belvedere walkway outside the town, toward the church of Santa Caterina.  But since 2010 the traditional fireworks have been let off from the top of the town bell-tower, right above the famous and famously beautiful renaissance Piazza Pio II.

And what an extraordinary spectacle they are!!   Other, much vaster fireworks displays take place elsewhere, such as for the festa of San Giovanni Battista on June 24 in Florence, seen by large crowds spread out along the Arno, set off (generally) from the area of Piazzale Michelangelo on the hill above and beyond the river.  The Pienza fireworks are a more intimate affair, with people jammed into the piazza and the adjoining main street, and with the fireworks erupting from the campanile right above us all.  

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So close up, they make a special and very civic impression -- colours, flashes, bangs, shooting 'stars' and pinwheels, apparently engulfing the bell-tower and -- this year -- even creating a sort of waterfall of sparkles down the front of the renaissance town-hall/palazzo itself.   



Great fun  -- and a wonderful new tradition!!!


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The Assumption and 'Cortili Aperti'  in Pienza, August 2012

17/8/2012

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One of the great annual happenings in Pienza takes place on the eve of the holiday of 'Ferragosto', August 15, day of the religious 'festa' of the Assumption, to which is dedicated Pienza's marvellous early renaissance cathedral.   (That is, for Catholics, the bodily 'assumption' into heaven of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, upon her earthly death.)    The night of August 14-15 is also the anniversary of the death of Pienza's renowned native son, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405-1464) who became Pope Pius II in 1458.   And for Pientini and knowledgeable visitors, the evening of August 14 is anticipated for a unique and remarkable annual exhibition on a theme related to Pius II: 'Cortili aperti' * organized by Francesco Dondoli.


'Unique and remarkable'  because the exhibition takes place only this one evening on this one day of the year, only in Pienza; because on this evening alone the delightful 'cortile' of the Palazzo Ammannati is open and illuminated as the centre of the small exhibition, together with the specially open cortili of the great Palazzzo Piccolomini and of the former Palazzo Jouffroy and Palazzo Borgia now the lovely town museum and, usually, the tiny cortile of the recently-identified former quattrocento inn; because every year the theme is different and every year fascinating, illuminating another select aspect of renaissance history , of Pope Pius II and of Pienza; and because the whole is the private initiative of an individual Pientino, Francesco Dondoli, and is organized and achieved by Francesco with his friends and fellow volunteers, combining highly professional results, élan, imagination, sheer hard work and impeccable good taste.

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In 2012, the theme was 'The Liber Cronicarum and Pope Pius II':  a luxury book, better known in English as the 'Nuremberg Chronicle' (for its place of publication in 1493) of world history, a landmark in printing and publishing which included amongst its sources substantial parts of the works of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini.    The 'Chronicle' is  known especially for its very numerous woodblock illustrations, closely integrated with the text.   The illustration here is of Pope Pius II with Emperor Frederick III.   In fact, as Francesco's handsome small catalogue points out, one copy survives of the publicity flyer for the book, highlighting the illustrations in what seems to me to be a very modern manner.  'Truly I promise you, dear reader, the utmost pleasure in reading this book,  for in addition to the sensation of reading history , through  pictures you will seem to have history before your very eyes.   You will see not only the the portraits of emperors, popes, philosophers, poets, and other famous personalities,  each one in the dress of their own times, but also views of the most famous cities in all the world, together with information on how they were born and prospered.  So much so that when you give thought to their histories, deeds, and hear news of them, you will picture them as if they were alive and present before you.'     (P.R. is P.R. all the world over, I guess!)

Francesco Dondoli has written about the genesis and development of 'Cortili aperti' in the first edition of Canonica, the periodical of the Centro Studi Pientini,  which you can read in Italian here, with a portfolio of the elegant little catalogues for each edition of the exhibitions from 2005 to 2010 -- very much worth leafing through here even if you do not read Italian.

*  'Cortili aperti' may translate literally as 'open courtyards' but English is impoverished if we do not use the Italian 'cortile'.   From the Encyclopedia Britannica on-line, for instance: 'cortile: internal court surrounded by an arcade, characteristic of the Italian palace, or palazzo, during the Renaissance and its aftermath'.   Thus the lovely and most magnificent of Pienza's cortili, of Pope Pius's Palazzo Piccolomini:


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Delightful article on 'Pienza's Missing Statues', in Italian

6/8/2012

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