Anghiari si racconta

Basically… I live in the house where I was born; I sleep in the bed where I was born. After having travelled a lot, I came back home to live with my parents, and I stayed with them until they died. Now I will live in that house till I die.

My mother, my father …. Well, my father came from a little village nearby called Il Carmine, where his parents were sacrestani, caring for the church there. A beautiful place! My mother, on the other hand, came from Anghiari. Her family lived in a small house up the hill, you know, where there is that little bridge over the road. Then, before I was born, they moved into the house where I live now, which was built at the beginning of the 20th century – my grandfather, my grandmother, my auntie, and my mother moved there.

The first school I attended was the Istituto d’Arte in Anghiari, which is still here. Then I went to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino (Urbino Academy of Fine Arts). I had a small flat with a view over the rooftops of Urbino, and, living in the flat underneath me, was a group of students from America, also attending classes at the Academy. We became good friends. I started speaking English, other languages, and all of this sparked my interest in travelling, seeing other places, meeting people.

After the Academy, my friends came to stay with me here in Anghiari. I had an apartment and they stayed there during the Carnival, participating in the life of the town. And, then, when it came time to leave, they invited me to the United States, to stay with each of them. When I had earned enough, working in a patisserie in Urbino at night, I went. And I stayed. I was 21 years old and I stayed for a year.

Basically, my base was in NY, where I lived in Queens with a very close friend, Elisabeth. After a month, we went on this trip with a caravan and tents. It lasted for months. We went everywhere, Niagara Falls, Chicago, California, all the National parks, Yosemite. Then I went back to NY and I found a job as a reader of Italian texts at the University of Newport, and I even earned good money. The only thing was that, after a year, I got homesick, ‘the Anghiari sickness’. I even dreamt it by night. I dreamt of the forests of my childhood. I dreamt that I was going to search for mushrooms. From an early age, we are taught about these things here – the mushrooms, the seasons, the forest. Here, you walk out, you find the forest.

I can tell you more about this. From when I was little, my father would take me fishing, and he got me addicted to it. But it is also a family thing, because, in summer, many families went to the Tiber. In Anghiari, the Tiber was our sea, so we all went there in summer. On top of that, there was also the countryside. Because I had some uncles who lived in the country, we went harvesting grapes, picking olives when they were needed to make oil, and we went searching for mushrooms.

Here, mushrooms are very important. Since I was very young, I have known all kinds of mushrooms. When the mushrooms come to life it’s like sparkles in the air; everyone knows that there are mushrooms, and so they go searching for them with baskets. Families all go, and when we find mushrooms, we eat them, we have dinners, we preserve them in oil so we can eat them the following season. It is a kind of ritual.

Mostly, it was me, my father, my brothers and my cousins who went. My mother would come sometimes, but she was a bit fussy, she was scared of snakes. But she also liked it. I still remember one time when we heard her screaming: ‘Oh my God, I found a mushroom!’. She screamed so loudly everybody could hear her! She was happy she had found a mushroom! She sat down with this mushroom, she was hugging it!

With climate change there are fewer mushrooms. And I don’t go searching so often. But when I am in a place in the country where I know they have grown, I’ll go and look for them.

Back to my story. At the age of 23, living again in Anghiari, after finishing military service, I started working in shops, high quality clothes shops. Like everyone else, I had to find a job. For 7 years I worked in one of these shops in Arezzo, and I liked the job – the rather sophisticated clientele, the sought-after product… And then, after Arezzo, I went to work in other shops like this, in Rome, in Via del Corso.

I went to Rome because I had fallen in love with it. I had a great passion for Rome. I had been there for a weekend for the art… for the art, for the palaces, for the history. For the depth you enter when you enter that history. It is a marvellous thing.

I love all art, but the Renaissance more than the Baroque. So, why Rome rather than Florence? Well, because I found Rome a much warmer city. The relationships between people were more direct, more real. Basically, when I arrived in Rome I didn’t know anyone. But, after a week, I had already found an apartment, in via Giulia, a splendid part of Rome, behind Farnesina. It happened because I had become friends with this guy from Puglia, who had this flat in via Giulia, but he lived somewhere else, and while talking over dinner, he said to me ‘Listen, you can stay there until I rent it’. I stayed for a year and a half, and he didn’t even charge me rent. I was so fortunate. I became friends with many other people as well. In this respect, Rome is very open, it really is a ‘città aperta’, like the Rossellini film.

While Rome is more open then Florence, I also love Florence, and, in fact, later, I worked there. But Rome is warmer as a city, more…it is more a southern city. Florence has something distinctive about it …., it is a lively city, friendly, but the Tuscan character is more cunning. They have a different way of looking at things. But I have been very happy in Florence, I have had friends in Florence…

With regard to the Tuscan attitude, Anghiari is a different matter. It’s not a city, like Florence. And, it is a very peculiar town, because it is a Tuscan town, authentically Tuscan, but we are on the border, in a very particular location. We are close to the borders of Emilia Romagna, Marche, and Umbria and so we have absorbed bits from all these populations living around us.

I would say that we are in a part of Tuscany which is rather on the periphery; that is, we are not central, like the Siena area or the Orcia valley. These places are a bit, let’s say, more famous.  The Tuscany there is considered the ‘true’ Tuscany. The Tuscany of Anghiari is perhaps more characteristic, because, in Anghiari, when you walk down the street, you can see the washing hanging from balconies. People live in Anghiari, it is not a postcard. Many other places have lost the charm of reality. Partly, it’s that Anghiari is a bit off the beaten track. Now it is a little more connected, with better roads. But, we have been rather isolated from the rest of Tuscany, let’s say un’isola felice (a little paradise).

I came back from Rome to live in Anghiari because a guy who had a shop in Sansepolcro phoned me and offered me a job. And at that point I was a bit tired of the city. There was too much action, too much confusion; at that time it was better than now, but anyway, too much confusion. I had been lucky in Rome, because, to get to work I strolled (facevo la passeggiata) from via Giulia, through Piazza Navona, past the Pantheon to Via del Corso, so beautiful! La passeggiata, what a perfect thing! But I had begun to miss Anghiari again.

After coming back to Sansepolcro, I worked in that shop for many years, 6/7 years in the Massi shop. And basically I stayed… at that point I found an apartment in a house in the country outside Sansepolcro near a river. That seemed a situation in which I could be happy; in fact I was very happy and I lived there for 6/7 years. And I came to Anghiari all the time, to my family – my father was alive, my mother was alive, there were my brothers, married, so I always came back. Then later I opened my own shop in Sansepolcro, and I kept it for 12 years. It went rather well, but then, with the financial crisis, I decided to close it before things turned too ugly. I continued working in the clothing industry for some years, and then, at the age of 52, I left the industry to paint.

I had already opened my studio a year and a half earlier. I had always continued painting, and basically my favourite subject has always been Anghiari, because Anghiari has my heart. It is a place I love deeply. I love these stones, I love the road I walk on, it gives me….every space, every corner, reminds me of the past, childhood, when I ran as a child.

And I get on very well with the people of Anghiari, because perhaps we are, among ourselves, quarrelsome, yes, yes, we are rather…but we all care for each other, we are a town …The people of Anghiari, we are a population that… what I am living now and what I have experienced, we are a very close-knit population, we very much feel a sense of belonging, physically to this soil, to this town, to this hill, really, we are really bonded. There is this thing in common among the people of Anghiari, because they love their town. Unlike other places where people get up and leave, the people of Anghiari are, we say, very much campanilisti.

Campanilismo (‘my bell-tower is the best’) is when you feel a great affection for the place you live in, for the relationships you have in this place, for the friendships that you have in this place. One of the reasons for this in Anghiari is the location of the town. It is a bit isolated, being at the upper end of the Tiberina valley.  And the location on the hilltop …  it’s not as close to other towns, as say Sansepolcro, San Giustino,.. And there’s the layout, the climb that comes up, up to the city walls…the walls… are a very important thing that enclose…That enclose, I think.

The walls have an effect on the body, on the community, on the mind; they give a sense of protection. The walls were a protection in the real sense of the word in the Middle Ages, there to fend off enemies, but these walls still protect us. I feel Anghiari walls, I love them. Do you know how many times I stop, I touch them, I feel the vibrations of the rock, because I say, I wonder what they have seen, who knows, in the past… And the view gives the impression of breathing, of freedom. And openness. There is a sense of openness, because Anghiari is a very open town.

Openness, and protection. Really this is the idea: there are the walls that protect you, and in front of you you have the whole world, because… have you seen the view? In front of you there is an incredible freedom, immense. It is a panorama in Anghiari, from the walls, that is unique; it is really unique. The walls then can give a sense of welcome, by saying: ‘We are here inside, but we are also open to the world’. You must know that anyone who has come to Anghiari has been accepted, as long as they have behaved in the right way. And everyone falls in love with this town.

Then there is the road that runs straight across the Tiber valley from Anghiari to Salsepolcro, the old road of Tarlati. In a straight line from Anghiari into the mountains above Sansepolcro there is the monastery at Montecasale. Do you know that, during the summer solstice, when the sun rises, there is a sunray that goes past the monastery and takes the road straight across to Anghiari, If you go up there, in the morning, at sunrise, there is this ray that hits the road, it looks like a sword of fire.

Because of its location on the hilltop, there have been no big industries in Anghiari. In this we’ve been lucky too – it’s allowed the town to remain intact. It means that many people commute, to Sansepolcro, Città di Castello, or Arezzo. The shopkeepers have all their activities inside the town, but others leave in the morning and come back in the evening.

When people visit Anghiari, they always come back. They fall in love. I have seen so many people who come, perhaps in summer, once or twice, and then you see them again, they come back to visit me, even here in my studio …Yes, they came back; people have even bought houses here – Americans, English, Canadians, many live here. For locals and foreigners, in my opinion, it is un’isola felice.

There is very a good relationship between locals and foreigners who come to live in Anghiari. They are all happy, they all get along well. There is a certain atmosphere; it is a rather magic place. You can see this in my portraits of Anghiari: in my paintings, there is a sense of fairy tale, there is a bit of a tale, there is the tale of, in the lights, you see. In the lights, in the colours of the stones of this town that has been here for millennia, do you understand, in my view it is a special place, special, and it is not a postcard, it is not a postcard (in English in original); it is the real thing, it is alive and this is the most important thing.

And now, a little more about my personal life. I live with my companion, Armando. We’ve been together for 13 years. He is everything in my life, he truly means the world to me. He comes from Città di Castello, and works there now. It wasn’t long after we met that he came to live at my place, with me, and with my mother! Imagine that attitude: my mum was a very open minded person.

It’s a bit of a story, because, when he came to live at my place, his father was ill, in hospital. Then his mother’s heart gave up, and she died before her husband. Both his parents were dead within months of his coming here. My father had already died, in 2000, and so it was just me and my mum living together. Then a year after Armando moved in, my mother fell ill; she was sick for 4 years before dying. I have 2 older brothers, but basically if I hadn’t had Armando near me during that time, it would have been very difficult. He was always close to me; he was like a son for my mother. And now we are living there.

I feel the presence of my parents in the house, every moment I feel….  I am happy, I am completely happy. I am happy because I live where I always wanted to live. I have my garden, if you come to my place, I would be really happy if you came. And my garden is exactly in front of Anghiari, do you know where the gasoline station is? He is my brother, behind you see a garden (in English in original), under the wall of the avenue, and there I have the lake, the little lake with carp, the fountain, with all the statues – Armando, who is a sculptor, and I have created a place of beauty. I like the beauty of the place.

I have tried twice to make a vegetable garden, but it didn’t turn out well. Either the insects come and eat everything or the birds come and eat everything, so I decided to spend less and go to the vegetable shop to get vegetables, less hard work. And the vegetables in these shops are very good. In fact, my habit is always to go shopping in town, in the little shops in town, never to the supermarket. There has been this tendency in Italy – now luckily, not so much – to go to the shopping centres, the whole family; from morning to evening, they pump air which is not natural ventilation into a shopping centre. In small shops, vegetables are fresher, and also you have a relationship with the person who sells you the salad. When you go shopping you actually like going shopping.

I’ve just remembered something else important about my childhood. It was very influenced by my relationship with Greeks and Greece, because a Greek boy called Costantino came to live with us at home. In a way, my parents adopted him, and he studied with my older brother.

And basically, between the ages of 13 and 18/19, I spent months every year in Greece. I used to leave in May and come back in October. So, I started to speak the language; I experienced the real Greece, not so much the seaside and the beach life, but the Greece of the mountains, of the sheep, of normal people, in places where people still remembered some words of Italian they had learnt during the war. So, for me this was an important part of my education, these trips to Greece and the rapport with another family that became my family. There had been almost an exchange of sons, do you understand. Important relationships were created.

Costantino is no longer alive. One day I came home and my mum said that unfortunately Costantino had had an accident and died. But I am still in contact with his wife and son. Yes, so our relationship continues, fortunately.

I wanted to say you that because it is very important