Vespa Tunes XXI: Er Traffico de Roma, Radici nel Cemento, 2004

When I came to Rome with a university class trip in 1998—the class was “Bramante and High Renaissance Rome”—I remember our tutor cast an amusing, but ultimately unfair, aspersion on two aspects of contemporary Italian culture. We were in the Cortile della Pigna in the Vatican where the vast Sphere within a Sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro has been since 1990, a gift for John Paul II (well, what does one give the Pope?). As we hurried through, intent on the abundant trove of relevant treasures of the Vatican Palaces, a throwaway comment which always stuck with me was made: Italians, he said in his elegant Edinburgh accent, do contemporary sculpture rather like they do reggae. Not very well.

Looking over Pomodoro’s Sphere, splattered with guano, from the usually inaccessible Belvedere Terrace, July 2023.

It was, I suppose, a wry riff on Samuel Johnson’s dismissive comment about women preachers (a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.)

Er traffico de Roma, October 2024