photography – Page 4 – wanderwarbler

October 1, 2018October 10, 2018

Montenegro: The Price of Salt

When by September the last tourists have left and the little Adriatic republic of Montenegro has fallen into peaceful slumber again, another kind of yearly visitor arrives. Thousands of migrating birds on their way to the African sun stop-over at the country’s lakes and rocky shores, but most importantly at the Ulcinj Saltpans, a lagoon at Montenegro’s Southern tip, bordering Albania.

Salt pans are an ideal nesting and resting spot for birds. They offer a unique salty fauna, plus amphibians and reptiles, to their avian guests: a win-win situation for local economy and ecology; or, in other words: the ideal cohabitation of humans and birds. For without the pumps and machines, not enough salt water would reach the lagoon and therefore the bird habitat.

Samphire – the salty flower of the saltpans – has risen to fame since Jamie Oliver recently introduced it into his modern cuisine.

The Ulcinj salt pans, created in 1934 for salt production, have since attracted millions of birds. Today, however the pumps stand still. The dried pans are left in dire need to be flooded with sea water, but the machines and salt-factories dilapidated and forgotten, a but a surreal setting for the flamingos, the Dalmatian Pelicans, spoonbills and many other waders – whose future is as uncertain as that of the salt factory.

Problems began when the salt pans were sold to a private company with the permission to turn the land into a hotel and golf resort. However, following protests by wildlife NGOs, the young state of Montenegro declared the saltpans an environmentally protected area in 2012, thereby thwarting any hotel plans. As a result, the private owner declared bankruptcy in 2013, stopped salt production, and sued the young Republic of Montenegro for breach of contract. A coincidence or probably not, the saltpans have also fallen prey to various acts of vandalism, pumps and flamingo nests were destroyed, water ways clogged.

While the situation still seems unclear today, as bankruptcy proceedings are apparently not settled, the saltpans have been turned into an open-air museum for birding tourists in 2014 – with three hides and educational signs at the path surrounding the pan. Not unlike the factories, though, the signs stand forgotten and bleached by the Mediterranean sun.

But there is hope. Nature and birds are resilient, and despite their run down state, the pans dazzle the visitor’s eyes with a sparkling display of colors and birds. Within the past years, awareness among the locals has risen, and with the support of various NGOs, efforts have taken place to reinstall salt production.

The price of salt doesn’t seem so high in Montenegro. For salt comes with the birds, which makes it all the more worth it.

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018

Montenegro: Paradise (Almost) Lost at Lake Skadar

Millions of years ago, tectonic shifts cut off a portion of the Adriatic sea and formed a basin, later named Skadar by the Montenegrinians, or Shkodar by the Albanians, who nowadays share this charming lake, one of the largest in Europe, with no one but a bunch of birds.

While the birds have nested in the high reeds and floating carpets of sea lilies ever since, humans only settled at the lake’s shores about a thousand years ago – and engaged in battle right away: the Slavs against the Turks, the Montenegrins against the Ottomans, back and forth through times and ages, Tito’s partisans even sank a steamboat in the lake, while the storks and herons, the egrets and ibises, kingfishers, turns, stilts, dived and sailed through waves and skies.

Pygmy cormorants rise with the morning sun.

Today, in times of peace and with the help of the EU, which invests heavily in Montenegro, the lake is of dreamy tranquility and breathtaking wilderness, glittering in the Mediterranean sun. For birders it is nothing short of a paradise.

Lake Skadar was declared a National Park in 1983 and two globally endangered species, the Dalmatian Pelican and the Pygmy Cormorant, are found at the lake in abundance.

Unlike humans, the Pelicans and Cormorants have teamed up, breading in vicinity and sharing the chores of hunting and babysitting. While the regal, imposing pelicans are surprisingly elegant gliders, the cormorants excel at fishing, diving meters deep into the waters and bringing with them fish too large for themselves to swallow, but just the right size for the big beaked pelicans.

Lake Skadar could be a paradise for the birds – if it weren’t for the humans. Despite its status as a natural park, Lake Skadar has a litter problem, the occasional plastic bottle drifting like flotsam in the undulating waves, getting caught in the reeds, and clogging the freshwater springs that feed the lake.

a channel through the water lilies for the fishing boat

But worst are the left over fishing nets. Once expensive and made of biodegradable fabric, they are nowadays made of plastic and extremely cheap, to the effect that fishermen don’t bother to retrieve them but leave them swaying in the water .

For the cormorants, those masterful divers, they are a deathly trap, in which they get entangled and drown. Their dead bodies can be seen floating with the empty canisters, tins and beer bottles. But if the cormorants can’t dive up the fish, not only the pelicans will go hungry.

August 17, 2018August 19, 2018

Vienna: No One Writes To The Emperor

“I am madly in love with you, virtuously or diabolically, I love you and I will love you to the grave,” his wife, Isabella of Parma, wrote. Unfortunately not to him, Emperor Joseph II, but to his sister, Marie Christine.

Joseph had married Isabella when they were both 18. His mother, Queen Maria Theresia of Austria, had set up the marriage to fortify the bonds between the Austrians and the Bourbons of France. That was how Maria Theresia did business. She used her children – of which she had sixteen – as merchandise.

The royal wedding was a flamboyant spectacle, the last baroque festivity of its kind, designed to impress the people with both empires’ unlimited wealth and military strength. Joseph was smitten with his bride, Isabella with her new sister-in-law.

Statue of Jospeh II at the Imperial Castle Vienna

Joseph II was Maria Theresia’s third child but first son and therefore the desperately awaited successor to the crown. The queen herself had inherited the title from her father for the sole reason that there were no male successors in sight. Now her first son filled her with pride and joy – the promise that the empire would soon have a male leader. She famously presented the new-born to the kings of Hungary, who in sympathy for the young mother, immediately took to arms and defeated the Prussians, Maria Theresia’s archenemy.

Joseph II opened the imperial parks to the publics, as well as the theatres, abolished censorhip and liberated the arts.

Other than that, Queen Maria Theresia spoiled and pampered her first son. He grew into an arrogant young man, who not only Isabella did not find charming. The people of the empire were not taken with him either. They despised his taciturn intellect, his fascination with the Enlightenment and rationality and preferred his mother, who despite being a conservative, catholic fundamentalist, appeared like their loving mother-figure.

After her husband’s death, Maria Theresa wore black for the remainder of her life.

At 24, after his father’s death, Joseph II was crowned co-regent of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He immersed himself in state business. “A monarch must be the first servant of his people,” he said. He traveled, studied ways of improving the monarchy, socially, economically and militarily. Yet, his ideas of reforming and modernizing the state were stalled by his mother, who after her beloved husband’s death remained frozen in the past, clad in black eternally.

Young Isabella, intelligent and educated, did not enjoy her role as baby machine. She was said to be plagued with melancholy and depression, and despite her love affair with Marie Christine, she was pregnant five times. Three pregnancies resulted in miscarriages. One girl survived only to die from small pocks at seven years old, and one girl’s birth was so complicated, she took Isabella with her to the grave. Joseph was heart-broken. He never recuperated from the loss.

Joseph II had a General hospital built in Vienna and the world’s first asylum for the mentally insane.

After his own mother’s, Queen Maria Theresia’s, death Joseph as a regent could finally realize his reformatory ideas: He installed the freedom of religion and limited the hitherto unlimited rights of the Catholic Church. He abolished serfdom and equalized the tax system. He abolished censorship and liberated the arts – Vienna turned into a heaven for musicians and Mozart and Beethoven settled in the city. He opened the universities to all religions, not only the Catholics, and the imperial theaters and parks to the public. He had general hospitals built and the world’s first asylum for the insane. And the people – still hated him. To the extent, that after his premature death at 49, most of his reforms were revoked. Not the serfdom, though, which could not be re-established.

While the nobles hated him, among farmers Joseph II was always popular. Even before his death. They just couldn’t deal with his progessive ideas regarding the Catholic church, whose rights he severly cut..

His eulogy left no doubt:

“Der Bauern Gott, der Bürger Not, des Adels Spott liegt auf den Tod”
“On his deathbed lies the peasants’ God, the affliction of the burghers and the scorn of the nobility”

a popular satirical verse went.

Joseph II had been ahead of his time. A few decades later, he was indeed venerated and a multitude of monuments were erected in his memory. But there was more writing in his honor.

After Isabella’s death, and another unhappy and unconsumed marriage following mother’s wish, the widower Joseph remained single for the rest of his life, but frequented the whore houses of Vienna on a regular basis. One day in the year 1778, a prostitute refused herself to him and after some quarrel, the emperor Joseph II of Austria and Hungary was thrown out of a bordel in Spittelberggasse in the then suburbs of Vienna. Now, there was someone who wrote to the Emporer!

He came flying through this door

Joseph II, Emperor

Durch dieses Tor im Bogen kam Kaiser Joseph II. geflogen– 1778

Witwe Bolte, now an upscale restaurant, was once a brothel in Vienna’s redlight district. While the place underwent renovation, the 18th century inscription was left untouched.

July 29, 2018July 30, 2018

Vienna: Salt and Pepper

The Saliera, the only work of art undoubtedly attributed to the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini

In 1544, the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini sculptured an intricate little salt table, saliera in Italian, which, for different reasons, went on to become one of Vienna’s most famous works of art. The Saliera is insured for the breathtaking sum of 60 million Euros. And good that it is…

Created for Charles I of France, the Saliera is a virtuoso piece in the then fashionable style of Mannerism. While in Renaissance art natural beauty, symmetry and balance were enhanced, Mannerism exaggerated these qualities to an extent that artworks appeared asymmetric, artificial. Mannerism addressed intellect rather than emotion – complex and sophisticated, with style and technique outweighing beauty and – meaning. A characteristic that some might find quite suitable to Viennese etiquette and manners…

Made of ivory, gold and enamel, the Saliera depicts a man and a woman: an allegory to the Sea and the Earth. A small vessel next to the man holds salt, a temple-shaped box next to the female figure pepper. On its base it even has a set of roles, for convenience at dinner parties and banquets – or for pure appreciation.

Charles son, Charles II, gave the Saliera to the Habsburgers as a present to Ferdinand II of Tyrol, when the former married Elisabeth of Austria. The Habsburg emporers and archdukes were avid collectors of exotic and uncommon materials, like precious stones, ostrich eggs, shark teeth and their likes – many of which were believed to hold magic powers – and were turned into works of art by chosen artists.

The Vanitas Group – An Allegory of Transcience is another famous oeuvre at display at the Kunstkammer. Sculptured in Medival Ages by (most likely) Michel Erhart, it contrasts the chaste beauty of Youth with the frivolity of age. The world was in the tight grip of catholic chastity back then…

The Kunstkammern – arts and natural wonders rooms – were collections that attempted to represent the erudition of their time. When the Museum of Fine Arts in Vienna was completed in the 19th century, the Saliera was transferred to Vienna, and has been at public display, well protected, since the Museum was opened in 1891. The Kunstkammer at KHM, Vienna, is still considered the most important of its kind in the world.

The Saliera sat idly among other spectacular, delicate or bizarre statuettes, clocks or automatons – until 15th years ago, on May 11th 2003, when during a renovation the museum covered by a scaffolding, the salt dish was stolen. No alarms went off, the Saliera was simply gone.

The KHM – Kunsthistorisches Musem – Museum of Fine Arts, Vienna – after renovation and without scaffolding.

The museum offered a reward of one million Euros for its recovery. Without success. It was in January 2006 only that the Saliera was discovered, buried in a forest 90km North of Vienna. The thief – one by occasion rather than training – had turned himself in. He had been caught by surveillance cameras and recognized by his friends.

Ever since then, the Saliera is the most popular piece of art in Vienna.

The Saliera advertised on Banners in Vienna.

June 8, 2018July 30, 2018

Rome: A Woman’s Place Is In The Kitchen

For over thousand years, from around 700 BC to 400AD, the Vestal Virgins tended to the eternal flame in the Forum Romanum. The Vestal Virgins were emancipated women, meaning, they did not belong to a man – a father or husband – like their female contemporaries, but were devoted to the Goddess of Hearth, Vesta, who unlike other deities of their time, was not represented by statues, but by fire.

remains of the Vestal temple at the Forum Romanum

The Vestal Virgins enjoyed most of the honors and privileges of Roman citizens, and were allowed to handle their own property. Yet – this came at a price: Chosen at a very young age from Patrician families, the girls had to take a vow of chastity for thirty years. They were to live like nuns in the house of Vestales, which was basically a kitchen with adjacent living quarters, next to the Vestal temple, where the fire was burning.

Besides tending to the fire, an important and responsible task in a densely populated city, their duties were most importantly the preparation of the mola salsa, the holy cakes used for state sacrifices, and the holding of the Vestalia Festival around the Summer solstice each year. During these festivities their home quarters were opened to other women for visits. As priestesses of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins were also considered guardians of luck and could intervene on behalf of those in trouble.

Everything in Rome, it seems, depended on the everlasting burning flame, and the Vestales’ virginity. Their purity promised to create a magic bond for the community. As long as their virginity remained intact – Rome would remain safe.

Punishment was brutal and merciless, should a Virgin fail in her duties. If the fire went out – which meant that the Vestal was impure and the health and safety of the Romans therefore under threat – the Virgin was whipped to death. If the virgin committed the worst of all crimes, lose her virginity, she was to be buried alive. She then was led to an underground chamber at the Campus Sceleratus, where a bed, food and even a lamp was provided. After she entered, the entrance was locked and covered with dirt. It was a clearly defined ritual. Control and administration of these punishments fell to the one man who had initially chosen them for the job: the Pontifex Maximus. If a Virgin finished the 30 years alive, she was free to do as she pleases. Only a few married.

The most famous Vestal to have broken the vow of chastity, was Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome. It is believed that Rhea Silvia was raped by an unknown man, but after discovering her unwanted pregnancy, she claimed immaculate conception and named Mars, the God of warfare, as the father. For fear of Mars’ wrath, Rhea Silvia was spared death, but the twin babies were to die – not by sword, but by the elements. Let fate decide! They were abandoned. The rest is history.

May 20, 2018July 30, 2018

Austria: Family Business

What a frenzy in the air! With flying colors, the gregarious bee-eaters have returned from their Southern African winter domiciles and are busy setting up shop in Austria. Using their beaks for digging and legs for kicking, they carve tunnels of up to two meter length in the soft sandstone near lake Neusiedl.

A bee-eater leaving home for the hunt. The bigger holes are bird’s nesting chambers, the smaller ones bees’. What neighborhood…

Bee-eaters are fast flyers. Spotting their insect prey from a distance of up to 60m they shoot like bullets through the air for the kill. Bees might be their preferred diet, but bee-eaters will do with any flying insect. They will however never eat from the floor. They have manners after all. They are social creatures.

The divorce rate among bee-eaters is low. Once a bee-eater found their mate, they will most likely stay together for years to come. Traditionally courtship ends with the presentation of a gift – not surprisingly a bee, or even a dragonfly – and then the bride leaves her family to move in with her in-laws. This is when all the trouble begins.

Prey is presented as a gift – or robbed- some individuals speialize in kleptoparasitism.

In-laws rarely have an interest in grandchildren. Rather, they want to have more children themselves and – since hunting is so demanding a business – they are in need of baby sitters, not grandkids. The in-laws will harass the newly weds and keep them from procreating mainly by blocking them access to their nesting chamber. To keep the peace, the young couple often obeys, delaying their own egg-laying for a few years.

The bride however, will feel short-changed. She left her own family for the groom after all. So she comes up with a scheme: She sneaks in with a completely different family, trespassing territory lines, and demands intercourse with a male. Upon return, she secretly lays her own eggs into her mother-in-law’s nesting chamber. She’s not scrupulous – without a flinch she will discard of already laid eggs. Yet, she must time her actions well – if her off-spring hatches too early or too late, they are doomed as well. The mother in law will know no mercy. Family – can’t choose them.

March 23, 2018March 23, 2018

Namibia: Two Leaves, Cannot Die

In 1859, the Austrian physician and passionate botanic Friedrich Welwitsch travelled to the then Portuguese colony Angola, where he came across a large, marvelous plant he had never seen before. He was amazed.

“I could do nothing but kneel down and gaze at it, half in fear lest a touch should prove it a figment of the imagination,” he wrote to Joseph Dalton Hooker of the Botanic Garden in Kew, England, in a letter accompanying a specimen. Hooker, upon seeing the plant, said the following:

“It is undoubtedly the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country, and one of the ugliest.”

And, since he was in a position to name things, he named it after its discoverer: Welwetschia Mirabilis.

For all we know, the Welwetschia itself could not care less about any names. Before Hooker, the locals called it n’tumbo, just “stump”. The Hereros in neighboring Namibia called it onyanga, “the desert onion”, then baked and ate it. So Weletschia Mirabilis is not the worst of all names. In Afrikaans the plant is called Tweeblaarkanniedood, which is the least inspired but most descriptive name of all: Two leaves, cannot die. For a Welwetschia really grows only two leaves, and lives up to 2000 years. From a human point of view, it is practically immortal.

Welwetschias were around 65 million years ago already. They survived ice age. They outlived fires and pests, they watched insects come and go, and viruses, parasites, animals, humans, roads and wars. If you ever come across a Welwetschia, honor the moment. You are looking into eternity.

A male Welwetschia somewhere in Damaraland, Namibia

Other than the rare specimen sent to England, the Welwetschia is endemic to Angola and Namibia, to most arid land. Welwetschias make ends meet with as little water as possible by sprouting deep taproots into the sand below. They grow slowly, with both leaves pushing out like dark green tentacles up to four meters long, their ends curled up and frizzled out. Like human hair, uncut and uncombed. Indeed, the Welwetschia Mirabilis is not a beauty. It is, however, a tree. Its very short trunk also likes to split into several lobes, which makes the Welwetschia look like flotsam, a giant starfish stranded on the beach. Only the beach is not a beach, but the dry Namib desert.

Like humans, Welwetschias are dioecious, with separate male and female plants. Fertilization is up to insects, flies and bugs. But the real specialist in Welwetschia Sex Life is the Odontopus sexpunctatus. Nomen es omen, you might think, but the bug was really named for the six dots on its back. (Not by Hooker, though).

Dandago, a Damara, showed me his homeland.

Dandago led me through his native land, Damaraland in North Western Namibia. The Damara people has lived in the Namib desert for thousands of years, long before the Hereros, the Portuguese, or the Germans came. They call the Welwetschia Nyanka. But don’t even try to say that loud. The language of the Damaras knows four different click sounds – unpronounceable for anyone not born a Damara – twisting the tongue like Welwetschia leaves.

Damaraland is of captivating beauty. A vast, ragged land, where wild animals like elephants, giraffes, rhinos and zebras still roam freely. It hasn’t rained in four years, however, and the animals, and the Damaras themselves face hard living conditions. The Welwetschias will live on. For unlike us humans, they cannot die.

January 26, 2018January 26, 2018

Vienna: Remembering The Lost

On January 27^th, Vienna commemorates the Holocaust Memorial Day. 72 years ago, on January 27 1945, the Red Army liberated the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the biggest Nazi concentration camp.

More than six million Jews were killed in the holocaust, plus an estimated number of 200,000 Roma and Sinti, 250,000 mentally or physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men. To never forget the tragedy, the United Nations declared January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

80 years ago, in 1938, Austria was annexed to the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler famously welcomed by the masses in the streets of Vienna. In the following seven years, more than 65,000 Austrian Jews lost their lives and the Jewish community was extinguished.

Judenplatz, the Jewish Square, in the center of Vienna, is now a sleepy, little square. Once it was the center of the Jewish community, Instead of a synagogue, a holocaust memorial stands on Judenplatz today, to remind the passers-by of the Jewish lives that vanished in the third Reich. The concrete cube, designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread, resembles a library, but the books are turned inside out. They are inaccessible, unreadable, a symbol of the many biographies, the untold, unheard stories, that were irreversibly lost in the holocaust.

The statue of Ephraim Lessing stands opposite the holocaust memorial at Judenplatz. Lessing wrote the novel “Nathan, The Wise”, a plea for religious tolerance, in 1779.

It was WWII that ended the abhorrent Third Reich, a war that came at a high toll for the city of Vienna and its inhabitants. Thousands of civilians lost their lives in the cruel fights over the city. It was also the Red Army that liberated Vienna from the Nazis.

Today, Vienna is again capital city of the Austrian Republic, but still high bunkers are scattered all over Vienna. These towers, unique to the cities Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna, and equipped with canons to fight hostile bomber planes, were built by the Nazis in a last and futile attempt to withstand the allied bombardments.

As the sun sets, Joggers pass by a high bunker from WWII in Vienna’s Augarten.

This year however, the commemoration day is over shadowed by the recent inauguration of Austria’s new government, a right-wing neo-liberal coalition, which – following an international trend – fails to distance itself from fascist thinking. Are the tragic events of 20^th century already forgotten in Austria?

This high-bunker was turned into a Zoo and Museum. There are no canons on its rood any more. “Smashed to pieces in the Still of the Night” it reads instead – a reminder of dark times in the Third Reich.

Two weeks ago, on January 13, the streets filled again. Despite the bitter cold winter weather, an estimated number of 70,000 people, peacefully demonstrated the Austrian new government’s program of economic aggravation and xenophobia, reminding many of the bitter days of the Third Reich. But instead of bombs, it rained hearts. For a day, Vienna was filled with love – and hope that history will not repeat itself.

December 21, 2017December 21, 2017

Rome: The Best Of Days

The Forum Romanum. The Saturn Temple at the base of the Capitol Hill

When days were shortest and darkest, the Roman poet Catulla found them the best of days. For a week in the end of December, the law courts closed in Rome, and the schools. No business could be transacted and to commence a war was regarded impious. People offered little presents, mostly wax figurines, to the children and the poor, and decorated their homes with greeneries and lights.

The streets of Rome were governed by a general spirit of merriness. Public gambling was allowed, and foolish tricks were played. People dressed in loose, colorful gowns instead of their white togas, and wore cone shaped hats. All of them! Slaves, freedmen, citizens suddenly were indistinguishable. “Io, Saturnalia!” The crowds exclaimed.

From December 17 to 24, the Saturnalia, the festivities to honor the God Saturn, were held in ancient Rome. Saturn had reigned the worlds in the Golden Age, when humans still enjoyed the earth’s bounty without having to work for it. Therefore Saturn was considered the God of agriculture and the Saturnalia were celebrated as a kind of harvest-home; by December the hard work in the fields was completed and people brought evergreens and lights into their homes.

Citizens, freedmen, slaves were indistinguishable for the week of the Saturnalia.

That the Saturnalia were held at the time of the winter solstice was not a coincidence: Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, was returning to enlighten humankind again. The migratory aspect of the sun’s trajectory and the seasons was reflected in much older myths that had Saturn down as an immigrant from Greece. As can be learned from the writings of Ovid and Virgil, Saturn was dispelled by his own father, Jupiter, an expulsion that ended the Golden Age and left humans waiting for Saturn’s return.

Until then, the Saturnalia brought a short comic relief. Social roles were reversed. In fact, slaves were not only exempted from their chores and toils, but were served by their masters, granted freedom for a week.

The Colosseum in Rome, where gladiators fought for their lives – as a sacrifice to Saturn. Wealth, Ops, only followed Lua, destruction.

While the Romans considered Saturn a liberator who brought with him wealth and peace, they also recognized his ambiguity. He was two-faced. Saturn’s wife, Ops, incorporated abundance and resources – but he also had a first wife, Lua, the goddess of destruction. It was for her that in the beginning of times, human sacrifice was offered during the Saturnalia, in form of dead gladiators. It took a hero, a shining light, to come along and end this inhuman rite, it is told. This savior was, of course, Hercules.

Hercules, the savior, through the eyes of a Pope (bronze statue at Vatican Museum.)

October 28, 2017October 29, 2017

Rome On Ecstasy

This month 500 years ago, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther published his 95 theses and thereby started the Protestant Reformation. He called for purification of the church, who in the run of the centuries had turned into a self-serving system of greed, nepotism and decadence. Christians should have faith in God and the Bible alone, Luther declared, and not in the army of angels and Saints, nor “immaculate” Mother Mary and least of all the Pope.

An angel fighting off vice – or killing a Protestant. Interior Chiesa San Luigi Dei Francesi, Rome

The Catholic Church stroke back: in arms (the bloodthirsty Thirty Year War broke loose) and arts. In a meticulously planned propaganda campaign (conspired at the Council of Trent 1543-63) they called for artists to flock to the eternal city and create buildings, paintings and sculptures that were so formidable and awe-inspiring they’d resurrect faith in Angels and Saints and Mother Mary, and most of all the Pope. But above all, they should instill fear of hell and punishment into an illiterate people. And so Baroque was born. Mesmerizing to this day.

Ceiling Fresco inside Villa Borghese, built around 1600 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, an admirer, collector and protector of Caravaggio

The world’s biggest church was built, St. Peter’s Basilica, in honor of the first Pope. Michelango was bullied into adorning the ceiling with formidable depictions of God’s grandezza. Michelangelo grumbled – he was a sculptor, not a painter, after all – but gave in.

Caravaggio self portrait as decapitated Goliath. ( David and Goliath Vienna KHM)

By the end of the 16th century, the Church found another Michelangelo, whose realistic and detailed depictions of beheadings and other pains very much satisfied their need for intimidation. On the downside, the guy was unpredictable and prone to outbursts of violence. Worse, he was a murderer. His name was Michelangelo Merisi, but he went by the name of Caravaggio.

St. John the Baptist hugs a ram. Caravaggio 1602, at Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Caravaggio first rose to fame through extremely realistic depictions of delicious fruit baskets and boys. The Cardinals, whose predilection for youth was well known and documented (The insider account Il puttanismo Romano was published anonymously) went crazy for both the painter and his canvases. Caravaggio himself, however, was also leaning towards women. While he complied with the church’s demand to glorify Mother Mary, he did so by using full-busted, sensual courtesans as models, and not thin pale nuns. It was a problem with him – women in the Catholic Church of course had to be chaste. Raped, if anything, but not lascivious. Finally, they had him paint old men as dying Saints, paintings they could display in their chapels. The martyrs of St. Mathew and St. Peter were immediate block busters: The contrasts of light and dark, the depth of field, the intensity, the drama were breathtaking, and still are, 400 years later.

A busted Mother Mary steps on a snake – the model was a well known courtesan, the painting, despite commissioned by the Vatican, was finally not accepted.

The council of Trent had outlawed any worldly pleasure. Dances and carnivals were forbidden, books banned and priests were asked to spy on their parishioners. (Easy, they had to confess anyway.)

Art became a surrogate for bodily desires and should channel them into spirituality. Saints and martyrs were shown in the moment of rapture, in the throngs of ecstasy. Ex Stasis meant the experience of being taken outside of oneself, to where one catches a preview of heaven, the moment when one is united with the beloved, with God. A little Death, as it was later called. Or: orgasm.

The church enlisted architects to turn the city into the shape of a star and sculptors Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona to beautify it with sculptures, fountains and staricases.

Pope Innocent X commissioned Bernini, whose sculptures were ummatched in expression and elegance, to design the famous Fountain of the four Rivers at Piazza Navona. The four rivers represented Rome also a colonial world power. Innocent X himself went down in history for his greediness – and for his even greedier sister-in-law and lover Pimpaccia. Pimpaccia was said to pull the strings behind Innocent. Their residence, Palazzo Doria Pamhilj, by coincidence at the Piazza Navona, is a vestige of their insatiable greed.

Detail of Fountain 4 Fiumini at Piazza Navona, Rome

The fountain was of course constructed on public expense – during the great famine of 1646-48 – and not surprisingly it was not met with much enthusiasm by the starving people. Riots lay in the air. Under cover of the night, protesters stuck posters on the stone blocks, so called Pasquinades:
“We do not want obelisks and fountains. It is bread that we want. Bread, Bread, Bread!”
In a spirit of Christian compassion, Pope Innocent X had the protesters spied out and arrested.
The fountain was built, but Pope Innocent X met a terrible end. While he lay on his death bed in Palazzo Dori Pamphilj, Pimpaccia robbed all his money and fled the city. His agony lasted three days, three days of ecstasy for Innocent X, 200 years for Rome. Then, the era of Baroque was over.