Bulgari. From History to Eternity. 125 Years of Italian Jewellery

 by Amanda Triossi

Palazzo delle Esposizioni  currently presents a landmark show devoted to the jewellery of Bulgari which marks the 125th anniversary of the opening of the first store in Rome in 1884. It is an event that is extremely significant for Italian decorative arts, in particular, for the history of jewellery, inasmuch as it makes it possible to survey the evolution of European jewellery through the production of one of the leading jewellers in the world.

Berluscni: A happy (somewhat) man

The shouting is (temporarily) over. The insults and the accusations are (for the moment) muted. And the fact is that after an election campaign - for the European Parliament and some Italian cities and provinces - that some described as the most unedifying ever nothing much will have changed here. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is still top dog on the Italian power tree and is likely to remain there for quite some time.

Noemi with Berlusconi's photo

To an extent, the events of the near future depend on Italy's fast approaching European and local elections (next weekend); should Berlusconi's government suffer a significant loss in votes, who knows what he would do. On the other hand, again this being Italy, the whole business could also fade into nothingness if something else happens to divert the press' attention, or if it should be revealed - once again - that a majority of Italians think that Berlusconi's lifestyle and behaviour (which many others, including this writer, find abhorrent) is just fine and dandy. Something in which they wish they, too, could partake.

          
To be published in Wanted in Rome.

The Italian government, showing an unusual degree of determination, in early May put into effect a new, hard-line policy against illegal immigrants arriving in this country by sea. The turn of the screw against the "boat people", in large part black Africans, who over the last several years have been arriving in large numbers on Italy's southern shores - primarily Sicily and the Sicilian island of Lampedusa - has created great controversy., so great that for at least a few weeks it convinced politicians and members of the press to talk about something else than Silvio Berlusconi's personal problems.

Five hundred and fifty years ago (in 1455) the Renaissance painter known today alternatively as Fra Angelico or Beato Angelico (the Blessed Angelico), died in Rome at the age of 60 and this city's Capitoline Museums is celebrating the anniversary with a major exhibition - the largest in Italy since 1955. Guido di Pietro was born in 1395 in the Tuscan town of Vicchio and at the age of 22 took his vows in the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole and as a Dominican monk was given the name Friar Giovanni of Fiesole.

At the time of his vows, Friar John was already painting and the exhibition, subtitled, "The Dawn of the Renaissance", traces the various phases of Fra Angelico's career from his late Gothic works, through his work as an illuminator of monastic manuscripts and on to the blossoming of his full Renaissance humanism. It puts on view such major works as the Paradiso, the Cortona Triptych, two of the panels from the Armadio degli Argenti from the San Marco Museum in Florence (and which bowled me over at age 18!) and the famous Annunciation from San Giovanni Valdarno.

There are decorated Codex, altarpieces and parchments. And, additionally, the exhibit includes some Fra Angelico works never before shown to the public such as the Zagreb altar step, which shows the Stigmate of St. Francis and the Martyrdom of St Peter, the Dresden Annunciation which was reassembled in the 16th century, and part of the Annalena altarpiece, which is now in Zurich. Two side panels of a 1430 triptych, The Blessed and The Damned, go on view for the first time, having been purchased years ago by an American collector.

The exhibition, which opened on April 8th (I was out of the country and was unaware of it) lasts through July 5. The museum is open daily, except Mondays, from 9:00a.m. to 8:00p.m. and tickets cost €6 for Fra Angelico alone and €9 if you want to visit the rest of the museum complex as well.

Piazza del Popolo

                                      But keep checking back as, from time to time, others will be added.

To be published May 13 in Wanted in Rome
Today's tourists spread out evenly through Rome's historic center, crowding areas such as Piazza Navona, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain, until recently Via Veneto and, of course, Piazza di Spagna. But in the old days, for visitors - especially those foreign - it was the latter alone, and the streets fanning out from it, horizontally towards Piazza del Popolo and vertically towards Via del Corso, that was considered to be the heart of the city. "There is nothing like it anywhere else,", was the comment of French writer, Henri Stendahl, who visited Rome in the early 19th century.

Divorce, Berlusconi style

Furthermore, today's newspapers carried Berlusconi's rather unequivocal response: he said he felt sorrow but also felt he could be the one to sue for divorce. This was the third time, he said, that his wife had made public accusations against him during an election campaign, he said. She was the victim of a "media trap", he added, believing everything she reads in the newspapers.