It is in going to Orvieto and seeing its art in the flesh that the excitement really begins.
The Karpes appear to have considered the Signorellis only in reproduction. This is regrettable, since the paintings themselves are the bomb that would have enabled them to understand unequivocally a lot that they tentatively suggest.
The arrival at the small room of frescoes in the medieval hill town halfway between Florence and Rome is itself a fantastic experience. Freud took the train, which deposited him at a station in the newer part of town, of little charm, since it exists mainly to service the medieval village looming above. We know from a postcard he sent his wife early in the morning of September 9, 1897, that he arrived the evening before and took the funicular, up through a dark tunnel into the old town, to find himself emerging to the sight of ancient buildings illuminated by electric lights, so that they were visible even at night. The way the structures were situated on a rocky peak reminded him of Hohensalzburg—the uppermost, older part of Salzburg.
Even before Freud saw the cathedral in daylight, he was struck by its polychrome facade, as he was by the local people, whom he described to Martha as “black like the Tsiganes of ancient Etruria,” his nice clean room at the Hotel Belle Arti, and the famous local wine, which he compared to the whites of Portugal. He pretty much repeated that information later the same day, in a postcard he sent from Bolsena, again making the comparison between Orvieto and Salzburg. He now added praise for the “marvelous panorama” and the Etruscan tombs there. To his wife, he made no mention whatsoever of the Signorellis. I consider that lack to be more than an oversight. He was avoiding telling Martha what was intimate to him and might have been unsettling to her.
We can easily imagine Freud’s experience going to the famous cathedral. From where the funicular stops, one ascends to the cathedral square on foot via a network of narrow, winding streets lined by ancient houses. One could easily get lost with all the twists and turns and dead ends, except that from almost every vantage point one can see, looming above everything else, two exquisite, squared, marble-clad Gothic towers that are constantly in view, like beacons for sailors in an ocean fog. They crown a sublime example of Italian Gothic architecture.
I say this although the Orvieto cathedral had a Romanesque start, and part of its beauty is in the calm of the Romanesque forms that preceded the lightening effects of the Gothic. Its initial architect, beginning in 1290, was Arnolfo di Cambio, who also conceived, in Florence, both the fine church of Santa Croce and the great cathedral there. Di Cambio thought in the true Romanesque way—making interior and exterior layout a logical consequence of structural necessity, and giving his buildings especially harmonious proportions. With his design as its basis, the construction and detailing of the Orvieto cathedral continued until 1500. The impact of the building depends primarily on the furious tracery of its ornament and the rich pattern of decoration, as well as on the spectacular use of white and colored marble, which characterize the very special way Gothic architecture developed in Italy as in no other place, but the underlying order of the building, which dates from its earlier origins, also penetrates us.
This pinnacle of Italian Gothic style is among the finest of the type in the world. The Gothic in other countries took very different forms; in Italy, it inspired facades of a delicacy that was without precedent in anything humankind had ever built previously. When the future Le Corbusier left his native Switzerland for the first time, at age nineteen, the buildings that initially showed him what architecture could be were examples of this style; the feathery surfaces of the great churches of Milan and Pisa and Siena intoxicated him beyond his wildest imaginings. And the animation of those facades was only part of it. The vastness of the interiors, the sheer feat of their engineering, and the humility they evoked in their visitors opened a whole new world to the man who would devote his life to trying to give humanity salubrious and inspiring settings in which to live.
Italian Gothic buildings reveal an imagination, a flair for the beautiful, and the wish to make aesthetic elegance part of the everyday life of the masses, all of which were unprecedented in the development of the human race. When my wonderful friends Josef and Anni Albers, who had met at the Bauhaus in 1922, took a trip from Dessau to celebrate their wedding in 1925, they went to Florence, and it was the Gothic facades there that, more than anything else, sent them into a new orbit. They found the charged geometry, the rich interplay of parallel lines, the bold divisions of the fronts of buildings like Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, so moving that when they returned to the Bauhaus, both of them, she in weaving and he in glass constructions, worked in a parallel way to the designers who had preceded them by some six centuries. They recapitulated the Gothic era’s vibrating stripes and interlocked rectangles in a completely modern, mechanically up-to-date style.
The cathedral in Orvieto was, as it still is, more remote than the structures in Florence, Pisa, and Siena; it is also, for a range of reasons, possibly the ultimate jewel in the crown. The Gothic master of Siena, Giovanni di Cecco, would subsequently design the glorious facade there with Orvieto in mind. While that better-known, similarly vibrant, geometric assemblage of pale, richly veined marbles of varying colors in Siena was once covered by sculptures by Giovanni Pisano and contained a stained glass window by Duccio, at which point it would possibly have been even more exquisite than Orvieto, by the time Freud made his trip to central Italy, a lot of those features had been removed, and Orvieto’s facade had far more allure than Siena’s—as it does today. The splendid cathedral at Orvieto still has its original sculptures in place. Not only does Orvieto brandish scenes in relief but it also has excellent freestanding figures in niches. Those of the relief sculptures that depict the end of the world and the Last Judgment must have had an impact on Signorelli when he illustrated the same biblical events inside the building they adorned, for he followed their general layout, even if he completely transformed the cast of characters.
The facade—which faces west-southwest—has elaborate round entrance architraves that are echoed upward and outward, like blossoming flowers, as well as six triangular pediments with elaborate scalloped edges and a rose window with a lovely decorative scheme. It culminates in four lithe towers with delicate finials. Beyond the relief sculpture and architectural ornament that blanket this highly charged building front, a profusion of painting covers the flat voids. While the painting is not of the greatest quality, it is remarkable that it exists on a building exterior, with its gold-leaf backgrounds and strong colors still intact; the art still looks as pristine as a well-preserved medieval manuscript page. To have decorated an exterior that could withstand the climatic conditions on a hilltop, even if requiring occasional restoration, is a remarkable feat. [plate 4]
The rest of the structure features bold horizontal striping of contrasting black and white marble. Mined from the local quarries, these splendid stones have been organized with the delicacy of a seven-layer cake. The juxtaposition of the rich facade covered in ornament and narrative with this handsome mass behind it defined by its bold Pythagorean geometry creates a confection that is both solid and frothy. Having lasted for centuries, it has enduring power.
The cathedral exemplifies the concept of “the heavenly city.” Walking up the few shallow steps as he approached the amazing facade and the noble cavern to which it invites entrance, Freud must have felt—I am using the precise words my psychoanalyst used at the start of the first session of a seven-year-long treatment—as if he were “starting a journey.”
Plate 4. The cathedral in Orvieto
ENTRY IS THROUGH ONE OF TWO SIDE DOORS, which open to the side aisles. Whether Freud headed straight down one of these aisles or, instead, used the nave to approach the altar is unknown; perhaps he wandered around and took his time. But even if he charged purposefully to the Cappella Nova—the side chapel where the Signorellis are, and which was, presumably, one of the main goals of his trip to Orvieto, as it is for many art lovers—he cannot help but have had his breathing altered by the graceful pacing of Romanesque arches supporting the architrave. Here human beings are meant to feel humble and awestruck, and there are few of us who don’t experience the intended modesty and wonder. The wooden ceiling high above and the network of roof beams allow, for all their roughness and frank materiality, a heavenly space to exist beneath them. Making his way, Freud must have entered a quiet state of receptivity.
The Cappella Nova is the southernmost quadrant of the transept; you reach it by turning right from the nave a few meters before you would otherwise reach the high altar. The space of the chapel is surprisingly small given the size and intensity of the artworks it holds. The compression adds to their thunderous power. Turning into the room blanketed with paintings, one is overcome by a surcharge of energy.
The initial impression of the Signorelli frescoes is like a symphony by Tchaikovsky at the apogee of its force, with every instrument of the orchestra performing simultaneously. As with the Tchaikovsky, this has been preceded by an ambient loveliness (the cathedral facade), and then by quiet and serenity (the nave and side aisles). They lull you into a preparatory calm. The hustle of the journey and the cathedral square are behind you, your defenses dropped. Your tranquil state makes the bombast of the fresco cycle a shock.
You instantly feel an impact from these paintings, even before you begin to study them and try to fathom the precise imagery. You are struck first by the preponderance of bare human flesh. Most of it is ruddy and luminous, enveloping bodies at the peak of physical vitality. Some of it, however, has the pallor of death and hangs on creatures diminished to corpses. Regardless, in all the scenarios there is a sheer energy that makes artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock seems laconic by comparison.
You are brought to total, 100 percent attention. The impact of the frescoes is that of three shots of espresso, a bar of intense dark chocolate, and a double dose of Ritalin—all consumed simultaneously. The vibrating mauve and dark green accents on the acres of human skin intensify the charge. [plate 5]
Then the imagery comes into focus. You have walked into a gay orgy. This is a specialized form of homosexual pornography—left, right, and center. There is a preponderance of naked flesh, almost all of it male. Muscular buttocks come at you from every direction, and gigantic, Prometheus-like characters with ripped torsos hold other nude men, equally muscle-bound, in hammerlocks.
Plate 5. The Damned Cast into Hell
You expect to smell the odor of a crowded locker room where two competing football teams have just stripped down after a game. The occasional women who are caught between the athletic men in the mélange are discernible as females only by their breasts, since otherwise these women are manly in their physiques. Adding to the confusion, some of the men have their same long blond tresses.
As the eye focuses, and the details begin to come into place, you face dying and death everywhere. Writhing bodies are losing in the struggle to avoid being carried to hell, and ghastly skeletons lie inert. Corpses face young and healthy bodies; executioners do their work. Mortal violence occurs or is about to occur, and hideous tortures are carried out with repellant gusto. The swirl of forms and the shouting colors intensify the fury.
It is all painted with aplomb. There are incredible passages of color, and a deliberate, pulsating rhythm. The hues and shapes are organized in series of echoes and balances, with a lightness of touch and artistic finesse in spite of the weighty subject matter. The result of this supreme artistry is that what might otherwise disgust you, or cause you simply to flee from the small chapel, holds you fascinated.
You are seduced by the aesthetic charms, which are in such contrast to the subject matter. The symphonic structure of lively curvilinear forms and the rich spectrum of varying greens and reds and other tones entice you not just to stay but to soak in something of unparalleled richness. Whatever your reactions may be to the very complex scenario before you, to all the naked men engaged in violent activity, it is depicted in such a magisterial way that you linger, fascinated.