by contributor Donna Shor
The Palace on the Potomac:
From 2011-2012 Italians worldwide celebrated the150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, when it became one nation, freed from its status as a peninsula divided into duchies, kingdoms and states, often under foreign rule.
After years of raising armies and leading battles to claim Italian territories and drive occupiers from his beloved land, the flamboyant military genius and political figure Giuseppe Garibaldi led the way to unification, bringing the nation together with a common identity.
Giuseppe Garibaldi
In 2013, building on modern Italy’s advances on its ancient heritage, the Italian government is taking the celebrations one step further, declaring this the “Year of Italian Culture.” In the United States, home to over 18 million Americans of Italian descent, Italy will host expositions and events in more than 30 U.S. cities, showcasing the scope of Italian culture and its influence.
Ann Stock, the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, singled out two of the many points of closeness between the United States and Italy: “Your cuisine graces our tables across America…and we owe our continent’s name to Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer.”
Kickoff events in Washington began at the National Gallery of Art featuring a statue (very old) and a book (very new): Michelangelo’s marble David-Apollo, and the beautifully illustrated tome Il Palazzo sul Potomac: The Embassy of Italy in Washington.
Photo credit: theguardian
The statue has been seen here once before, in 1949, when it drew crowds during an earlier inauguration, President Harry Truman’s. As a grace note to President Obama’s second inauguration, the David-Apollo is on display at the National Gallery until March 3, on loan from the Bargello Museum in Florence.
Unfinished, the double-named statue has long puzzled art historians, uncertain whether the figure Michelangelo planned to draw from the partly chiseled marble block was to be an image of the god Apollo with a quiver of arrows, or of David when he battled Goliath. David-Apollo is only life-sized, while the David in the Academia Gallery of Florence, considered the most famous statue in the world, is in a very different pose, and is over 16 feet tall.
The book making its debut, The Palace on the Potomac: the Embassy of Italy in Washington, was the topic of a panel discussion at the Italian Embassy touching on the myriad areas the book covers.
The 500-page volume offers striking photographs and paintings, both contemporary and historic, commemorating Italo-American friendship and the part our respective leaders played and continue to play, passing through scores of topics, from Garibaldi’s role in the unification of his country while our own fledgling land was struggling to remain unified during the Civil War; to the National Italian American Foundation and on to the international role of Italian arts and architecture.
Photo credit: i-Italy
Architect Piero Sartogo wrote the chapter on the building of the Italian Embassy on Whitehaven Street. He designed it to resemble a Tuscan villa, and he explains the symbolic and actual significance of its design. This and the above-mentioned topics are only a few of the total the book covers with thoroughness and charm.
The material on Villa Firenze, the ambassador’s Rock Creek residence, will be of special interest to Washingtonians who remember the parties given by leading hostess Polly Guggenheim when she owned it with her husband, Jack Logan. After being widowed and remarrying, Polly sold it to the embassy.
Photo credit: NIAF
Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, formerly Italy’s ambassador to Washington and now Italy’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, was instrumental in the publication of the book. He also wrote the chapter “The Palace, the Flag” stressing the friendship of the two countries, as does the chapter by the current ambassador from Italy to the United States, Claudio Bisogniero.
Minister Terzi was in town for the launching of “The Year of Italian Culture,” and he and Ambassador Bisogniero participated in the book discussion along with Ambassador Marisa Lino, formerly the U.S. ambassador to Albania and Assistant Secretary for International affairs of the Department of Homeland Security.
Moderator of the panel was ProPublica’s Sebastian Rotella, investigative reporter, author and novelist. Chicago-born Rotella worked 23 years for the Los Angles Times, served as bureau chief in Paris and Buenos Aires, in Washington as National security correspondent and is the winner of the 2012 Urbino Press Award.
The book, written by Gaetano Cortese, former ambassador to both the Netherlands and Belgium, is a beautiful volume to keep and cherish. It is expected to be available for general sale later this year
