robert hughes on rome

Article first published as Book Review: Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Robert Hughes on Blogcritics.

Recently released in paperback by Vintage, Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History, is the art and culture critic's last published book. Hughes died in August 2012.

Hughes has always been good at mixing history with an entertaining story, and Rome doesn't disappoint--but it is a dense read. There is a lot of information in its almost 500-page length. Luckily there are also many color illustrations to aid the reader with unfamiliar artists or architecture.

Rome is undeniably one of the world's great cities. One can learn of its amazing history, from its Etruscan roots, to its Imperial grandeur and fall, to its Renaissance glory, to its 20th century cool. But there is nothing like actually visiting the city, and being able to experience the collision of all of those eras, sometimes on one street corner, or Roman encounter. Hughes (Shock of the New, Barcelona, Culture of Complaint) tries to capture all of Rome's glory and contradictions in his rambling, yet entertaining narrative.

Hughes tries to convey, in only the way he does, how he views the city of Rome. "In other places fountains are special events," he notes, "but in Rome they are simply part of the vernacular of city life; you notice them, you see them as exceptions to the surfaces of stone or brick, but it seems that they are there to be breathed, not just seen."

Throughout Rome he gives his very personal, mostly chronological history of the city, highlighting the art and people that he deems most important or interesting. Hughes starts off by taking the reader through Rome's beginnings, the Roman Empire and all of the magnificent art and architecture that resulted from Emperor Augustus and his successors, through the city's shift to becoming the center of Christianity.

In his chapter on the Renaissance Hughes is truly in his element, focusing on art and architecture. He tackles not only the creation of probably Rome's most well-known artwork, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, but also the more modern controversy around whether they should have been cleaned. He has always stood firmly in the "yes" camp on that issue and reiterates his position here.

Jumping ahead to Rome in the 17th century and its Baroque period of art, Hughes enjoys talking about "bad boy" artist Caravaggio as well as Spanish painter Diego Velasquez. Velasquez only stayed there a year, but Hughes believes he was profoundly influenced by the city and its art.

When he reaches the 20th century Hughes highlights the connection between Mussolini's fascism and art, reiterating the commonly held view that the political movement's roots can be found in the poetry of famed Italian poet and war hero Gabriele D'Annunzio. As Hughes tells it, only in Italy, only in Rome, could art and politics mix so fully.

He ends his tour of Rome with the cinema of the 1950s and '60s. Film studio Cinecittà (also with links to Mussolini, who founded the studio to produce propaganda films in 1937) turned the city into a filming destination, both for location and subject, hosting religious epics like Ben Hur, and Quo Vadis. Native efforts with more contemporary themes, especially Fellini's iconic La Dolce Vita changed and influenced modern cinema. He enjoys dropping fascinating tidbits such as producer Dino DiLaurentis's desire to have Paul Newman play the character of Marcello in La Dolce Vita (sacrilege!)

The overall effect of Hughes' Rome is like the eternal city itself. If you have never been there, whether you are diving in or just sampling, this book will make you want to visit. If you have already been to Rome in the past, Hughes easily and entertainingly reminds you why you need to return.

theodora: actress, empress, whore

Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore, part of the BlogHer Book Club, is a fascinating read. Author Stella Duffy paints a vivid portrait of a woman who lived in a turbulent world, who managed to make her way from the lowest part of Byzantine society to its ultimate height — as the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, and ultimately declared a Christian saint.

by Nick in exsilio

Duffy's Theodora is strong physically - a master of her body and breath. She has been taught by the eunuch Menander from a very young age to be a dancer and actress, and ultimately, a whore — as all actresses were expected to be at the time in Constantinople society. Staying close to the facts of Theodora's life, which are dramatic enough, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore fleshes out an amazing woman and an amazing life. The reader may realize that some of the most outlandish events in the novel are straight out of Theodora's life and based in fact:

Her father was a bear trainer and after his death her mother paraded her three daughters in the Hippodrome, trying to win the support of Constantinople's Blue faction. Theodora became an actress and dancer and ultimately, whore. She would perform for high society at private banquets. One of her most infamous numbers, "Leda and the Swan," was basically a striptease where was covered with barley and had trained geese peck it away, revealing her nude form underneath. She fell in love with the Syrian Hecebolus and moved to Africa with him wen he was appointed the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis. But she was eventually discarded by Hecebolus and she made her way to Egypt, Alexandria. There she  came under the influence of the bishop Timothy and experienced a conversion.

Duffy paints Theodora as a rebel. She never wants to be part of the chorus, she wants to stand out, be a star. When she has achieved great fame, both on and off stage, she sees an opportunity with the handsome young Hecebolus who will take her away from her life on stage and as a prostitute. When that relationship falls apart Theodora, through a long and winding road finds herself in the desert, with a group of religious ascetics, and finds faith. Her new associates send her back home to Constantinople to spy in the name of her religion with the ultimate goal of getting close to the nephew of Emperor Justin, the quiet and bookish Justinian.

by Richard Brown

It must have been tough to construct a narrative about someone who lived so long ago, with a life lived in such extremes. Although I may not have completely bought Duffy's characterization of Theodora, I still really enjoyed reading Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore. Her depiction of Constantinople and the various life paths open to women (all not surprisingly, rather bleak and extremely limited) was really involving.

Theodora is a person who triumphed in her life, no matter how buffeted by circumstance she may have been. After her father's death, she was forced into working at a very young age, and into prostitution. My only hesitation with Duffy's version would be that Theodora, for such a willful and strong personality, continually finds herself being pushed around and manipulated, sometimes physically abused, by all the men in her life. Her first mentor and trainer Menander literally whacks her into shape. First love Hecebelos tells her to quit her career and come with him — and she does. She is just a possession of his until he tires of her. Bishop Timothy is using her to advance his religious cause. But it's not just men who use Theodora. She falls into an affair with one of Timothy's agents, Macedonia, a forceful woman who even pushes her temporarily back into whoring.

Theodora acquiesces, even after she has had her revelation in the desert and renounced her former life and ways. Her constant malleability seemed to be less a strength than a weakness of character, and it diluted her spiritual conversion for me, which was supposed to be the character's turning point, coming at a central, pivotal part of of the narrative. The only truly sympathetic male character in the novel was Justinian. He also happens to be the only character who doesn't completely manipulate her, which does help make the outlandishness of their true romance more believable.

Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore brings to life a woman who lived on many levels of early Christian society. Duffy is supposed to be working on adapting her novel for HBO, which could also be very interesting, indeed.

Full disclosure:


I have been compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review, but all the opinions expressed on my blog and in this review are my own.

very fine arts

We spent a very museum day in this rainy town of mourning. Ted's funeral procession passed by our hotel on Tremont Street.

We cabbed our way through the wet streets, first to

the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which was a little like the Frick or the Barnes Foundation—an incredible house, with the proviso that the collection always be displayed exactly as Mrs. Gardner originally laid it out. This made some works difficult to see, and included oddities like the empty frames where canvases that had been stolen were left hanging ion their original spots on the walls.

No photography was allowed unfortunately, so you will just have to take my word for it that the collection included the best Veronese ceiling painting that can be seen outside of Italy. What a treat.

We pushed onward to the Museum of Fine Arts, where we raced through treasures including Italian renaissance, Spanish masters Velasquez and Zurbarán, Impressionist gems by Degas, Monet and Manet, Greek, Roman and Egyptian art—and these are just the highlights. I had as much fun checking out these masterworks as I did playing with my iPhone camera special effects. A damp but good day.

new york pizza

I was just thinking of a little hole-in-the-wall on East Houston Street, New York and wondering if it was still in business. You know the kind of place where two big beefy guys serve up a slice for a few bucks that you grab on the way home, with the oil dripping through the bottom of your pizza box? You know, New York pizza. What is New York pizza, you might ask, and why exactly is it considered to be so superior to all other kinds of pizza?

There are plenty of pizzerias in the D.C. area which claim to make "real New York" pizza. A favorite local haunt is Radius, which, besides its pizza, all named after Italian motor scooters, serves an excellent grape and gorgonzola salad, as well as great pasta. Some other eateries also make very good pizza. But sorry folks, it isn't New York pizza. It's traditional brick-oven pizza, which is very tasty. But brick-oven pizza is not what people mean when they yearn for a New York slice.

Growing up in South Jersey, I was spoiled, thinking that all pizza is made with an extremely thin crust, and a minimum of sauce and cheese, which results in that foldable, delicious slice. When I moved to New York to go to art school, the pizza was generally the same as what I grew up with. I never really liked Famous Ray's in the Village, because they messed with the formula and dumped on way too much cheese. The rude awakening came when I moved away from the tri-state area and soon realized that most pizza was made elsewhere the Chicago way.

This is probably an endless debate, but where I think that most places go wrong is the dough. Obvious conclusion? Of course. But it's not just how thin the dough should be, which I think is where too many place the focus. Plenty of restaurants are making pizza with a very thin crust. It's how they cook the pizza. In New Jersey, the traditional pizza oven was used wherever we got our pies - not a brick-oven in sight. Thin-crust pizza, whether from Domino's or a more upscale joint, usually ends up very dry and crusty, even hard, on the bottom (I recently scraped the inside of my gum on a D.C. "New York" slice.) New York pizza should have a thin crust, which is crispy on the bottom, but where the crust comes in contact with the sauce and cheese it should not be dry at all - the opposite in fact. The dough underneath the sauce and cheese should be bubbly, moist and positively gooey. Sigh. There are definitely things I miss about New York and New Jersey.

Of course all this blather is just that, when you are lucky enough to be on vacation in Italy and have the "real" real thing. I'll never forget the pizza in Rome, which wasn't like American brick-oven pizzas, or New York style, but something entirely its own. And positively delicious. with some really unusual toppings. As I continue my quest for great pizza, I at least have some beacons in the night to light my way.