The death of Bruno Giovanni Lonati. Was he Mussolini’s executioner?

Two days ago Bruno Giovanni Lonati died in Legnano, Italy. He was 94 years old. During the war he had been fighting in Russia, then he joined the communist resistence after the 8th of September 1943 and, after the war, he became a successful manager at the FIAT car company.

In 1994 he managed to have his memoirs printed by Mursia of Milan, after several publishers thought them to be worthless, rejecting them. Was finally the historian Luciano Garibaldi who thought that those pages he had typed were worth of publication. Garibaldi, after having investigate his typescript  found some points matching and he was convinced that they contained some truth. His book  was then published under the title of “That 28 April. Mussolini and Claretta: the truth” and it caused a sensation.

In a few words Lonati says that in 1944 while in Milan he was approached by a British agent of Italian descent, John Maccarone – probably a false name – who wanted to kill Mussolini and recover some documents deemed to be too embarrassing for the British government. They finally managed to reach Bonzanigo, on the Como lake, on the 28 April 1945, snatching Mussolini and his lover Clara Petacci from the partisans who had captured them, then Lonati shot Mussolini while John shot his girlfriend, not guilty of anything but who had seen too much. The documents were not there, even if a few days later Lonati met again John who told him that the documents had since been found. Lonati had sworn to keep his mouth shut for 30 years but then, when the time had elapsed, he tried to re-connect with John who was in London but what he got was only a phone call in which he was asking him to forget everything.

The sensational revelations of Lonati did fall on fertile ground in Italy since all the different versions given by the Communist partisans who had captured Mussolini and claimed to have him executed were confused, contradictory and changing over the time. A further complication was caused by the fact that Mussolini was fleeing with a large amount of  gold (over 100 kg) money and jewels. Several partisans did fall on the gold, and fortunes were made overnight followed by a string of executions of people who had witnessed those events.

I know well Lonati’s book because it was the base of my historical novel, Ben, published by Mursia in 2010, where Lonati was one of the main characters, together with a young James Bond.

Here is an unedited version of the first chapters of my book which I had translated into English:

http://www.angeloparatico.com/documents.html

 

A Novel Use for Microwave Ovens.

Microwave ovens are a common kitchen appliance present in all our homes and which are used to heat and cook food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiations in the form of microwaves. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce thermal energy in a process known as dielectric heating. Microwave ovens heat foods quickly and efficiently because excitation is fairly uniform of a homogenous (high water content) food item; in such a way that food is more evenly heated throughout.

They became common in all modern kitchens starting from the late ’80s but after the initial enthusiasm, with the publication of hundreds of cooking books and manuals, all cooks and housewives had abandoned them, going back to traditional electric and gas ovens, thus neglecting them. They are used only to re-heat vegetables and frozen meat.

But I am here proposing a smart use of them.  Being them very quick and practical, they may be used for sanitary purposes – a thing that no housewife has been aware of – as very effective germs killers. They may in fact be used periodically to disinfect all non-metal items which are used in the kitchen:  cups (with no gold rims); dishes; drinking glasses; bowls; chopsticks; all ceramic and wooden items. What we have to do is just to wet them with some water, then insert them into the oven and let them turn at a maximum power for about 5 minutes. Microbes and bacteria will be wiped out completely by the heat.

Microwave oves were invented after WWII, as a by-product of Radar technology but because at the beginning were cumbersome and expensive they were not easily sold.  This modern technology is also used in several industrial sectors, like textile mills, used to dry cone of yarns after the dyeing machine.

 

 

 

Immortal Blue Jeans

I am in charge of sales in Asia for my company, TRC Candiani, in Asia, a leading world producer of denim. TRC was founded in 1938 and it is located 25 miles far from Milan and very close to Malpensa airport. We are producing around 32 million of meters of denim each year. By watching a simple pair of blue jeans lay people cannot imagine the complexity of the work involved in its fabrication, with a concentrate of science and experience which had evolved over the centuries. The subject is vast, but today I’ll limit myself to give you some snippets, just some hints about this sector.

The first real pair of blue jeans known and documented seems to be those belonging to the Italian National hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. They are kept at the Museo del Risorgimento in Rome, just inside the Altare della Patria, the monument behind where the Unknown Soldier of WW1 is resting.

Garibaldi’s trousers were made with duck cotton (canvas in Dutch) in a light blue colour and they look like woad dyed rather than indigo dyed, I don’t know if they were ever checked before. They have a patch on the left knee. Garibaldi wore them when he united Italy in 1860 with a thousand red shirts volunteers. Probably they are even older than 1860, as some historians say that he inherited them from his father. While forced into retirement on Caprera Island he gave them to a friend, asking him to pass them to one of his gardeners, but this person was smart enough to understand their historical value and kept them, handing them down in his family.

The name jeans is a corruption of the name  Genoa and Denim is a corruption of de Nîmes, a city in France. The fabric produced in Genoa was cotton duck in plain weave and were not always indigo dyed. In Nîmes, France, they were producing a kind of twill, a mix of wool and cotton deemed very sturdy. Mr. Levi Strauss had placed small orders in Genoa where he purchased light brown canvas in the range of 8 oz. but no samples are left because of the fire that destroyed Levi’s archives in 1906.

Blue jeans are the quintessential iconic garment, and they are part of our daily life and our dreams, as it is true that we sell fabric to build emotions and dreams. We may say that for denim’s innovation and quality Italy and Japan are at the forefront. But while Japan is sticking on tradition, Italy is stronger on innovation. By now there is very limited production or no production at all in the US, perhaps some at Atlantic Mills and Cone Mills – but the US still have production of Jeans garments, mainly in California, an industry which is Hollywood’s driven. Hong Kong was prominent in the production of Denim in the ’60 and ’70 but with the opening up of China all the Mills have all moved over the border or have just closed down.

Today we wear what we like and we look elegant just as that. No matter if our pants are broken or oiled, but this is a rather new concept coming to us straight from the French Revolution. Before the French revolution butchers were forced to wear butchers’ clothes, miners, miners’ cloths and so on. That new law in the Revolutionary Parliament was proposed by a young and gifted writer: Philippe François Fabre d’ Eglantine in 1793. He did it to contain feminine revolutionary activism: certain women forced people walking on the road of Paris to put on their head the Phrygian cap of the revolution. Anyway the obligation of the Convention to keep the cockade remained in force. So, at the end, he drafted and they passed a law according to which one can dress the garment he liked, provided that they kept the cockade. Fabre d’Eglantine lost his own head one year later, on the guillotine, accused of having schemed against Robespierre.

When we talk about Blue Jeans and Denim two things spring to mind COTTON and INDIGO colour.

Cotton

The worldwide market of cotton is huge, estimated to be worth 500 billion USD per year. Cotton is an Asiatic fibre. The centre of cotton production was India 3000 years before Christ, in the Indus Valley were it was cultivated and then it spread around the world. Some cotton fabrics were found in the Pharaohs’ tombs.In Europe we had not idea where cotton was from. Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Persians invading Greece were wearing cloths made with wool growing on trees. A few cotton fabrics reached Rome but, like silk, but it was rare and expensive. Romans were normally wearing linen, wool and hemp. Mongols created the first Cotton Board of the world in 1289 and taxed it since 1296. The spinning wheel was probably invented in China during the Warring States Period (IV century B.C.) and then it spread to India. There is an old Chinese proverb: ‘Men plough and women weave.’ Indian spinners and weavers were famous for quality and price so much so that the British had been forced to issue a Bandana Act in the 18 century to forbid imports from India, because they had very fine yarns and beautiful prints. Their protectionist measures remained in force well into the last century; we all remember the picture of a defiant Gandhi spinning his own cotton. The British traveller – better say plagiarist  – Mandeville in 1320 spoke of a “wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of the branches. The branches are so pliable to let the tiny lambs to graze on the ground.” Raw cotton was first imported in Europe by the merchants of Venice and Genoa, together with pepper, lacca, sugar, pearls, cotton fabrics at the beginning were actually called bocasini (silk and cotton mixed), then also indigo bricks for dyers starting from the XIII century. By the XII century Lombardy specialized in spinning and ginning cotton. Piedmont and Veneto followed and later the technique spread to France Switzerland and Germany. The earliest examples of cotton spinning and weaving were in imitation of Syrian and Palestinian textiles. Milan, Pavia and Cremona produced large quantity of fustian (since the cotton warps were too weak they used linen instead). The only exception of high quality cotton fabric were found in Milan; all the others were cheap products. By mid XIV century the Milanese could not keep up with competition from Switzerland and Germany, weakened by plague and warfare.

The Color Blue

Today we are seeing a lot of blue colour around but was it common in the past? No, not so much in the past, it is a color not present in Paleolithic times. Fabrics in antiquity were mostly dyed in red. In Latin coloratus (coloured) and ruber (red) were synonymous Blue for clothes was mostly used by Celts and Germans, who were using Woad. But it was a pastel coloured blue, not a deep blue, a plant of the same family of the indigofera. The common Mongol citizens were called Blue Mongols; the nobility was called the Dark Heads to distinguish them from the clergy who had shaved heads. The first block of Indigo imported in Europe convinced Europeans that it was obtained from stones not plants. This idea remained fixed until well after the discovery of America where some varieties of Indigo plants were growing (while none was native in Europe).Starting with the XIII century blue pigments were greatly used for the Church, especially as the color of the mantel of Holy Mary. Then French Flag, blue with gold flowers of Lily, was adopted in the XII century. Because of this it came to symbolize Nobility. Their national flag still has a portion of it. A representation of Goethe’s masterpiece The suffering of the young Werther of 1770. Werther was wearing a blue jacket. This sparked a craze among young Europeans that lasted for centuries.
Up to the XIV century Black was the primary colour, loved by reformers and then by counter reformists. Red was considered the colour of Rome and the Papists, as well as…whores. Nixon’s wife Pat, in 1974 during her historical trip to China received pressure by so called experts (like Malreaux) not to wear red, but she did her own way and no one criticized her for that indigo.

Indigo, the magic colour of jeans.

Indikon in Greek means to dye. Then it passed into Latin as Indicum and then Italian Indaco and English Indigo. It is a dyestuff possessing a deep sapphire colour. Newton used Indigo to describe 2 new primary colours he had added to the existing 5 describing the Rainbow (1675’s Lectiones Opticae). Indigo was extracted from the Indigofera plant. India is considered the centre where it was first extracted, in prehistoric times. It is a complicated and time-consuming job and for this reason indigo was an expensive stuff. Indigo dyed fabrics have poor fastness because it sticks on the surface of the cotton fibers. As it is it is not soluble in water, it must be reduced first (leuco-indigo). A Leuco indigo solution is reduced to achieve some affinity with cotton and is in this state soluble while in its normal state is insoluble. Removed from the solution and exposed to air it absorbs oxygen and get insoluble again. In Japan they used bacteria producing hydrogen to reduce it, in Europe urine and zinc powder. The first indication of such dyeing methods is in a cuneiform tablets in Neo Babylonian, VII B.C. where it is described how to use it with repeated immersions and airings. Romans used it also as medicine and as pigment for painting. It has been synthetically produced first by Bayer in 1878 starting from Isatin and then in 1880 from 2-Nitrobenzaldeyde. But it became industrially available only around 1901. Other plants of the same family are known. In Europe we were mostly using Woad, extracted from the plant Isatis Tinctoria, similar to Indigo. After the Portuguese opened the Western Route around 1512 Indigo was imported and was later cultivated in America and Africa. Together with import from the Far East this lead to an Indigo War in France and Germany, which were compelled to forbid its import to protect their domestic Woad Industry. Indigo it is still widely used for food under the indication E132. The Tuareg, the blue men of north Africa, traditionally wear indigo dye wool, with poor fastness, hence their denomination. Today we do apply sulphur dyes at the base of some denim before applying indigo, to change the hue and make it more fashionable. So we apply first yellow, or red, or black and then Indigo on the warps. But what is so special about indigo? It has a large molecule and it is very brilliant, like having micro sapphires which are stuck on the surface of the cotton fibres. It is one of the few colours that when fading stays brilliant. You may find in internet pictures of a pair of jeans found in a mine, early Levi Strauss, which were sold on eBay, their colouring in spite of everything is still brilliant.

HOW TO PRODUCE DENIM

Quality Denim is produced in vertical mills only, you cannot go to the market and buy yarns, as they all do for other kind of fabrics and to keep a constant quality. The only exception to this rule was Hong Kong who had a very strong denim industry starting from the ’60 but those were different times, there was such a demand for denim that buyers accepted anything, even shading and spots. The Shanghainese had flocked to Hong Kong in ‘50s and some did set up cotton spinning mills, then they begun weaving and when there was demand for denim from the US they were quick to react. Denim Mills in Hong Kong were placed on different floor levels, quite a sight! But in Hong Kong they did not developed local brands, and so the industry just faded away, moving across the border, inside China.

You must start with the bales of raw cotton. Each mill has his own formula, or cocktail of cottons, often a well kept secret. Then you have to spin and then dye the warps. This is another particularity of denim no longer common with other kind of fabrics. After dyeing the warps, dry, size them and then you go for weave inserting a white pick inside the warps and go on with the finishing. This is the tradition way and that explain why they fade white with time. Perhaps at the beginning it was made to save money and to make weaving easier – if you insert a weft that has been dyed and sized, your loom become a mess very quickly and the fabric cost will go up. It is today a process in evolution even if for 2000 years there were no major changes. The Rope dyeing machine was invented in 1915 in the US and it is still considered the true indigo dyeing machine even if the European version (actually Hong Kong version) is more in fashion: with less space, less people involved. Before you could reach a darker colour with a Rope dyeing machine but with the concentration reachable with pre reduced indigo today you cannot see the difference with a slasher. Also the Looptex machine – a variation of the slasher type – was first patented in Hong Kong. We use projectile looms but the shuttle looms, abandoned in the ’60, are back again. The particularly of the shuttles lays in the creation of a selvedge where the yarns are inserted not cut like in a rapier type machine or in a projectile type. Shuttle looms are perfect to imitate the old look and the old feeling.

YARNS FOR DENIM

The original yarns were ring spun, and today we use ring spinning frames, in imitation of the ancient hand spinning. Then in the ’70 in Czechoslovakia they invented Open-End spinning machines, 4 times faster, where the cotton fibers were blown together and twisted. They disappeared at the end of the ’90 but today the ring spinning has came back. Today most yarns are spun with intentional defects, reps, irregularities in order to imitate the product of the old spinning machinery.

WASHING

Here Italians do it even better than Japanese. Washing with pumice is called stone washing – sandblasting is now forbidden – then laser, digital printing are also used. If you make a mistake in washing you will not sell, so it is an important point of your selling strategy. You have to consult a guru able to forecast which washing will be popular in the next season. It is something that was noticed rather earlier. Even when Levi Strauss was still alive, washed blue jeans look better than unwashed! Perhaps a consideration to be made is that dark indigo dyed trousers during the first wearing will make your white underpants turn blue because of poor fastness of indigo. Even the Spanish nobility in the XVII century wearing back cloths used to wash them down as a demonstration of detachment of worldly affairs.

Today we find a lot of garage wash in Japan, good only for Indigo purists for limited editions of expensive garments.

FINISHING

The traditional finishing for denim is Sanforization. It is a process invented in the ’30 by Mr. Sanfort, that is to say it is a compressive shrinking. You find old jeans with indicated size 34 that are perhaps size 30. Why? Because they kept on shrinking and twisting. Sort of always alive on you. Now the varieties have greatly increased: application of resins to increase the washing effect of light and dark, film coating, foam coating, sulphur before application of indigo in order to change the colour hue.

The 3 greatest brands: Levi Strauss, Lee and Wrangler.

Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss remains the quintessential brand of Blue Jeans even if this company seems to have missed the train around the ‘80s. Let’s consider Lob Strauss (later opted for the name Levi) was born in 1829 in Bavaria, Germany. His father was a peddler. Since Roman times Jews were peddling, in Gaul following Caesar’s legions they were selling stuff to the soldiers. Jews could not own land so they had to find jobs different from farming. He was made an orphan at 16 and soon after he took a ship in Bremen to New York in 1847 with his mother and sister. In New York they met his brothers Jonas and Louis born to the first wife of his father. Having no better options also Levi Strauss picked up peddling: he was carrying up to a 100 pounds of weight. In 1853 he moved to S. Francisco because gold was found in Sierra Nevada and there was a rush, all prices went out of the roof. Levi Strauss demonstrated there his great marketing skills. He had bought some heavy canvas for tents for miners – perhaps from Genoa – but then they suggested him to make trousers instead.

Mr. Levi Strauss

One of the best legends is this: A miner complained to him that he was losing gold powder from his broken pockets, thus he needed stronger trousers. That is how Levi Strauss thought about working pants for miners.
David Stern married Levi’s sister Fanny and Levi Strauss settled with them – he never married – founding the Levi Strauss & Co. together with Stern. Then Jacob Devis proposed to use rivets, and Levi Strauss wrote a letter to him on July 2, 1872 proposing to cooperate. They could not patent them for all garments but only for the pockets. He bought shares of the Mission and Pacific Woollen Mill. The first jeans made by Levi’s were of lighter material, probably canvas (called duck in the US) woven in Italy. The same material used for Columbus sails. Colored in light brown, as some of early Levi Strauss jeans. He had the idea of using orange colored threads to distinguish Levi’s from competition and because that colour matched his copper rivets. Then he had the idea of an Oiled label promising free replacements if they ripped, with the image of two horses pulling a pair of jeans but unable to rip them aside. It was changed into leather in 1886. Levi Strauss was a marketing genius, far ahead of the pack. He invented the branding of garments. Rivets were first made of copper, then in a copper alloy. Those used in 1873 bear the engraving ‘May 1873 patent’ which is taken as the birth of true blue jeans. Amoskeag – the first denim mill in History – Manchester, N.H. In 1890 they were known as 501 trousers. They had received a lot of denim number 501 from XX Amoskeag (New Hampshire) with denim weighting 9 oz. later changed in 10 oz. They were sold slightly oversized to allow shrinking. Duck overalls were terminated in 1911. These were the first pants produced by Levi’s, before the blue colored ones. In 1890 Levi Strauss adopted the two arc design for the back pockets with orange threads, like the wings of a seagull. This is the oldest patent for textiles and it is still valid, even if proper registration was made only in 1942. In 1935 Vogue accepted the first advertisement for Blue Jeans. The red flag was added in 1936 that was the first outside label on garments ever, to combat imitations.

1915 Cone Mills of North Carolina start to supply Levi Strauss & Co. Levi’s Jacket (called blouse) was designed in 1905 but that model had only one pocket, called 506 then 507 with two pockets.
The oldest pair of 501. The crouch rivet was eliminated in 1940 (there are several tales about this) if you find a Levi’s with that crouch copper rivet you have a few thousand USD in your pocket. There were complains because if you get close to a fire, then the copper rivet will get hot and you will get burned in a male-sensitive area…with cowboys jumping under the moon. Rivets at the top of the pocket had been taken away on 1939: they were scratching saddles and chairs. In the 80s blue Jeans were in decline in all Western countries but went up in communist and Muslims countries as a mark of dissent. Levi Strauss used right hand twill for his garments, while Lee used left hand twill. Old Levi’s have side seams twisting in front, while Lee tend to move back. The trucker Jacket 557 was marketed in 1962. This is a symbol of the movie Easy Rider, of On the Road by Kerouac and Woodstock. Wrangler adopted the broken twill construction to combat twisting. Levi Strauss died a billionaire in 1902. He had been a philanthropist helping to set and finance orphanages and schools. We don’t know much about the early years because in 1906 San Francisco and Levi Strauss headquarters were destroyed by an earthquake followed by fire.

H.D. Lee

They began production in 1911 in Kansas. In 1911 they invented the Union All (tuta) shirt and trousers attached. They were the first to introduce the zipper fly on blue jeans in 1926. Levi’s follow them it only in 1954. Levi’s had always used button-fly since the beginning. In 1933 they invented the Storm Rider Jacket with internal lining and corduroy collar. This soon became an American classic. Lee 101 are the essential Cowboys jeans, as they were marketed as such.

Wrangler

First real jeans in 1946. But they had a longer story as part of the Blue Bell denim company. Their image was the cowboys Wrangler in American means cowboy. They were using extra wide belt loops to allow large rodeo buckles to be worn. They were the first to invent denim shirts with snaps instead of buttons. One of their designer saw a cowboy with his shirt taken up by the horns of a bull, he tough that with snaps that would have never happened. They invented the flared jeans a symbol of the beat generation in the ’60. They adopted broken twill construction to avoid twisting.
’60s

Brushed denim was introduced as well as colored denims. James Dean was a fan of denim. Not so Elvis Presley. Woodstock concert, half a million young people wearing jeans. More women wearing pants. Start to become the garments of protest against society, hippy generation. San Francisco was one of the centre of the hippy movement. Levi Strauss was at the right place in the right time, another Gold Rush.

’70s

Elephant legs became common. Blue jeans become status symbols no more something to bring people together. Only cowboys and gays were still wearing real blue jeans, all the other was wearing fashion jeans. Here Levi’s perhaps missed the train at the end of the ’70s; they should have developed a fashion section. Levi Strauss dropped the Big E in the flag label. A very important point for collectors. The date is not sure, probably early ’70.

Big E no more

By 1978 the old good jeans were dead in the US, dead certificates signed by Gloria Vanderbilt, CK, RL and many others. Birth of the first Italian brand of jeans, JESUS JEANS.
The 1971’s iconic creation by Oliviero Toscani for Jesus jeans. He shoot his American girlfriend…
Cavalli began buying stock jeans in the US and selling them in his shop in Florence. Candiani producing Denim in 1976. Fiorucci, Rifle etc.

 

’80s

The Year 1981 market the peak of sales of blue jeans worldwide, later sales declined. It coincided with Ronal Reagan presidency, a fan of blue jeans. Customers were tired of new designers of hippy jeans. Because contrary with traditional jeans they were out of fashion after a season. The worst enemy of blue jeans are the chino pants, when one is strong the other is weak. Beginning of strong stonewashing with pumice stones and chlorine bleaching. In 1985 Levi took out the red thread inside the 501, a suicidal move. Single red line is gone, huge difference in price for old jeans. They put it back in 1999. While in Europe and the US blue jeans declined in Japan the nostalgia for the old west fuelled by antiquarian models was taking roots. Within the Soviet Block and Islamic countries people were willing to pay a fortune to have a pair of jeans. It was a symbol of defiance. At this time an Italian Adriano Goldschmidt in Cortina created the fashion the modern de luxe jeans which are a recreation of the past, sort of antiquarian models. He bough a roll of Kayara fabric, Japanese, and ask a tailor to make jeans. The tailor charged him a lot and he had to put up the prices in Cortina’s mother shop. They sold like hot cakes and he understood that there were potentialthere. He founded DIESEL, then REPLAY and several other brands. Citizens AG Denim, now he is living in L.A.

ANTIQUARIAN DENIM.

2000 tons of vintage jeans are shipped every year from the US to Japan ending up mostly at Shibuya Street vintage denim shops. Kenji Hirano is the founder of the craze. If TRC exist and prosper is because of the allure of antique jeans which we are recreating, our customers are driven by emotions and dreams, as I said before. This created a multibillion industry. In Itself denim should not exist because of poor fastness and a difficult industrial production. We are all trying to imitate old pants. The high end denim industry in Italy and Japan would have already closed doqwn without this allure; unable to keep up with the competition from cheaper producers. The Japanese, as I have already said, want to have the original stuff Italians want to have something that looks like the original stuff.

I remember Sugiyama san, the chief of Levi’s Japan, now moved to Guess. He told me that in his dream was the discovery of a huge warehouse somewhere in the US full of 1920 denim fabric, millions of meters, with original buttons, threads and rivets. That is what they want. Low waist blue jeans are also an Italian invention, Alberto Biani did it first then it was taken on Jeans.

Evisu
Just look at the story of Evisu because it is symptomatic, they started as EVIS (Levi without the L) and they did sort of copy everything: the red flag and labels and exaggerate the stitching on the back pockets. Rumors went around that they had bought the original looms of Cone mills, that made Levi’s people angry with them. In some shops in London they called police to cut their red labels. The best investment is always Levi, then Lee and Wrangler. But also other brands created in the US are reaching high prices. The so called Depression Denim is growing very fast and is a good investment. Also the military denim, used in the US navy and air force, if the quality is ok and all the marking originals it may cost you a few thousand dollars. JC Penny, Montgomery, Boss of the road. Roebuck, Chicago Sears. Also the US railways were using denim at the turn of last century. The oldest Levi Strauss jeans predating the 501. Probably made early 1880 and with the white selvage typical of Amoskeag denim, in New Hampshire, was found 70 years ago in a mine. Another early model found in a mine was bought on eBay in 2001 for 45.000 USD. Fashion denim was hard to pick up because some of the denim produced in the seventies and eighties had open-end yarns, not ring. So the hand feeling, the color is not good. Indigo has a long tradition in Japan it was used by farmer because they believed that it kept snakes away. Will denim survive in the following years? I believe so because it is flexible and adaptable.

Why jeans are always selling so well?

-Women and men look younger and more sporty!

-No need to press and ironing. Throw them into the washing machine, no softener, hang and they are ready to wear. They will look three-dimensional and raw. Save electricity and time.

-If you combine jeans with elegant cloths and gold jewellery you will create a great but pleasant contrast. A Prada jacket, Bulgari jewels and a pair of 1950 broken jeans on ladies, will make them stand out and  look like the Goddess Venus…

 

 

 

 

 

A Review in Chinese on Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy by Yang Sun

Yang Sun is a young writer from Hangzhou, China and a Leonardo Da Vinci’s fan. Here follows her review written after having read my book.

达·芬奇完美主义镜像中的恋母情结（伊谛普斯情结）

意大利历史学家、小说家Angelo Paratico 在《莱昂纳多·达·芬奇：迷失

在意大利文艺复新时期的中国学者》一书中提出，著名的肖像画《蒙娜丽莎》中

的模特是达·芬奇以他的生母为原型而创作的艺术瑰宝。1452 年达·芬奇出生

后，他的生母——这位名叫卡特里娜的女奴，即从文献上消失，Angelo 进一步

指出，这位消失的神秘女性有可能是来自中国大陆的奴隶。基于Angelo 提出的

假设成立的前提下，对照另一权威理论——《蒙娜丽莎》是达·芬奇的自画像，

两条主轴若互相交织、相辅相成地进行探索，不难发现，达·芬奇似乎认为女性

的美是完美的，照此进行逻辑推理，“蒙娜丽莎代表了一种完美的女性美->蒙娜

丽莎的原型是卡特里娜->卡特里娜是完美的”。作为一名完美主义者，达·芬奇

把自己画成女性这点也顺理成章，这能够证明两种心理：1.达·芬奇认为自己的

内、外美是完美的，所以，他把自己画成一个女人，推理内容为，“女性的美是

完美的->达·芬奇认为自己像女人->达·芬奇的美丽、优美是完美的”；2.达·芬

奇有女性意识，这也间接地指明了他的同性恋身份并非是无稽之谈。如果，对

达·芬奇创作《蒙娜丽莎》的原初动机从心理学的角度上做深度剖析的话，可以

得出达·芬奇对其生母——卡特里娜怀有的恋母情结（伊谛普斯情结）是受其完

美主义信仰驱使的，简而言之，可以理解为——《蒙娜丽莎》是达·芬奇完美主

义镜像中的恋母情结（伊谛普斯情结）的映射，也是达·芬奇对完美主义所做的

超现实的演绎。

Angelo Paratico 的《莱昂纳多·达·芬奇：迷失在意大利文艺复新时期的

中国学者》是本可读价值非常高的小说，图文并茂、条理清晰、殷实的史料、多

方位对素材的搜集、深入事件内核的分析、炉火纯青的演绎法，都让这本小说成

为不可错失的一次了解达·芬奇的奇妙之旅，我强烈五星推荐！

 

A Wonderful Neronian Villa Discovered under Positano

Positano, is a pictoresque village on the the Amalfi cost, in South Italy, which was thought to have medieval origins but an extraordinary discovery is changing this impression.

Positano was probably founded during the I century after Christ as the personal villa of a very wealthy Roman, perhaps a Senator or a successful general. We do not know yet his name but at the centre of the town, 8 meters under the village Church (see the picture: below, on the right side) excavations are exposing never seen before mural paintings in perfect conditions, similar to those found in Nero’s  Domus Aurea in Rome.

Here is a short documentary broadcasted by RAI, justclick here:  Italian TV

 

 

 

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE ITALIAN COMMUNITY IN HONG KONG

This short essay was drafted by Margot Errante and Angelo Paratico in 2012 with the intention of having it included in the book “500 Years of Italians in Hong Kong and Macau” published by the Society Dante Alighieri and the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau but the then Consul general decided to scrap it.

This is the first attempt to sketch a sociological portrait devoted specifically on the Italian expatriate community in Macau and Hong Kong. This phenomenological(1) analysis (i.e. based on investigation of phenomena) is solely based on the direct narrative data collected from interviews, written self-reports, study of social networking, of about two hundred Italians who had settled in Macau and Hong Kong during different periods.

During the past five centuries the contribution of Italians citizens to Macau and then, much later, to Hong Kong had been mainly on the education and religious side, through priests within the Catholic education system, and hospital care, offered by Italian nuns.
The Italian contribution to trade and commerce had been negligible before WWII, while a relatively high concentration of traders was to be found in Shanghai. Things changed radically starting from the ‘60s, with hotel managers, musicians, artists moving here along with banks, which were following the establishment of Italian trading offices. The greatest increase in the number of Italians residents is recorded starting from the beginning of the ‘80s, once China open up to free trade. It was then that Macau and Hong Kong became the ideal stepping stones for Italian industries looking for new markets.
The data collected during our survey show a portrait of a young (average age 35-45 years) highly educated and well-off community of Italian traders and businessmen. In Macau and Hong Kong we can indeed find the brightest type of modern expatriates, generally speaking all enterprising, open minded Italian men and women. Because of the hectic lifestyle of the individuals which are part of this group, they are living in a very loose social network: widely scattered and weakly interconnected. For this reason in Macau and Hong Kong there is no Italian neighborhood or Little Italy.
Italian families tend to live within a small circle of friends of a similar age, often sharing similar interests, with a limited amount of social exchanges but a high degree of social value sharing. This was not the case in Hong Kong society before the last war, where a very strong caste-like society was in existence among Caucasian expatriates. On one side we found the old residents, the old China hands with their heavy baggage of experience: people who had been through the 1997 handover (a kind of parting line in the perception of many, like a boundary stone); then those arrived after the Sars, who tend to possess a more positive attitude toward the future; another category is that of the expatriate spouses, with several of them performing charitable duties within The Italian Women Association; another interesting sociological category, which is rapidly growing, is that of Italian men marrying Asiatic girls (few examples are known of Italian girls marrying Asian men, even if also this category is slightly on the increase) conscious of the fact that their children will be fortunate for being able to switch in and out of the two worlds: the Asiatic and the European.
Great annual gatherings of Italians in Macau and Hong Kong are few and not all residents are participating. One is the Italian National Day on June 2nd.
Then, at the end of October there is Sandy Bay, at the Duchess of Kent Hospital, and the Grape Festival. Since 5 years there is also a branch of the Fogolar Furlan, for people coming from Friuli Venetia Giulia region and their supporters as well as Club of Veronesi, coming from Verona.

According to one of the fathers of Sociology, Max Weber, individuals act, not collectivities; and individuals are not the product of social forces, but they are the creators of such currents. This could be easily detected among Italians living in Macau and Hong Kong. Unlike other countries, where family relationships play a critical role in immigration and resettlement, for Macau and Hong Kong the two main reasons that prompted Italian people to resettle are: better economic prospects and the allure of an exotic Country.
For what concerns the first reason let us mention the director general of an elite University in Rome, Pier Luigi Celli, who in November 2009 wrote an open letter to his son, published by Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, that articulated a growing sense of frustration within the Country’s young generation. He was telling his own son that he and his friends should place their best hopes for success and self-fulfillment abroad, like their forefathers, not within the Motherland. Economic stagnation in Italy, a stiff labor market, in fact is spurring new generations of Italians to abandon their Country and resettle abroad, even if the reasons for their leaving nowadays are not the same as the waves of economic migrants that left Italy to make their fortunes a century ago, a Diaspora that reached its peak during the beginning of the XX century. In Italy the number of people aged between 25 to 39 years with college degrees registering with the national government as living abroad is on the rise. The research-institute Censis estimates that 11,700 college graduates found work abroad in 2006 — that’s one out of every 25 Italians who graduated that year. According to a poll by Bachelor, a Milanese recruitment agency, 33.6% of new graduates feel they need to leave the country to take advantage of their education. A year later, 61.5% feel that they should have done so (Arrivederci, Italia: Why Young Italians Are Leaving, Time magazine, October 18th, 2010).
Today, in the XXI century, instead of peasant farmers and manual laborers, the new wave of migrants is mainly made up by highly educated and talented young people with a college degree.
“I also discovered, with great pleasure, that the Italian community in Hong Kong, although not numerous, was made up of valuable professionals” says Stefano Bassanese working at the Domani Restaurant.
The pull of the exotic is still a strong motive to move out, but less than in the past twenty or thirty years, with the perception of the Orient as a fabulous and enchanted place.
“Just a dream” tells us another long time resident, then wittily quoting Elvis Presley who sung in one of his song, titled Go East, Young Man: “Go East, young man, go east young man//You will feel like a sheik, so rich and grand//With dancing girls at your command//Go east and drink and feast, go east young man.” But he soberly adds that people leaving with such high expectations in mind should of course expect quite a different reality.
With the European economic crisis and the progress of the Asian market, in the past years the number of Italian immigrants is considerably increased. According to AIRE (Italian Register of Italians living abroad) the largest group is made up of relatively young people, ages 33 to 43, followed by children ages 0 to 10, which indicates that a high percentage of migrants is made up by families. Unlike United States, Canada and Australia, where the majority of migrants are settlers who intend to live permanently in their new country, in Hong Kong most of them are professionals, employees of national or transnational corporations who shifted around the globe from one country to another, and who are referred to as “expatriates” or colloquially “expats.”
Considering China’s economic growth over the recent decades, Macau and Hong Kong have become world centre in terms of trade and commerce, taking third spot on ECA’s list of most expensive home rentals. The high cost of living is creating a first selection of the migrant type.
“I noticed at once that in Hong Kong there is no place for average things or people: either you create and practice excellence, or if you are a foreigner you are forced to leave.” says Giovanni Angelini, a top hotelier, with an impressive professional careen.
And again, this concept is clearly expressed by Novella Burioli, an executive working for an Italian bank: “In Hong Kong the cost of living is proportional to the quality, and there is no space for idleness.”
Donatella Oliboni, the president of an international financial institution admits: “This is a place which either you love or you loathe. But I was bewitched by its dynamism from the first day.”
Except for missionaries, mixed couples and old families with a long Asian tradition, like the Acconci and the De Bedin, the fact that many of them have become permanent Hong Kong and Macau residents is due to economic reasons more than to the real desire to resettle in this region.
“I am happy to be here, today and now. Asia represents the shift in the industrial production worldwide” says Silvia Marlia, married to an American trained architect and running a teaching program for children.
The greatest part of Italians living in Macau and Hong Kong this is just a place of transition, the usual and well known borrowed place on borrowed time story, just to quote an old expression. They tend to see this as a place where to work hard for a few years and then return back to their native Country: “Hong Kong is a like a sea port and for many it is a just a passage point” says Diego Busiol, a young architect landed here a few months ago who almost immediately found a good job.
Since the ‘80s, there has been a significant shift in migration patterns determined by globalization: the heightened interconnectivity between people resulted into a receding significance of boundaries among States, and except for the owners of small private businesses, such as restaurants for instance, most of the migrants have developed strong transnational ties to more than one home country, blurring the congruence of social space and geographic space. As a result, they shift frequently, and they are psychologically ready to move around more easily. After few years in Hong Kong, many families are relocated by their companies in mainland China or in Singapore, following the economic market trends.
“During my life I have been living in several cities. Eleven, before Hong Kong. The average number of years I spend in a new city is three years” says Fabio Delfino, a resident since 2002.
Most of expatriates are scattered on Hong Kong islands and Kowloon, but families with children tend to live in Sai Kung or Discovery Bay areas. In general, contemporary Italian immigrants don’t seek the same lives in a new location, like their predecessors, but they rather seek different lives, and they use their new opportunities to resist preexisting social conceptions. Unlike other communities, which are more compact and manifest social tendency, Italians in Hong Kong are mostly assimilated into the international community.
“The colonial period has left the heritage of a language, English, which has allowed to different ethnic groups to easily mix and integrate” says Dario Calvaruso, who seems to have felt strongly the pull of the exotic Orient.
Nevertheless, they regroup during social events or when is needed.
“Occasions when Italians have joined hands to help a fellow Italian in need of help are many” tells us Federico Cavalli, an old China hand.
Despite the lack of an ethnic enclave, there is an effort for cultural and social preservation: children of any age every Saturday attend the Alessandro Manzoni school, where they are taught in Italian. There is also a school teaching the Italian language and culture to local people, the Dante Alighieri Society Society, originally founded in the ‘20s. More recently, within the Italian Consulate, a specific and independent cultural office has been created, directed by Matteo Fazzi.
Among the many different forms of integration, most of the Italians seem to choose active participation to society, which is often beneficial to the local community. Ugo Conta, a musician belonging to the earlier wave of migrants arrived during the ‘60s says: “I have opened and directed three Italian restaurants and founded the Mary Chau Academy for Contemporary Arts & Languages that is teaching to more than 600 students.”
Some of them have cooperated with the local institutions; others have founded and are still actively involved into fundraising events, such as Sandy Bay, making a genuine and lasting impact on charitable causes; many of them offer their contribution in their spare time: “I have joined hands with a group of friends who, during our scarce free time was visiting a rural area near the border with China to help with restructuring of a local elementary school” says Andrea Croci, an executive with an Italian Bank.
The general perception shared by most of the people we have spoken to is that Macau and Hong Kong are places where things move fast, where there is minimal bureaucracy, no corruption and a high degree of integrity. They all remain in contact with their friends and relatives in Italy, thanks to the internet and the social media. Few learn to speak Cantonese because all their working and social connections are made in English.
Most of them are also conscious to be living a life full of privileges (with some of them taking it for granted) and are unaware of the growing inequality within this society, where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Margot Errante & Angelo Paratico

 

1)Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

Winners and Losers according to Alastair Campbell

Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a veterinarian. Having graduated from Cambridge University in modern languages, he went into journalism, principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, Campbell worked for him first as press secretary, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy from 1994 to 2003. He continued to act as an advisor to Mr Blair and the Labour Party, including the 2005 election campaign. Since then, he has been engaged mainly in writing, public speaking and working for Leukaemia Research, where he is chairman of fundraising.

Last month I had the opportunity to hear Alastair presenting his latest book first at the FCC of Hong Kong and soon after at one of the bookshops of the Bookazine chain, in Prince Building, Central.
What he was presenting was his: ‘Winners and how they succeed’ Hutchinson, 2015.
At Bookazine, Alastair gave a short speech presenting his book and why he wrote it. It consists of interviews he gave to so called ‘winners’ in several areas: business, politics and sport. Putin, Mandela, Angela Merkel, Nerendra Modi, Jose Mourinho, Garry Kasparov and so on.  It is his conviction that the world is firmly divided in winners and losers and that the winners are so just because they have a strategy and a drive not to be losers. Then he took several questions from the floor even if, unfortunately, this part was somehow spoiled by a tattooed Australian (they seem to be everywhere nowadays) who raised questions unrelated to writing, to the book and even to Campbell himself. But patiently the author tried his best to answer.
It was clear to me that even when he speaks of sport – he is a great football fan – you could notice that he is always veering towards world politics, which, I dare say, remains the main driving passions of his life.
Perhaps it is true that when you have been close to the pinnacle of world power it is difficult to leave everything behind and retire in a monk’s cell. The great sage Confucius, in praising Hui, his best disciple, told him: “When called, we step forward, when cast aside we withdraw. Only me and you are capable of that.” Yes, I agree, it is not easy.
I read his book in the following days and I do like it. It is light, well written and laid out in the “American way” so to speak, no shadows and little doubts, flowing smoothly from the beginning to the end with inserted windows in the text highlighting sentences which are of some importance.

Alastair analyses how potential winners deal with unexpected setbacks and new challenges and judges what the different worlds of politics, business and sport can learn from one another. Then he sets out a blueprint for winning that we can all follow.

This book is selling well – which is extremely important for every author – even if Alastair remains a divisive figure in society, calling for hate from some and love from others.
It will then come to no surprise that some columnists in the British press have mercilessly thrashed him  – even on a personal level, doubting openly about his personal integrity – as well as the quality of his writing.
Here is Nigel Farnadale on the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11451632/Winners-and-How-They-Succeed-by-Alastair-Campbell-review.html

And here an insulting John Carce on the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/01/winners-how-they-succeed-alastair-campbell-digested-read

Last a more positive view on the Irish Times by Patrick Freyne:

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/alastair-campbell-walking-with-winners-1.2145586

But I don’t mind. I met Alastair and having talked to him I received the impression that he is a real winner in the real world of history-making. Yes, I do wish him well.

An unsolved mystery dating 2.144 years. Was Scipio Aemilianus Murdered?

Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus (185–129 BC), also known as Scipio Aemilianus or Scipio Africanus the Younger or Scipio Africanus-minor, was a great general and a open minded politician of the Roman Republic. As consul he commanded at the final siege and destruction of Carthage in 146 BC and his name was tied to that brutal act. But in fact he was a very refined man having the great Greek historian Polybius as his personal teacher and friend. Polybius says that when Scipio looked upon the city of Carthage while it was perishing in flames and pillage under his own eyes – following orders he had received from the Senate – is said to have shed tears openly for his enemies, realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; this had happened to Troy, once a rich city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent in his mind while he was with his father at the battle of Pydna. Verses escaping him and he said that also Rome one day will likewise fall. Perhaps he was still under the influence of his famous Dream, Scipio’s Dream which is retold in Cicero’s VI book of the De re publica, which indeed resembles the Dream of Er by Plato. But, contrary to Plato’s story, Scipio is taken up in the sky towards the Milky Way by his adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus and from there he could see the planet Earth from high above.  Some consider Cicero’s story the first literary example of an interstellar travel. (See appendix 1). The Somnium Scipionis had great philosophical influence during the late Roman empire and throughout Medieval times. Macrobius commented on it in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, which in turn was an important source for Medieval dream theory, down until the Renaissance with Girolamo Cardano.

Scipio Aemilianus was the younger son of Lucius Aemilius Paulus Macedonicus, the conqueror of Macedonia, and fought when he was 17 years old at his father’s side at the battle of Pydna, which sealed the fate of Macedonia and made northern Greece subject to Rome. He was then adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio, the eldest son of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, and his name was changed to Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus.

In 151 BC, he took control of the war in Spain where things were going badly for the Romans and he managed to pacify the province. Though Carthage had been greatly reduced in power following the Second Punic war sixty years earlier there was still fear and resentment in Rome. Cato the Elder was always ending all his speeches with a chilling: “Also, I think Carthage must be destroyed.”

In 150 BC an appeal was made to Scipio by the Carthaginians to act as mediator between them and the Numidian prince Massinissa who, supported by a party at Rome, was incessantly encroaching on Carthaginian territory. Using that argument as casus belli in 149 BC a war was declared by Rome, and a force sent to besiege Carthage.

In the early operations of the war, which went unfavourably for the Romans, Scipio Aemilianus, though a subordinate officer, distinguished himself repeatedly, and in 147 BC was elected consul. Without the customary procedure of drawing lots, he was assigned to the African theatre of war. After a year of desperate fighting and stubborn heroism on the part of the Carthaginians, he took the city, taking prisoner only about 50,000 survivors with the other half million either deliberately killed or fallen defending their land.  This he did in compliance with the mandate he had received from the Senate. The city was evacuated, burnt, razed to the ground and plowed over with salt, thus ending the Third Punic War. On his return to Rome he received a Triumph, having also established a personal claim to his adoptive agnomen of Africanus. He then entered politics and in 142 BC, during his censorship, he acted to check the growing luxury and immorality of the period. The fall of Numantia in 133 established the Roman dominion in the province of hither Spain and for his services there Scipio Aemilianus received the additional agnomen of “Numantinus”.

His personal troubles begun with his taking side against the Gracchi.

Scipio Aemilianus himself, though not close with the extreme right wing party, was not present in Italy at the time of Tiberius Gracchus’ murder and thus, at the beginning, he took no side. Since he had not opposed Gaius Laelius Sapiens’ land reform law, because of his personal integrity, it is likely that he would have supported it. Nevertheless, he was decidedly opposed to the socialist policies of the Gracchi. When he heard of the death of Tiberius Gracchus, he is said to have quoted this line from the Homer’s Odyssey:

So may all who engage in such lawless conspiracies perish

After his return to Rome he was publicly asked by the tribune Gaius Papirius Carbo what he thought of the fate of his brother in Law Gracchus, and tactlessly replied that he was justly slain. He had made a mistake! The crowd listening to this comment responded with jeers, to which Scipio quickly replied: “I have never been scared by the shouts of the enemy in arms. Shall I be frightened by your outcries, you stepsons of Italy?”. This made him an enemy of the popular party, which was now led by his bitterest foes. He soon became an advocate of the Italians who disapproved of some aspects of the Lex Sempronia Agraria, fearing that their land would be confiscated.

Then, soon afterwards, in 129 BC, on the morning of the day on which he had intended to make a speech in support of the Italians, against the Roman pleb he was found dead in bed with some strange marks on his body, marks which had been never clarified or explained. There have been three scenarios proposed for his death: murder, suicide, or suffocation by strangling.

Cicero thought that he was murdered by Sempronia, his wife and sister of Tiberius Gracchus.  Ten years later in 119 the cold case was reopened: Crassus accused C. Papirius Carbo of that murder taking him to Court. Some old slaves were tortured and confirmed the accusations against Carbo and he then committed suicide. This could not be seeing as a proof of guiltiness, as Carbo was hated by many people in Rome and he feared they would accuse him even without proofs.

The mystery of his death was never solved.

 

Appendix 1

Cicero The Dream of Scipio – Somnium Scipionis  Translated by W. D. Pearman (1883) pp.3-14.

 

  1. When I reached Africa to serve under the general Manius Manilius, being, as you are aware, Military Tribune attached to the 4th Legion, I made nothing of more importance than to meet Masinissa, a prince for good reasons most attached to our family.

 

As soon as I came to him, the old man folded me in his arms and wept over me; and after some time he looked up to heaven and said: “I give you thanks, O Sun most high, and you, you other heavenly beings, for that, before my departure from this life, I behold in my realm and in this my home Publius Cornelius Scipio, by the mere mention of whose name I feel myself made young again: even as the memory of that most excellent and invincible hero is ever present in my heart,” After this I asked him about his kingdom and he questioned me about our Commonwealth; and so with much converse on both sides we spent the whole of that day.

 

  1. But in the evening, being right royally entertained, we prolonged our conversation far on into the night; the old man talking of nothing but Africanus and calling to mind not only all his deeds but his sayings too.

 

After this, when we separated for the night, both after my journey and as I had sat up till late at night, sleep folded me in a closer embrace than was usual.

 

Then there appeared to me,—for my part I believe, out of what we had been talking about: for it often happens that our thoughts and conversations give birth in sleep to some such fancy as that which Ennius records about Homer, of whom, to be sure, in his waking moments he was wont to think and talk very often— there appeared to me Africanus, in that form which was more familiar to me from his picture than from his person. When I recognised him, I shuddered, I assure you, but he said: “Be of good courage and banish fear, my Scipio, and record what I shall say.

 

  1. Do you see that city, which although forced by my arms to yield obedience to the Roman people, is reviving the recollection of the wars of old and cannot rest in peace,”—now he was showing to me Carthage, from a place on high, full of stars, and bright and shining—, “that city, to attack which you are now coming almost as a private soldier? Within these two years you will destroy it as Consul; and that title, which so far you bear as an inheritance from me, shall be won for you by your own achievement. But when you hast razed Carthage, celebrated a triumph, held the office of Censor, and travelled on a mission over Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, you will be elected Consul a second time though abroad; and you will bring a most important war to its close, you will utterly destroy Numantia. But when you ride in your car of triumph to the Capitol, you will find the state sorely troubled by the plotting of my own grandson.

 

  1. Here, Africanus, you must display to the fatherland the light of your courage, genius and wisdom.

 

But in that time, I see the march of destiny, so to call it, hesitating between two ways. For, when your life has completed seven times eight full cycles of the sun; and these two numbers, each of which for a different reason is held to be a perfect number, in the revolution of nature has fulfilled your destined sum for you; to you alone and to your name the whole community will turn together: the Senate, all right-thinking citizens, the allies and the Latins will fix their eyes on you; you will be the one man on whom the community can lean for safety; and, in short, as Dictator you must reform the constitution, if only you can escape from the unnatural violence of your relations,”

 

At this point, Laelius having cried out and all the others groaned exceedingly,— “Hush! please,” said Scipio with a gentle smile, “lest you rouse me from my sleep, and listen a while to the rest,”— 5. ” But still, Africanus, so that you may be the readier to defend the Constitution, know this: for all who have preserved their fatherland, furthered it, enriched it, there is in heaven a sure and allotted abode, where they may enjoy an immortality of happiness.

 

For nothing happens in the world more pleasing to that supreme Deity, who governs all the universe, than those gatherings and unions of men allied by common laws, which are called states. From this place do their rulers and guardians set out, and to this place do they return.”

 

  1. Here, although I was greatly terrified, by dread not so much of death as of treachery from men of my own household, I found courage to ask if he was himself alive and my father Paulus and others, whom we regarded as dead. “Yes indeed they are alive,” said he, “who have soared away from the bonds of the body, as from a prison-house; but your life, as it is called, is really death. Nay, look at Paulus, your father, coming towards you!” On seeing him I shed a flood of tears, but he folded me in his embrace and by kisses endeavoured to stop me weeping.

 

  1. And, so soon as I began to be able to speak, having choked back my tears, “Pray, tell me,” said I, “most revered and best of fathers, since this is life, as I hear Africanus say, why do I linger on earth? Why don’t I hurry up and come to you there?” “It is not as you think,” said he, “for unless that God, to whom all this region that you can see belongs, has released you from the keeping of your body, the entrance to this place cannot be open to you. For men were created subject to this law, to keep to that globe, which you see in the centre of this region and which is called the Earth; and to them a soul was given formed from those everlasting fires, which you mortals call constellations and stars, that, round and spherical in form, alive with divine intelligences, complete their orbits and circles with marvellous swiftness. So, my Publius, you and all good men must allow the soul to remain in the keeping of the body, nor without his command, by whom it was given to you, must you leave your human life, lest you should appear to have deserted the post assigned to men by God.

 

  1. But rather, my Scipio — like your grandfather here, like me your sire — follow justice and natural affection, which though great in the case of parents and kinsfolk, is greatest of all in relation to our fatherland. Such is the life that leads to heaven and to this company of those who have now lived their lives and released from their bodies dwell in that place which you can see,”— now that place was a circle conspicuous among the fires of heaven by the surpassing whiteness of its glowing light—”which place you mortals, as you have learned from the Greeks, call the Milky Way.” And as I surveyed them from this point, all the other heavenly bodies appeared to be glorious and wonderful,—now the stars were such as we have never seen from this earth; and such was the magnitude of them all as we have never dreamed; and the least of them all was that planet, which farthest from the heavenly sphere and nearest to our earth, was shining with borrowed light, but the spheres of the stars easily surpassed the earth in magnitude—already the earth itself appeared to me so small, that it grieved me to think of our empire, with which we cover but a point, as it were, of its surface.

 

  1. And as I gazed upon this more intently, “Come!” said Africanus, “how long will your mind be chained to the earth? Do you see into what regions you have come?

 

See! the universe is linked together in nine circles or rather spheres; one of which is that of the heavens, the outermost of all, which embraces all the other spheres, the supreme deity, which keeps in and holds together all the others; and to this are attached those everlasting orbits of the stars. Beneath this there lie seven, which turn backwards with a counter revolution to the heavens; and of these spheres that star holds one, which men on earth call Saturn’s star.

 

Next is that bright radiance, rich in hope and healing for the sons of men, which is called Jove’s star; then one fiery red and dreaded by the world, which you call Mars; next lower down the sun holds nearly the middle region, the leader, chief and ruler of the other lights, the mind and ordering spirit of the universe, of such magnitude that he illumines the whole and fills it with his light. With him Venus and Mercury keep pace as satellites in their successive spheres; and in the lowest zone of all the moon revolves lighted up by the rays of the sun.

 

Now below these there is nothing more but what is mortal and transient except those souls which the bounty of the Gods has given to the sons of men; above the moon all is eternal. As for the earth, the ninth and central globe, it does not move but is the lowest point, and towards it all heavy bodies tend by their own gravity.”

 

  1. And, as I gazed on these things with amazement, when I recovered myself: “What,” I asked, “what is this sound that fills my ears, so loud and sweet?” “This,” he replied, “is that sound, which divided in intervals, unequal, indeed, yet still exactly measured in their fixed proportion, is produced by the impetus and movement of the spheres themselves, and blending sharp tones with grave, therewith makes changing symphonies in unvarying harmony. For not only is it impossible that such vast movements should sweep on in silence; but, by a natural law, the outermost parts on the one side give a grave, and on the other a sharp sound. Wherefore the highest of all, the celestial zone equipped with stars, whose revolution is more swift, moves with a sharp, high note; while this one of the moon, as it is the lowest, with the deepest tone of all. For the earth, which is the ninth, remaining motionless is ever firmly planted in one spot, clinging closely to the centre of the universe. Now the revolutions of those eight spheres, of which two have the same power, produce seven sounds with well-marked intervals; and this number, generally speaking, is the mystic bond of all things in the universe, And learned men by imitating this with stringed instruments and melodies have opened for themselves the way back to this place, even as other men of noble nature, who have followed godlike aims in their life as men.

 

  1. But the ears of men overpowered by the volume of the sound have grown deaf; and you have in you no duller sense than that of hearing; for instance, at the Catadupa as it is called, where the Nile rushes headlong from very high mountains, the tribe which dwells near that spot, owing to the loudness of the noise has lost the sense of hearing. But this sound of the whole universe revolving at the utmost speed is so awful that the ears of men cannot contain it; just as you are unable to look straight: at the sun, and your eyesight and its perceptions are overpowered by his rays.”

 

Though marvelling at these wonders I still kept turning my eyes at intervals towards the earth.

 

  1. Thereupon: “I see,” said Africanus, “that you are even now regarding the abode and habitation of mankind. And if this appears to you as insignificant as it really is, you will always look up to these celestial things and you won’t worry about those of men. For what renown among men, or what glory worth the seeking, can you acquire? You see that on the earth only scattered and narrow plots are inhabited; while even in the very patches, as it were, in which men dwell, vast deserts are interspersed; and among those who live on the earth, there are not only such breaks that no communication can pass from one set to another, but some live in opposite zones; some on opposite sides of a zone; some even at the opposite point of the earth to you; and from these, at any rate, you can expect no glory.

 

  1. Moreover you see that this earth is girdled and surrounded by certain belts, as it were; of which two, the most remote from each other, and which rest upon the poles of the heaven at either end, have become rigid with frost; while that one in the middle, which is also the largest, is scorched by the burning heat of the sun. Two are habitable; of these, that one in the South—men standing in which have their feet planted right opposite to yours—has no connection with your race: moreover this other, in the Northern hemisphere which you inhabit, see in how small a measure it concerns you! For all the earth, which you inhabit, being narrow in the direction of the poles, broader East and West, is a kind of little island surrounded by the waters of that sea, which you on earth call the Atlantic, the Great Sea, the Ocean; and yet though it has such a grand name, see how small it really is!

 

  1. And yet of these very lands, which are frequented and familiar, could your name or that of any of your race have climbed beyond the summit of the Caucasus here or crossed the waters of the Ganges there? Who in the other remote regions of the rising or the setting sun or of the North or South will hear your name? Yet, leaving these aside, you can certainly see in what a narrow field your human glory aspires to spread. Again, the very men who talk of you, how long will they talk?

 

  1. Why, even if those generations of men to come should care to hand down, in succession from father to son, the glory of each one of us; yet, still, owing to the deluges and conflagrations of the earth, which must happen periodically, we cannot acquire a lasting, much less an eternal renown. Nay, what does it matter that mention should be made of you by those who shall be born hereafter, when there was none among those who were born before you? They were not fewer in number but were, at any rate, better men; 16. the more so, as, among those very men, by whom our name may possibly be heard, no one can secure his reputation for a single year. Men, to be sure, commonly measure the year by the return of the sun, that is of a single heavenly body: but when all the constellations together shall have returned to the same point from which they once started; and after long intervals shall have restored the order of the whole heaven as it was before, then can that really be called the year of revolution: in which I hardly dare to say how many generations of men are comprehended. For as at that time, when the soul of Romulus made its way into these heavenly regions, the sun appeared to men to disappear and to be darkened, so whenever, in the same quarter and at the same time, the sun is again eclipsed, then, all the constellations and stars having been restored to their original position, you can say that a year has been fulfilled. But of this year know that as yet not a twentieth part has come round.

 

  1. So, should you have lost hope of return to this place, on whom great and illustrious men rest all their hopes, what then is your human glory worth, which can hardly affect a scanty portion of a single year? Therefore, if you will choose to look aloft and fix your gaze on this our resting-place and eternal home, nor ever enslave thyself to the rumours of the rabble, nor stake the hope of your life on the rewards of men: virtue must draw you by her own attraction to true glory; what others say of you, let that be their own concern; but still they will talk. However, all that talk of theirs is both confined within those narrow bounds, which you can see, and has never been of long continuance in the case of any. It is buried with the men themselves, and ends in the forgetfulness of posterity.”

 

  1. When he had ended: “For my part,” said I, “Africanus, if indeed a pathway, as it were, is open to the gates of heaven for those who have deserved well of their native land; although I have not failed to do you honour, from my boyhood t reading in my father’s footsteps and in yours, yet now, with so great a prize before me, much more watchfully will I strive.”

 

“Strive indeed,” said he, “and be persuaded of this: it is not you that are mortal, but this body. For you are not that which your bodily form presents to view, but it is the mind of any man that is the man, not that figure which can be pointed out by the finger. Know then that you are a god; since he is a god who possesses force, feeling, memory and prescience, who directs, governs, and moves that body, of which he is the master, just as much as the supreme God of all moves this universe. And as the universe which is in some degree perishable is moved by God, who is himself eternal, so is the frail body moved by an immortal soul.

 

  1. For that which moves all the time is eternal; but that which imparts motion to something else and itself receives its motion from some other source, must have a limit to its life because its motion can end. Therefore that only which moves of itself, because it never abandons itself so it never ceases to move. Moreover this is the source, this is the original cause of motion to all other things that move.

 

Now an original cause has no origin; for all things originate from it, but the original cause itself cannot arise from anything else. For it would not be an original cause if it had originated from something else. And as it has no origin so it never perishes. For if the original cause once perish it will neither be itself reproduced by another nor will it create another from itself; since all things must necessarily spring from the original cause. Hence we see that the original cause of motion resides in that, which is itself self-motive. Now that can neither be born nor die; otherwise the whole heaven and all nature would collapse and come to a standstill, nor would it find any power to give it the first impulse of motion.

 

  1. Since therefore it is plain that what is self-motive is eternal, who can deny that this quality is an attribute of our souls? For, whereas everything is soulless that receives its impulse from without, that, on the contrary, which has a soul, moves by an inward motivation of its own. For this is the natural property and essence of the soul. And if this is the only thing in the world that is self-motive, assuredly it has had no beginning but is eternal.

 

  1. Exercise this soul in the noblest activities. Now the noblest are cares and exertions for our country’s welfare. And the soul which has been enlivened and trained by these will speed more fleetly to this its resting-place and home. And this will it do more readily if, even while still imprisoned in the body it strains beyond it, and, surveying that which lies outside it, as much as possible, endeavours to withdraw itself from the body.

 

For the souls of those who have given themselves over to the pleasures of the body, and have yielded themselves to be their servants, as it were, and at the prompting of those lusts which wait upon pleasures have broken the laws of God and man; when they have glided from their bodies, go grovelling over the face of the earth; nor do they return to this place, except after many ages of wandering.”

 

So he departed, and I woke from my dream.

 

Leonardo’s Lost Princess: Peter Silverman Quest to Authenticate an Unknown Portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci. Or is it a fake?

Leonardo’s Lost Princess is a wonderful book written by art collector and art historian Peter Silverman detailing his discovery of a real Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting. It reads like a thriller in the Da Vinci Code mold, except that contrary to Dan Brown’s best seller it is absolutely based on facts.

Here is how the book is presented to the readers from the back cover, which is self-explanatory:

In 1496, a beautiful princess was preparing to marry in Milan. Bianca was the daughter of Duke Ludovico Sforza and betrothed to Galeazzo Sanseverino, commander of the duke’s armies. Portraits were often commissioned during the Renaissance to mark major events in a subject’s life, and a court artist named Leonardo da Vinci was given the task of memorializing Bianca.
Tragically, the princess died soon after her wedding. Then her portrait, the last evidence of her existence, was also lost.
At a New York City gallery in 2007, Peter Silverman saw a portrait catalogued as “German, early 19th century.” Thinking it misattributed and regretting not buying it once before, he scooped it up for a mere $19,000 and began a long quest to discover its origins. He hardly dared utter the “L” word: Leonardo.
Giants in the field of art history and scholarship soon would, though, as the best of connoisseurship was used to authenticate La Bella Principessa. Science would then confirm their judgments. The picture was carbon-dated, digitally examined with multispectral imaging, even scrutinized for fingerprints—and one of Leonardo’s was found along with a palm print. Bianca was identified as the subject, and her clothes and hair were matched to those of her period.
Many in the art community still would not believe, but Silverman persisted and, with the help of Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp, discovered its provenance: the tribute book from which the picture had been removed. After more than 500 years the beautiful princess was home again.
The picture is valued at $150 million, but its value to the art world is incalculable—and its story is unforgettable.

 

It is indeed interesting to read all the detailed informations contained in this book and the amount of skepticism put forth by people who should have been open to new ideas and hypotheses – museum curators, arts experts, art journalists – who tried to deny so much clear evidence, even if they were confronted with scientific proof of authenticity. Starting with Christie’s in house expert François Borne who had incredibly classified this Leonardo’s masterpiece as a XIX century work by an anonymous German nazarene romantic.

The lady who trusted Christie’s expert – her husband Gianni Marchig was an artist close to Bernard Berenson – sued them after the truth had been revealed but her case was rejected because more than 3 years had passed since the transaction.
Working as a team with his wife Kathy, Peter Silverman had already made a name in the art world by buying, in the early ’90s, a wonderful wooden crucifix later attributed to Michelangelo and in 2000 discovering 3 van Dyck paintings and then a Raphael assigned instead to an anonymous hand of the XVI century.
Peter had tried to get la Bella Principessa as it is known in 1998 with an anonymous bid but he was beaten. He regretted it deeply having been struck by that image and lived regretting not to have offered more until the year 2007 when, casually walking in the New York shop of Kate Ganz he found her there on sale once more.

Since writing the above words I have been convinced by contrary arguments: sorry, this sketch attributed to Leonardo is a clever and contemporary forgery.

See:

https://www.academia.edu/25513966/La_Bella_Principessa_Arguments_against_the_Attribution_to_Leonardo?

 

Peter Silverman (with Catherine Whitney) Leonardo’s Lost Princess Wiley, 280 pages, 2012. ISBN-10: 0470936401  ISBN-13: 978-0470936405

Was Leonardo Da Vinci a pedophile?

A powerful wave of repression brought this childhood excess to an end, and established the dispositions which were to become manifest in the years of puberty. Because his love for his mother had been repressed, this portion was driven to take up a homosexual attitude and manifested itself in an ideal love for boys.

Sigmund Freud A Childhood Memory of Leonardo Da Vinci 1911.

This may be offensive to some but it is based on facts. After all this part of Leonardo’s personality, which is well known to his biographers, has never been discussed openly. And here I may claim to have been the first to do so in my book Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy Lascar, 2015.  http://www.lascarpublishing.com/leonardo/

So was he a pedophile? Indeed he was but in the original meaning of the term (i.e. adult attracted by young boys) as it is noticeable by several of his sketches – the most extreme, pornographic ones, were stolen from the Windsor collection at the end of the XIX century by a German zealot and since have disappeared, except one the so called Angel Incarnate which has reappeared in Germany a few years ago – showing anatomic details of male models. Whether he was also a child-molester it is still open to discussion.