52
Martina Franca
some barons are like sovereigns in their lands
Paolo Maria Doria, Vite Civile
FORTY KILOMETRES TO THE SOUTH EAST, Martina Franca is an even prettier little city than Conversano. On a hill at the highest level of the Murgia del Trulli it dominates the fertile Val d’Itria and, although nowadays its white walls are masked by high-rise flats, the centre remains unspoilt, with narrow white-washed streets and small Baroque palazzi that have wrought-iron balconies. A local historian, Michele Pizzigallo, describes it proudly as “belonging to yesterday, like a flower always in bud.”
Founded in the tenth century by refugees from the Saracens, Martina expanded in the fourteenth, being granted many privileges and adding “Franca” to its name. Raimondello del Balzo Orsini built a castle in 1388 while a hundred years later its lord was Francesco Coppolo, Count of Sarno, whom King Ferrante made his finance minister and then destroyed. In 1507 Martina Franca became a duchy and was given to Petraccone III Caracciolo del Leone, Count of Buccino in Basilicata. The family descended from ‘Sergianni’ Caracciolo, Grand Seneschal of Naples and lover of Queen Giovanna II, who amassed a vast fortune before being murdered. The Caracciolo del Leone took their name from the lion on their coat-of-arms, to be seen all over Martina Franca.
The Masaniello of Martina Franca, who led the 1647 revolt here, was a blacksmith, Vivantonio Montanaro, called ‘Capo-di-Ferro’, (‘Iron Head’). Duke Francesco I routed him by importing 300 mercenaries. But generally strife was less bloody, mainly wrangles over the ducal feudal dues that were levied by professional tax-gatherers. They caused chronic resentment, which was why most dukes preferred to spend much of their time at Buccino, until the accession of Petracone V in 1655.
Duke Petracone was always loyal to the Regno’s Spanish King and when only thirteen served in Spain against the Portuguese. On his return two years later he married Aurelia Imperiali of Francavilla. After killing the Count of Conversano, he and his brother Innico were imprisoned, but so many nobles interceded that they were soon released. When he came out of prison in 1668, Petracone began building a palace.
The old Orsini castle was pulled down, replaced by a palazzo, so beautifully proportioned that it has been attributed to Bernini. The main façade has a balcony with iron scroll-work running the length of the building beneath a long line of windows, and a tall gateway flanked by two great columns leading into a large court-yard. Pacichelli thought it “a work of perfection... very like the Casa Pamphilij in Piazza Navona at Rome”, noting that each façade has sixteen windows, and that there is a gallery, a theatre and a roof-garden. He reminds us that “The Lord Duke is also Marquis of Mottola... Lord of Bovino... and Baron of many other lands in Calabria and Lord of Locorotondo nearby, which produces horses and mules and supremely good milk, and is best for cheese.”
A portrait of Petracone V shows a self-satisfied face with a big nose verging on the bulbous, a low forehead and a pointed beard. According to Pizzigallo, he was “narrow and obstinate with his family, haughty and offhand with local gentry, open and generous with the people.” He lived in great splendour. When his son Francesco, Count of Buccino, married Eleanora Gaetani in 1700, Martina was illuminated for nights on end and horsemen carrying torches serenaded the palazzo, which was lit by splendid fireworks.
The duke had a favourite, Gaetano Faraone, an avaricious tailor, who became both informer and adviser. He ran everything in Martina Franca, but acquired some dangerous enemies, among them the Count and Countess of Buccino. When Petracone died in January, 1704, Faraone was immediately put in a dungeon and accused of dominating the late duke by witchcraft, with the aid of Nardantonia Casparro and Grascia di Mascio, “women commonly reputed to be expert at spells and magic.” Nardantonia’s daughter testified how one night the tailor had come to her mother’s house with dough from which five crosses were made. “The said Faraone crushed each in turn, stamping his feet as he did so crying ‘Devil, Devil, Devil, Beelzebub, give me entire ownership of the will and desires of Don Francesco, Count of Buccino, as I have over the Duke his father!’” He then placed the crosses in a bag, saying that he would drop them in a well. Five pieces of dough were found in a cistern at his house, wrapped in paper on which was written “Gaetano Faraone”.
When interrogated in February Faraone was very ill because “he had struck his breast with a stone while calling on God to pardon his sins.” He was placed in a “horrible dungeon” where he was found dead in May, the official cause of death being “gangrene of the bladder.” Forty years later, some citizens of Francavilla Fontana accused Francesco II of murdering him. He was so alarmed that he contemplated giving the duchy to his son and going into a monastery, but eventually escaped with a fine of 20,000 ducats.
Francesco II made feudal dues even more burdensome, with a new poll-tax. Martina Franca was divided into two parties; the duke’s followers and the moderates, the Ducalisti; and the radical borghesi, called Universalisti. However, as feudal lord the duke controlled elections to the commune and the appointment of most officials, including the mayor, and during the eighteenth century his vassals grew still more frustrated. Petracone VI, a straight-forward soldier who succeeded in 1752, did his best to make life easier, consulting both Ducalisti and Universalisti, but after seven years, exasperated by constant litigation, he handed the duchy over to his son.
Francesco III, who became duke in 1772, was much liked, his love of the country and interest in agriculture endearing him to the peasants. He and his wife, Stefania Pignatelli, modelled their little court on the royal court at Naples, plays being regularly produced in the palace theatre. In 1773 they commissioned Domenico Carella to paint the rooms of the piano nobile; the Mythology Room, the Bible Room and the Arcadia Room. As Rococo decoration they are superb, especially the Arcadia Room. On the ceiling are painted the Four Seasons. On the walls you can see the duke and his court. Francesco, in striped breeches and waistcoat, carries a tricorne hat while Duchess Stefania has a towering mass of powdered hair. They are surrounded by their courtiers, the local nobility, in a fête champêtre with fiddlers, a flautist and a huntsman with a hunting horn, and a background of country people. A beaming Carella watches from his easel in a corner. There are dogs everywhere, since the painter adored them.
Despite feudal dues, mules and horses brought prosperity to Martina Franca, as can be seen from its Rococo palaces. The best are Palazzi Panelli, Stabile, Martucci and Conte Barnaba, all graceful (yet surprisingly restrained for the period) and all built by the same unknown architect. The civic buildings are equally elegant, the Torre dell’ Orologio (1734) and the Palazzo della Corte (1763) in what is now Piazza Roma. Both saw many angry confrontations between Ducalisti and Universalisti.
Count de Salis, who, with Archbishop Capacelatro, visited the duke at his masseria at San Basilio on their way from Bari to Tàranto in 1789, recalled Francesco III’s friendly, unaffected manners. Dinner at the masseria, the Casa del Duca, was “a plain, almost rustic repast”. During the meal, the archbishop sang the duke’s praises to de Salis for preferring country life to the pleasures of the court at Naples.
Next morning Duke Francesco took de Salis to see his flock of 3,000 sheep and the dairy farm where cheese was made from their milk. All were purebred pecore gentili, descendants of the white Apulian sheep admired by the Romans, although by this date the hardier black sheep with a higher milk-yield was becoming more popular. On the way to the sheepfold the party met a band of shepherds, who walked before their flock carrying a banner, and playing a horn, an oboe, bagpipes and a curious local drum. They were also shown the duke’s horses, mules and donkeys, at a stud near the masseria.
When Francesco III died in 1794, feudalism died with him, even if legally it lingered on for a few more years. His son, Petracone VII, died prematurely in 1796 and the next duke, Placido I, was only eleven. After the Universalisti welcomed the Neapolitan Republic, the city was sacked by Cardinal Ruffo’s Sanfedisti an
d swelled by 7,000 recruits from the Murgia dei Trulli, whose wilder elements ripped up floors in a search for hidden money, plate or jewels. Silks and linen, china and furniture, wine, cheese and salami, were flung out of the windows to gangs waiting below. Some women had rings pulled off their fingers or earrings torn out of their ears.
Predictably, Universalisti supported the Napoleonic regime. So did Duke Placido, whom Murat made Esquire to the King, a high court appointment. He died at Martina Franca in April 1815, a month after Murat’s fall.
In 1816 the restored Borbone monarchy issued a decree confirming the abolition of feudalism, although Placido’s sickly little son, Petracone VIII, retained the palace with much of his wealth. When he died in 1827 the male line of the Caracciolo del Leone became extinct, the title passing to his sister Argentina. Through her it went to the Dukes of Sangro.
Sold in 1914, the palace became the Municipio, but in recent years a programme of systematic restoration has given back the state rooms something of their charm. For over a decade a music festival celebrated throughout Europe has been held annually in the courtyard.
53
Francavilla Fontana
...immense, majestic and well built...
Giovanni Battista Pacichelli, “Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva”
ANOTHER GREAT FEUDAL FIEF in central Apulia was Francavilla Fontana. Unlike the Acquaviva and the Caracciolo, its lords, the Imperiali, were Northerners by origin, Genoese bankers. They also spent far more time at Naples. It is possible that their enormous wealth made for an easier relationship with the locals than at Conversano or Martina Franca, since they did not have to depend so much on feudal dues for their income.
The foundation of Francavilla Fontana was, once again, the story of finding a wonder-working icon. In 1310, Philip of Anjou, Prince of Tàranto, was hunting when he saw a stag kneeling by a fountain in a valley and shot at it; to his amazement, the arrow turned round in flight and came back to him. He had the valley searched, a small grotto being discovered which contained a portrait of the Madonna and Child, “painted in the Greek manner”. The Prince built a church and, to encourage people to settle around it, granted land to all comers, free from taxes for ten years, giving the settlement the name of Francavilla or ‘Free Town’. Many settlers were attracted by the miracles which were worked by the icon. The most famous was on 24 January 1520, when a severe frost and then snow threatened to destroy the crops; everyone prayed before the Madonna of the Fountain and, on rising from their knees, they found that every plant, every leaf and stem, was free from frost or snow. Given walls in 1364 and a castle in 1450, Francavilla Fontana eventually passed to the Borromeo. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo sold it in 1571, to feed the poor of Milan.
The purchaser was Davide Imperiali, who already possessed vast estates near Genoa and also in Spain, besides a huge banking for-tune. In the same year, 1571, he equipped four galleys at his own expense and took them to fight the Turks at Lepanto. As a reward, King Philip II made him Marquess of Oria. Davide’s son, Michele, acquired the lordships of Avetrana and Massafra in 1647, together with the title ‘Prince of Francavilla’.
Pacichelli is curiously unenthusiastic about the Princes of Francavilla, although he admits that their fief is one of the largest in the realm. However, he admires the wealth of the surrounding countryside – its grain, wine, oil, almonds and “other delights”, remarking also on the town’s “commodious, white-washed houses”. He visited it when Michele II was its Prince. This Michele, who reigned from 1676 until 1724, rebuilt the castle as a palace, one of the largest in Apulia. The basic plan remained unchanged, four square towers at each angle and crenellated battlements, but the interior was modernised, the famous Neapolitan architect Ferdi-nando Sanfelice designing the double staircase which leads to the great hall where the Imperiali displayed their collection of paintings. There were superb guest-rooms, and a small theatre. There was also Cardinal Renato Imperiali’s library, one of the best in Europe, which was open to the public.
The duomo at Francavilla, housing the miraculous icon, is large and Baroque, rebuilt in 1743 after an earthquake. Henry Swinburne describes it as “new, gay and well lighted; but so stuccoed, festooned and flowery, that the whole decoration is mere chaos.” He says the plans were drawn in Rome, but muddled up by a local architect. It has paintings by the prolific Domenico Carella, a native of the town. Among them is “Il Caduto del Fulmine” (“The Fall of the Thunderbolt”), commemorating the drama of Palm Sunday 1779. Six hundred of Francavilla’s leading citizens met in the church to discuss public affairs, the debate growing so heated that the Archpriest had to beg them “to respect the house of God.” A certain Angelo Cosimo Candita standing near the main door was particularly noisy. Suddenly a thunderbolt struck the church, killing Candita. His horrified friends commissioned the painting, which still hangs over the main doorway.
Andrea II (1724–38) was a benevolent ruler who gave the town a school and an orphanage. His son Michele III, fifth and last prince, spent most of his time in Naples where he rented the Cellamare Palace, entertaining seven or eight hundred guests a week; among them was Casanova, who commented that “this amiable and magnificent Prince... preferred the love of Ganymede to Hebe.” Even so, he made the steward of his Apulian estates build villages, schools and workshops, and turn scrub into farmland.
When Swinburne visited Francavilla Fontana, Prince Michele had told its citizens to make him welcome, with “honours sufficient to turn the head of a plain English gentleman.” Don Domenico, formerly Clerk of the Chamber to the Princess, showed him the town, a mob accompanying them throughout. He thought the houses “showy”, but admitted the main street would be “handsome even in a capital city.” As for the palace, “The apartments are spacious; but, as the owner has been absent above fourteen years, everything wears the face of neglect and decadency.” He gives a patronising account of what must have been the town’s most prized diversion:
I was left to take my afternoon nap, and in the evening entertained with the tragedy of Judith and Holofernes, acted by the young people of the town, in a theatre belonging to the castle. Their rude accent, forced gestures, and strange blunders in language, rendered their dismal drama a complete farce. When the heroine murdered the general, the whole house shook with thundering bursts of applause; the upper part of his body was hidden by the side scenes; the lower parts lay on a couch upon the stage, and in the agonies of death were thrown into such convulsions, kickings and writhings, as melted the hearts and ravished the souls of the attentive audience. Judith then came forward, and repeated a long monologue, with her sword in one hand, and a barber’s block dripping with blood, in the other. Never was a tragedy-queen sent off the stage with louder or more sincere acclamations.
Although the Imperiali family was very far from being extinct in Apulia, when Michele III died in 1782 he had no heirs within the fourth degree of consanguinity. The entire fief of Francavilla Fontana therefore reverted to the Crown, together with his other great castles and estates at Manduria, Massafra, Oria and Messagne. Despite having spent so much time away at Naples, he was deeply mourned. When visiting Oria, de Salis heard that Prince Michele had been a man of “rare knowledge and qualities”, who by his kindness had doubled the population of his estates, encouraging many peasants to leave their former lord and settle on his land. But even in 1789, only seven years after the Prince’s death, under the Crown’s management the Imperiali estates had begun to be less prosperous. Due to being run from Naples by bureaucrats who never set foot in Apulia, “the population had dropped by a third, the newly cultivated ground had deteriorated and the manufacturing industries were completely exhausted.”
Francavilla Fontana was very badly bombed in 1944, losing many of the historic “showy” houses next to the duomo. Nevertheless, the main street admired by Swinburne two centuries ago remains much as it was during his visit; the palace has been restored, and the little theatre where he saw the tragedy of Judith and Holofernes is still ther
e.
Among the other great houses that once belonged to the Imperiali Princes of Francavilla Fontana, the palace at Manduria also survives intact, although broken up into flats, a bank and a restaurant. The castles at Massafra and Messagne have been restored. Best preserved of all, however, is the beautifully maintained castle at Oria, which since 1933 has belonged to the Counts Martini Carissimo.
Part XIII
Risorgimento?
54
The Death of the Regno
To many it was as if the kingdom had disintegrated with Ferdinand II.
Sir Harold Acton, “The Last Bourbons of Naples”
KING FERDINAND OF THE TWO SICILIES died on 22 May, 1859, two months after his last visit to Bari. His death paved the way for the Risorgimento: the unification of Italy. Nowhere would he be more regretted than in Apulia where, like the Emperor Frederick and King Manfred, he had hunted in the forests. If he did not build castles, he keenly encouraged New Bari’s development, besides giving Apulian titles to three of his sons, the Counts of Bari, Trani and Lucera.
Nicknamed ‘Bomba’ for supposedly threatening to shell rebels into submission, a lie spread by enemies, Ferdinand was hated by liberals. He kept the absolute monarchy he had inherited, imprisoning his opponents. Mr Gladstone described his government as “the negation of God”, conveniently ignoring England’s own prison-hulks and record in Ireland. Yet no Southern ruler has been more popular. A big, bluff, virile man, he was a type whom the Mezzogiorno (southern Italians) understood, the perennial ‘capo’ or boss, constantly sticking cigars into deserving mouths. A Southerner to his fingertips, who spoke and thought in Neapolitan dialect, and whose staple diet was pasta, he always listened to petitions, granting generous pensions. If he was superstitious, making St Ignatius a field-marshal on full pay, so were his subjects.
An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia Page 26