9.4
The wild boar (Sus scrofa; Linnaeus, 1758), is native to the Mediterranean region, much of Central Europe and Asia, and the Nile Valley. Classified in 1927 by Oscar de Beaux and Enrico Festa, in their La ricomparsa del cinghiale nell’Italia settentrionale-occidentale, the Maremman (or Italian) wild boar – Sus scrofa majori – is one of two indigenous Italian subspecies, with Sus scrofa meridonalis, which is found in Sardinia; other subspecies, once common in northern Italy, are now extinct.
Most adult Italian boars weigh between 80 and 90 kilos, but in Tuscany male boars weighing in the region of 150 kilos have been shot. The Italian boar is generally 120–180cm in length, with a shoulder height of approximately 90cm. Its skin is thick, with deep pads of subcutaneuos fat and little blood supply, which gives the boar exceptional protection from bites and other surface injuries. Rigid bristles, in most cases dark grey or brown, cover the whole body except for parts of the head and the lower part of the legs; a finer undercoat of fur provides excellent insulation. In summer the animal will often roll in mud, which acts as a coolant, as protection from sunlight, as a balm for any wounds to the skin, and as a treatment for parasites. Should no standing water be available, the boar will urinate on the dry soil to create a muddy paste.
An omniverous species, Sus scrofa majori has twelve incisors, four canines, sixteen premolars and twelve molars. The distinctive upward-curving canines are a feature of the male only; the lower canines, which are the larger pair, normally grow to a length of between 15cm and 20cm, but 30cm has been recorded. Vegetable matter, such as grass, nuts, fruit and tubers, forms the bulk of the wild boar’s diet; it is particularly partial to acorns, and thus mature oak woods are its preferred habitat. The boar is very adaptable, however, and can colonise most environments where there is surface water and the consistency of the earth makes it possible to root for food. In addition to vegetable matter, the boar will eat insects, small reptiles, eggs, carrion and fish. A notoriously aggressive animal in defence of itself and its young, the wild boar will also occasionally hunt other animals for food; Sus scrofa majori has been known to kill young deer and sheep.
Foraging discontinuously from dusk until dawn, Sus scrofa majori causes great damage to cultivated land, which is one reason that the species is so widely hunted. During the day the boar will shelter in a shallow hole; it is the only hoofed species to dig burrows. Wild boars live in groups, or sounders, that typically contain around twenty animals, but may contain as many as fifty. Each sounder occupies a territory of approximately twenty square kilometres, and usually will remain within that territory unless shortage of food forces it to wander. The boars mark the borders of their territory with secretions from glands in the mouth and anal area.
9.5
Plenty
Oil on canvas; 150cm x 210cm
1977
Private collection, London
It could be argued that Plenty is the most important work in the career of Gideon Westfall, in that it was this picture that first brought him to public attention, when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1978. Inspired by the Dutch still life artists of the seventeenth century, and in particular by the work of Willem Claeszoon Heda, whom Westfall once termed ‘the supreme master of reflective surfaces’, this large painting is centred on a kitchen worktop. Carrots, potatoes, leeks, cloves of garlic and other vegetables are heaped on the dark stone surface, to the left of a sink in which two trout are curled in shallow and faintly bloodied water. Three knives lie on a wooden chopping block, beside a glass jar of olive oil and a white porcelain bowl. Beads of oil glisten on the flank of the jar; a bulb of water hangs from one of the taps; on the sill above the sink, in full sunlight, stands a half-full glass of red wine, smeared with fingerprints; a wine bottle is positioned at the right-hand edge of the picture, next to a loaf of white bread, the heel of which lies alongside, amid crumbs. Plenty made a strong impression on visitors to the 1978 show. It’s probable, however, that certain details of the picture were not noticed by all of its admirers. The scene is represented as if from the viewpoint of a person standing at the worktop, looking down. And if you look closely, you can see that someone is indeed standing there: the artist, whose face – tiny, distorted, surrounded by the reflections of the furnishings of the kitchen – is painted in the tap from which the drop of water is suspended. Look closely at the wine bottle and you will make out, above the label, almost as dark as the wine inside, the reflection of a human skull, apparently floating in mid-air.
One viewer who did not miss these details was the critic James Hannaher, who cited Plenty in ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be’, one of the essays collected in his book Looking Backwards, published in 1991. ‘Technical accomplishment,’ wrote Hannaher, ‘has often been the hallmark of kitsch, and this picture is premium-quality kitsch, a bombastic and sterile pastiche, overburdened with significance.’ In later years, Gideon Westfall would refer to Hannaher’s essay – which was first published in Ark magazine, in 1989 – as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. The viciousness of the London critics, he would say, had forced him into exile.
Plenty was sold before the exhibition closed, and still lifes by Gideon Westfall have readily found buyers ever since. It was a genre to which he returned many times, often on commission, and skulls appeared in several of these works. In the first half of his career the skull was invariably human; after the move to Castelluccio, however, animal skulls began to appear, and in the still lifes produced after 2002 one particular specimen predominates – the massive wild boar’s skull presented to him in that year by Carlo Pacetti, to join the previously donated bones of a fox, a porcupine, a deer and a variety of raptors.
To an interviewer who asked him about his predilection for the motif of the memento mori, Westfall responded that although he may once have had a penchant for this device, the boar’s skull was in fact no such thing. The great skull of the wild boar was no more a memento mori than an image of the hills around Castelluccio would be. ‘It is a beautiful landscape, a landscape made of bone,’ he said. The interview made reference to one of Westfall’s most striking images: a painting of the same dimensions as Plenty, showing the boar’s skull brightly lit against a plain brown background, in the manner of George Stubbs’ Whistlejacket. Created in 2005 and sold later that year to a collector in Berlin, it was exhibited in Wissenschaft/Kunst (Science/Art), an exhibition held in Köln in 2007. There it was seen by James Hannaher, who was later quoted – in an article published on the www.kunstwelt.de website – as saying that he had ‘begrudgingly admired’ its ‘grandiloquent austerity’.
9.6
‘If I don’t get this bloody thing finished today,’ moans Gideon, hunched on the stool, pricking Turone’s picture with a tiny brush, as if lancing a pus-filled abcess, ‘I’m going to take a jump off that tower and take my chances with Saint Zeno.’ His mood is not the best. He has been obliged to give up half an hour to the cleansing of Trim; Robert, when asked, drew the line at shampooing the dog.
‘And how is the patient this morning?’ Gideon at last enquires.
‘Much better.’
Gideon’s response to this is silence, broken after two or three minutes with: ‘The visit has not been unpleasurable.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Rather better than might have been expected.’
‘Good.’
‘If she were living within driving distance, I might enjoy seeing her every month or two.’
‘Get to the point, Gideon.’
‘But a solid week, then extra time – it’s too much.’
‘It’s been just a couple of hours a day. Of your choosing.’
‘More than that.’
‘You’ve hardly had to change your schedule.’
‘It’s too much. She’s relentless.’
‘I have no idea what you’re on about.’
‘The family,’ he sighs. ‘Even when she’s not talking about it, the subject is there,
all the time. The invisible cloud.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘When it’s just the two of us, it’s there, believe me,’ he states. ‘But I can’t unmake the past, and I’m not going to punish myself for not being Mr Happy Families. She wants a good show of remorse for not having liked her father. And she’s not going to get it.’ Grimly he attends to the painting, saying nothing more for a while, except to mutter: ‘Christ, I hate this damned thing.’ Then, after another long pause: ‘So why do you think she’s here?’
‘She’s told you. Curiosity.’
‘Wanted to take a look at me before it’s too late,’ he murmurs. ‘Strike while the iron’s still lukewarm.’
‘Something like that.’
Precise as a watchmaker, working with his face almost touching the canvas, Gideon continues to make minuscule adjustments. Ten minutes pass before he remarks: ‘Plain, isn’t she? I don’t mean her appearance. Though she’s no beauty. But that’s not what I meant. There’s a deep plainness to her. Stolid. Immensely decent, but stolid.’
‘Decent, yes.’
‘Literal-minded.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘And needy, as they say in magazines.’
‘Not that either.’
The sharpness of this reply makes Gideon halt his brush and turn his head, as deliberately as a CCTV camera. He smiles and says: ‘Oh, I think she is.’
Robert returns the gaze indifferently, and forces it away. ‘I need to update your blog,’ he tells Gideon, in the tone of a doctor with a recalcitrant patient. ‘We haven’t added anything this month. Any ideas?’
Gideon sits upright, braced by the change of subject. Wiping the brush, he looks up at the skylight as if to receive inspiration. ‘How about: Ingres and landscape – his antipathy towards it?’
‘Done it. Three years ago.’
‘Nobody will remember.’
‘The internet does not forget.’
Hands on knees, staring at the floor, Gideon ponders. ‘Well, I read something a couple of nights ago: “I have discovered that our misfortunes derive from a single source: that we are incapable of staying still in our rooms.” Pascal. Words to that effect. Apply the idea to Morandi.’
‘You did Morandi in January: “The intolerable struggle with bottles and paint”.’
‘Yes, but this is a different angle.’
‘You did him twice last year.’
‘Really?’
‘Believe me. A break from Morandi is required.’
‘OK. Maillol – I’ve been thinking about Maillol.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Maillol and Dina Vierny. The idea of the muse.’
‘Not sure this is the best moment to be writing about muses.’
‘It wouldn’t be about me. Purely Maillol and Dina. Nothing personal in it.’
‘Nonetheless, circumstances being what they are, I think it’s better to wait. Good topic, but one for the future.’
‘If you say so.’ He scans the still life, as if looking for a face in a crowd. ‘Restoration – abuses of,’ he proposes.
‘Go on.’
‘An item on that tomb in Lucca. The della Quercia. Something along the lines of: “This sculpture hasn’t been restored, it’s been flayed alive.” Might stir up a bit of trouble. Get myself banned from Lucca.’ Grinning, he wiggles his eyebrows, relishing the prospect.
‘Fine. Shall we do it in the next couple of days?’
‘Do it now, I say. Take my mind off this thing. Go and fetch a notebook. I’ll dictate as I daub.’
And at that moment Teresa calls: ‘Can you meet me at lunchtime?’ she asks.
9.7
Teresa is sitting on a bench by the pool in the Giardini Pubblici. Nearby, on the grass, a boy is twirling a baton, throwing it high, catching it behind his back; another boy lies under the chestnut tree, smoking, with a snare drum beside him. Hearing footsteps on the gravel, Teresa turns and sees Robert; she takes off her sunglass and smiles, shielding her eyes with a hand. The smile is almost a wince.
‘How was your morning?’ she asks.
‘Same as ever. And yours?’
‘Unbelievably exciting.’ She puts the sunglasses back on, and looks ahead, where there is nothing but the pool and some dusty bushes and the empty sky to see.
The boy with the drum starts patting a rhythm on it with his fingertips. ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’ Robert suggests.
‘Sure,’ she says, but she doesn’t move. She slides a hand into his and says she’s sorry.
‘For what?’ he asks.
Turning in the direction of the drummer, she releases his hand; she slips a finger under one lens and wipes. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she says. ‘My head is a mess.’
‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘You’ll sort it out.’
She says they should not see each other for a while; she needs time to think what is best for herself and for Renata.
‘It won’t be for a while. We both know that,’ he answers.
She watches the boy with the baton: he passes it swiftly around his back, under a leg, then drops it. His friend laughs and smacks the drum. ‘Are you angry?’ says Teresa.
‘Beneath this calm exterior I am a seething mass of rage,’ he tells her.
She faces him, presenting his bulbous twinned reflection. ‘You have a right to be angry,’ she states.
But he is disappointed rather than angry, and the disappointment is not very sharp. ‘No,’ he says. ‘This was going to happen.’
She nods, considering. ‘One day,’ she agrees.
They sit on the bench for a minute more. The drummer takes a call on his mobile; baton-boy takes this as a cue to make a call; they are both talking very loudly. ‘Let’s go,’ says Robert.
They walk down Via dei Giardini, and neither of them says anything. At the Corso she kisses him on the cheek; she’ll ring him in a day or two she says. Robert watches her as she hurries along the Corso and disappears into the Palazzo Campani; and that’s the end. A few months from now she will have left Castelluccio and be back with her husband.
9.8
The Campani family are recorded as wine producers as far back as the early thirteenth century, when they owned vineyards around the town of Rufina, twenty kilometres to the east of Florence. By the start of the following century the Campani had also become active in Florence itself, where they put a considerable amount of capital into silk-weaving and banking, while expanding their land-holdings in the vicinity of Rufina and acquiring vineyards in northern Chianti. In 1395, Piero Campani became rector of the Arti dei Vinattieri, the city’s winemakers’ guild; under his guidance, the Campani vineyards became as lucrative as any in central Italy.
In 1486 the head of the Campani family, Tommaso, entered into a partnership with Cesare Marchini, a Volterra-born merchant who specialised in the importation of luxurious fabrics, particularly the heavy and much-prized silk known as zetani. Just six months earlier, Marchini’s elder son, Piero, had married Lucrezia Vielmi, the sole heir to the substantial remnant of her family’s wealth. The marriage of Lucrezia and Piero lasted little more than a year: in March 1487 he died of a fever in Barcelona, where he had gone as his father’s representative. In 1490, aged twenty, Lucrezia Marchini married Michele Campani, the only son of Tommaso. Shortly afterwards, construction of the Palazzo Campani began; it was completed in 1500, and was the largest private residence ever built in Castelluccio.
Palazzo Campani is a three-storey house, with a lightly rusticated façade that has an entrance arch and two round-arched windows on the ground floor, and five windows on each of the upper storeys; there are no columns or pilasters on the façade, but the elegant central courtyard is colonnaded. The architect was Simone di Foiano, whose name is associated with no other building; it has been suggested that the design of the Palazzo Campani might have been adapted from plans by Giuliano da Maiano, possibly for a house in Florence that remained unbuilt.
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sp; For several years Michele Campani divided his time between Florence and Castelluccio, then in 1525, having entrusted control of the family business to his twin sons, he and Lucrezia retired to the Palazzo Campani. It remained in the possession of the Campani family until 1920, when the unmarried Paolo Campani died there at the age of 92, almost insolvent. The last of the Campani vineyards, having been mismanaged for decades, had been sold by his grandfather many years before. Nowadays the ground floor of the palazzo is occupied by the Banca Popolare di Volterra; most of the space on the upper floors has been leased by lawyers, doctors, a property agency and other small businesses, but the largest room – the music room – is unoccupied. Stretching the full width of the first floor, the music room is notable for its trompe l’oeil fresco, painted in 1642 by Bartolomeo Ballarini. Covering an entire wall, the fresco simulates an ornate loggia that gives a view from Castelluccio towards the slopes of Le Cornate di Gerfalco and Poggio di Montieri; the young man and woman gazing over the balustrade are Massimiliano and Matilda Campani, whose parents commissioned the picture. Bartolomeo Ballarini was a pupil of Giovanni Gaspare Lanfranco, whom he might have assisted in painting the Assumption of the Virgin on the dome of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome; Ballarini painted similar scenes in palazzi in Genoa, Siena and Volterra. The other conspicuous features of the music room are its two huge chandeliers, which are festooned with glass figs and warblers; they were made on the Venetian island of Murano, to a design by Paolo Campani. The music room may be visited, by appointment with the Banca Popolare di Volterra, every Wednesday afternoon from 3pm to 4pm, between Easter and the end of September.
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