Hit, Myth and Memory

The Capitoline Wolf

Like Alice in Wonderland herself, I've just had a trip down a wormwhole of knowing, losing and finding. These little moments present themselves to each of us everyday, if you are present to the images and their resonance as they pass your gaze. In googling images to do a post on my favourite piece of scultpture in Perth, I lost my way, but I have returned from my travels with something new. Let me explain. 

I live but one hundred metres away from a symbol of many of the layers of my cultural heritage (on my father's side). In the entry of the WA Italian Club on Fitzgerald St, is a statue of the Capitoline Wolf. One of my new lifelong companions is a book called The History of Images and Ideas in Italian Art. (I definitely found a corner of myself when I first read this book in my New York (New Jersey actually) landlord's basement. Nancy, advertising gem of 80s Madison Avenue and Paul, sculptor and fine art teacher at the Stevens Institute of Technology, owned the beautiful ante bellum brownstone in Hoboken we lived in from 2002 - 2006. They were divine and were in loco parentis. I adored that basement and its many books, but I digress)

When I learnt about the Capitoline Wolf, familiar to any tourist to Italy in the tacky placky versions, what blew my mind about this piece of sculpture and its million replicas, is that the wolf is Etruscan and made in the fifth century BC. It turns out that the little cherub twins, Romulus and Remus (Founders of Rome, children of Rhea Sylvia and Mars, thrown into the river by their jealous Uncle and suckled and saved by the she-wolf) were added 2000 years later. Have a closer look and you see the difference in the Iron Age style of the wolf and the late rennaissance, almost baroque style of the dear little plump suckling, twins. 

So here is this piece of Etruria sitting in Fitzgerald St Perth, there because it was given as a gift to the Italian community of Perth by Italy's Wartime fascist leader, Benito Mussolini  in 1937.  Mussolini considerd himself the Emperor of 'the New Rome' and he sent these life-size replicas all around the world to communities of Italians taking root in the soil of the new world. The inscription on the base reads "L'Italia agli Italiani della Western Australia" (Italy to the Italians of Western Australia).

So when you walk down Fitzgerald St, North Perth, you can be present to all these layers of Italian culture and history - Etruscan, Roman, Rennaissance, migrant, and less attractive, but no less real, Mussolini and fascism. 



Chimera of Arezzo. 400BC

Imagine my shock when I googled my Shewolf just now, and found that it is not Etruscan at all! The original statue which has lived in a Roman museum since the fifteenth century has been carbon dated and found to be made in the Carolingian period in the 14th century. That's a very long time ago, but not the same as my precious Etruscan emblem. Drats. Not all bad. Apparently Cicero speaks of a similar statue, so its probably a replica, or reinterpretation of something from classical Rome.  

L'ombra della sera. 400 B

Something lost, something found. I checked my other beloved Etruscan piece, the Chimera of Arezzo and it seems that it's dinkum (for now). Something lost, something found. But in my searching, I did find this quite extraordinary, haunting new friend, the Ombra d'ella Sera (Shadow of the Evening) made in the fourth century BC and looking like a Giacometti if ever I saw one. Does the Etruscan piece speak to the same existential hollowness that Giacometti seeks to explore? 

Tall Figures: Giacometti

The Etruscan piece, is thought to be a Lari - a friendly domestic spirit that protected home and hearth. Enigmatic, haunting, romantic.  I think the Etruscan version is about time and shadows and and enchanted world of protective and destructive forces. Giacometti said he was seeking to capture how he felt about his subjects. His is an emotive project, not a romantic one. So they look similar but are having very different conversations. 


The name"L'Ombra della sera" was given to my new friend by Italian poet Gabrielle D'Annunzio, collaborator with Debussy who was considered to be the forerunner to Mussolini (they call him the 'John the Baptist' of Italian fascism or 'the first Duce'). 


There we go with those  circles of human conversation again, layers of myth and memory.