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Spectator's Journal
Can the World Survive Without Italians?
Survive, yes, but not thrive.
Still pining over our combined pilgrimage-vacation to Rome last year, my wife and I decided to participate in the Year of Italian Culture 2013 at the National Gallery here in Washington, D.C. There we were able to gaze upon Michelangelo’s David-Apollo, which is on loan to the Gallery from the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, through March 3. It is tastefully displayed in a small rotunda all its own.
The last time this marvelous statue came to America was in 1949, coinciding with Harry Truman’s inaugural reception.
The statue, a male nude, is reminiscent of the artist’s earlier, more famous statue of David but tantalizes with ambiguity since the artist stopped work on it at the point where it could have become, according to his own inclination, either the biblical character or the pagan god.
Evidently, the great artist had a habit of leaving sculptures incomplete or non-finito with a view to letting the imagination run wild as to what might have actually emerged from the marble.
Karen Wilkin, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes “that Michelangelo is supposed to have said that he simply ‘carved away everything that wasn’t the sculpture.’”
In the David-Apollo there is an undefined form below the right foot which elevates it, thus bending the knee. The hips and shoulders shift into a twisting or spiraling movement, a pose called the serpentinata or serpentine. The left arm reaches across the chest and the face turns in the opposite direction.
Michelangelo left the flesh area unfinished, revealing chisel marks all over. He also left incomplete the tree trunk supporting the body as well as a rectangular area on the subject’s back which might have become either a quiver or a sling depending whether or not this was to be Apollo or David. The form or lump under foot might have become the head of Goliath. Again, the subject of this work of sculpture is simply unresolved.
We were informed that a 1553 inventory of the collection of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici called the work “an incomplete David by Buonarroti,” a common Florentine symbol of resistance to tyranny. However, previously, in 1550 Michelangelo’s biographer Giorgio Vasari called the statue “an Apollo who draws an arrow from his quiver.”
Without delving into the politics of Florence which are, well, Florentine, it should be noted that Michelangelo, like Machiavelli, was a supporter of the republican cause against the Medici family but then, again, like Machiavelli, tried to curry favor with the powers that be after the republic was demolished. This adds more complexity to the mystery of David-Apollo.
Yes, just another Italian masterpiece by a great Italian master. For sure, it is a small one but delightful and more than sufficient to enlighten a cold, gray Saturday afternoon in Washington.
Whatever would we do without Italians? Let us not forget Verdi, Puccini, Pavarotti, Caravaggio, Bernini, Dante, St. Francis, and the “red priest” — Vivaldi. Yes, I’m free-associating and could go on and on. I could do a whole riff on Italian-Americans such as Frank Sinatra, Marcella Hazan, Joe DiMaggio, and Francis Ford Coppola (OK, partial credit here for only the first and second installments of The Godfather trilogy.)
The Italians have given us great art, sculpture and architecture (think Palladio). They even make some pretty decent films.
And then there’s the magnificent culinary experience of Italian cooking that makes life worth living wherever first-, second- or third-generation Italians have pulled out their family recipes and opened a restaurant. Growing up in South St. Louis, I was a stone’s throw away from the Italian neighborhood, “The Hill,” which had fine Italian restaurants, across all price ranges, block after block. These spilled over into my neighborhood. Some fellow would get off the boat, open a storefront restaurant without even a liquor license. The place would be jammed in a matter of weeks, the liquor license was obtained and soon he opened a second establishment.
One of our favorite restaurants on The Hill, Cunetto’s, used to be a pharmacy. The owners cooked their own dishes during lunch breaks. It was so good they eventually moved into the restaurant business full time. The place is always packed and the bar overflowing with good cheer and great expectations of the meal to come.
There is, however, a dark cloud looming over the Year of Italian Culture 2013. The Italians have one of the lowest birth rates in the world with a fertility rate of 1.38, slightly higher than Germany but lower than France. Japan is at 1.32.
About the Author
G. Tracy Mehan, III served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the administrations of both Presidents Bush. He is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
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Bob Grant| 2.4.13 @ 8:16AM
Best food in the World. Period. Bar none!
What would the World be like without Sunday Gravy? ....fahgettaboudtit!
loulou| 2.4.13 @ 12:40PM
You can try but you will not be able to get a bad meal in Italy. Impossible. They are a good looking people who enjoy life and are the best designers in the world.
Bob Grant| 2.4.13 @ 10:38PM
Loulou,
Designers? Can you say Tower of Pisa? But, yea, how can you go wrong with Italian food?
Occam's Tool| 2.5.13 @ 1:18PM
Bob: I grew up in Niles, IL. I have a fondness for the Tower of Pisa. Look up Niles, IL to find out why.
Stephen Foulard| 2.4.13 @ 5:55PM
In October 2011, I wrote a series of articles on (mostly) European history for a project called "White History Month" for The Michael Berry Show. The articles were posted on his website while excerpts were read on-air. The ninth in the fifteen-part series was on Italy, and cuisine was referenced in its second paragraph, quoted in full below.
"The shape of Texas makes a great belt-buckle, and the agricultural marketers have done pretty well with the shape of France, but nothing else on the map identification quiz beats Italy for recognizability: restaurants everywhere have the distinctive boot on their menus, on posters, on their pizza delivery boxes. It’s as if the Almighty Himself had wanted Italian take-out to succeed, and considering that Italian is the father of European cuisines, it doesn’t involve much hyperbole to suggest that He did. (In case you think this is just jingoistic nationalism speaking, please remember that not only am I French, not Italian, but my dad was a French chef.) Paleo-anthropologists will tell you that Homo habilis invented the knife, but the Italians invented the fork."
Le Cracquere| 2.4.13 @ 8:23AM
"Can the world survive without Italians?" The answer is a resounding "No," gentlemen. Not while there's still so much furniture in the world to move.
RJ| 2.4.13 @ 8:26AM
Most of the world has had a dramatic increase in population in the last 200 years. The possibility that it may go down somewhat doesn't mean that there won't be Italians, Germans, Americans or other nationalities in the future; just that there might be fewer of them. There were about 130 million Americans during WWII, less than 70 years ago. Now US population is over 310 million. In the 1960s, the world's poorest countries were usually those viewed as "over-populated" and struggling with a population explosion. A strong economy demands innovation and increased productivity; not necessarily an ever-growing population. The historic Italians mentioned in this article and Italy's golden age existed when there were far fewer Italians.
7-08| 2.4.13 @ 8:38AM
We have gotten along without them for 1500 years or so. Why even bring this up?
fmm| 2.4.13 @ 10:56AM
That timing coincides with the last time they offered anything of value.
Occam's Tool| 2.5.13 @ 1:17PM
Fermi was 20th Century, Rita Levi-Montalcini worked into the 21st. (I particularly like Rita because she was an Italian Jew, protected from the Nazis by her Italian neighbors, doing Nobel Prize winning research in her lab under terrifying external conditions.)
Tony is my buddy; everyone back off. I like Italians. Their low birth rate is a TRAGEDY of secularism and modernism.
Anthony| 2.4.13 @ 1:18PM
Hey Cazzo, my ancestors were living in palazzos with indoor plumbing for a millennium while yours were still defecating in the same caves they were eating in.
CJW| 2.4.13 @ 3:17PM
Antonio
He has improved on his ancestors. He is living in a trailer defecating in the back yard by the creek.
Rich D| 2.4.13 @ 10:06AM
You haven't eaten my spumoni.
Michele San Pietro| 2.4.13 @ 11:31AM
I am an Italian by passport but an American at heart, and I think Americans remain the best people in the world. The world would simply not exist without them. As for Italians, right now there are very few things that make me proud of being one of them.
Anthony| 2.4.13 @ 1:08PM
OK Michele, you're right about Americans, but come on, AC Milan is enough to make any Italian proud.
Drunken Sailor| 2.4.13 @ 3:30PM
Had a blast in Rome and Naples. 3 years in La Maddelena was the final straw. I was hooked.
Michele San Pietro| 2.5.13 @ 11:43AM
Yes, Anthony, it's my favorite team and it's definitely one of the very few things I can still be proud to be an Italian about.
Frank Drackman| 2.4.13 @ 12:32PM
I'm sure our neighbors from the South will take up any slack in the Organized Crime(hey, its Organized at least) Industry...
Frank "Vito" Drackman
Petronius| 2.4.13 @ 12:50PM
And how would we learn any philosophy without Yogi Berra? But middle class White people everywhere are giving up and not having families because the Smart people who control the culture and the government won't allow Us to accumulate any wealth. It's that damned sand box mentality of the economically illiterate boobs who let Keynesian advocates pull their chains and they vote for liberals and high taxes. Between that and the Mafia, how can the average Italian be blamed for not reproducing? Same here. This will not change until we all say arrivadirci to Liberalism.
Rich D| 2.4.13 @ 4:02PM
You're not a paisano - you meant arrivederci.
Anthony| 2.4.13 @ 1:03PM
Ah bene, another besotted turista Americano.
But you are correct Mr. Mehan, a world without Italians is a world without sunshine, joy and porchetta panni.
I shall do my best to help populate the peninsula whence my next visit. I'll tell my wife, the Irish guy at TAS made me do it.
Drunken Sailor| 2.4.13 @ 4:53PM
You may end up Castrato but at least you'll have a nice singing voice.
KittyAmerica| 2.4.13 @ 2:49PM
Can the world survive without any Western Civilization? What about America or Great Britain? Our borders are being erased and we are going to be one world just like the globalists planned. Only non-white nations get to maintain their ethnicity and identity; like Japan, Iran, and Israel.
Occam's Tool| 2.5.13 @ 1:12PM
Israel is kinda white, Kitty. So am I.
Occam's Tool| 2.5.13 @ 1:11PM
We need Non-Islamic Western Europeans. They are dying out. THERE IS NO Western European country with a non-Islamic replacement birth rate. That may make Jack in Wi. happy, but it does NOT make me happy. ZPG or less sucks.