"The Painted Palace" by Mary Jane Cryan - review
In “The Painted Palace”, Mary Jane Cryan gives readers a unique insider view of life in the historic town of Vetralla, near Viterbo, and the sprawling former noble residence of the Piatti family, where she has chosen to make her home.
A passionate researcher, Irish-American Cryan traces the story of the lives of former owners and residents of the Palace, a “huge building consisting of 85 rooms on 5 levels and including annexes such as cantinas, gardens, workshops, storage areas, stables and passageways” that included a silk worm breeding area in the servants' quarters on the attic floor. The Piatti family, industrialists from Piedmont, purchased the Vetralla palace in 1893 and proceeded to restructure it, incorporating several adjoining older houses, a convent and an ancient chapel. As its nickname suggests, the edifice was lavishly frescoed, not only internally, but also externally, on the southern wall overlooking the gardens, with a brown and white checkerboard design and trompe l'oeil archways, balconies and windows.
The author gives us tantalizing glimpses of the lives of the moneyed proprietors, who owned a string of estates and princely homes that included the Bisentina Island on Lake Bolsena, which they transformed into a botanical garden, Villa Carpegna in Rome and their show-piece summer residence, Villa Quittengo in Piedmont, where people like Italian statesman Count Cavour and the popular Italian writer Edmondo De Amicis came for prolonged holidays.
Among the celebrities connected with Palazzo Piatti, Cryan cites the sculptor Pietro Canonica, an artist much in demand among the crowned heads of Europe during the first half of the 20th century, and his adopted daughter, Olga Matteini, an opera singer. She married the Piatti heir, Flaminio, and the couple gambled way the family fortune so that eventually the Vetralla palace had to be sold. Consequently, it was split up into units that included a club for Fascist party members, a nursery school, a refuge for homeless families during the Second World War and, more recently, individual apartments, occupied mainly by foreign residents who appreciate its history and artistic value.
Cryan dedicates a chapter to “the Secret Gardens”, hidden behind the now faded south-facing facade. This is now used for summer concerts, theatrical performances and dinner events.
The concluding chapters focus on lesser known monuments and archaeological sites in the surrounded Tuscia area, like the well-preserved ancient Roman theatre at Ferento (near Viterbo), the mysterious stone figures scattered around various sites and the Etruscan sphinx discovered at Vulci a few years ago.
Most intriguing of all Cryan's “discoveries” is the “Boston Michelangelo” - a little fresco discovered in a niche in the Vetralla Church of San Pietro during restoration work. This mirrors a drawing of a “Pietà” that the Renaissance genius is believed to have made for either Vittoria Colonna or Cardinal Reginald Pole. The original is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston.
“The Painted Palace” (in English with Italian translation) follows Cryan's other books dedicated to the Tuscia ( Etruria) area including “Etruria Travel, history and Itineraries in Northern Lazio”, “The Irish and English in Italy's Risorgimento”, “Affreschi Exploring Etruria”, a collection of essays written with Norman M. Roberson, “Vetralla the English Connection” and “Travels to Tuscany and Northern Lazio”, documenting the pastoral visits to the Tuscia area in the 18th century by Cardinal Henry Stuart, last of the Stuart line, who brought many benefits to the town and whose bust can be seen in Vetralla Town Hall and “Etruria Storie e Segreti” (in Italian).
The Painted Palace is published by Etruria Editions and Edizioni Archeoares. 120 pages. €5.99-€10
