Strawberries

 Painting by Jacopo Ricci[2] / Ref.: 0_5458846_125008.jpg 

“ …capability to set rules, that is to establish relationships which are sanctioned according to merit. It is the capacity inherent in a primary citizenship, whose connections don’t look after a protection from the standards of the secondary citizenship, usually known as ‘State law’…”[1] 

“ …When being born (zero time) a baby comes in contact with someone else, outside his own, or her, own body-thought, and immediately sanctions that offer in terms of pleasure or displeasure, the displeasure referred to a not well-being : crying does sanction displeasure and dissatisfaction, sleeping does sanction pleasure and satisfaction.

Afterwards (time one) a baby gets to distinguish an ex-citement coming to satisfaction from that one not coming to satisfaction : on his own, or her own a baby can’t satisfy any hunger, vary the light or any outside noise. Also a few organic dysmetabolisms with suffering, diabetes for example or a benign epilepsy can’t yet be diagnosed.

It is in a time-two that one, or more than one, partners can be recognized as a favourable physical presence because they allow the satisfying of a wish or ex-citement otherwise not possible. Accepting someone as a partner in one’s own principle of pleasure – it is the conjugation – and working it out in ‘satisfaction’ is then one and only goal with no coming back.

Any further experiences of pleasure / displeasure will be judged compared with the surplus of satisfaction. The sedation itself will function, from now on, as a surrogate and a substitute, then disappointing.

As a matter of fact a child can now single out his own, or her own well-being in a physical presence of the partner, or partners, arranging his own, or her own thought-body (work-one : offering one’s own thought-body to receive satisfaction is an ‘outside investment’, i.e. work) to receive satisfaction. It is already ‘work’, as it is an individual processing of an unconscious-who-can-no-longer-wait. And it is an investment, i.e. economically oriented.

In a time-three, a child gets to finish (work-two) his own, or her own, demand to the partner.

It is infact in the acknowledgement of this concluding satisfaction, in which a child has been calling, favouring and propitiating the partner to give an offer in order to achieve the goal that he, or she can experience ‘I’, as powerful toward the partner.

Getting to the words can speed up the appointment with the partner, only if that can be linked with a further surplus of satisfaction.

Any data on these four times are irreplaceable in the care of psychopathologies…”[3]  

                                                                                           Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – April 22, 2020 

[1] “Il pensiero di natura”, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni 1998, p.26

[2] Independent painter in Valenza-Alessandria (Italy), Jacopo Ricci is born in Milan in ‘80s (1988). He loves painting since he was a child but does turn on coloured pencils and brushes just at his Superior degree. He nowadays cooperates with online magazines, also for on demand commissions. In 2018 he illustrated ‘Dottor Tremarella’  and ‘Guarda Oltre’ (published by the author himself). In 2019 began also working on  serigraphy.

[3] “Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no ?”, Marina Bilotta Membretti 2014 ISBN 978-88-91081-63-6 Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso SpA, ‘Un inizio in quattro tempi?’ p.28

The hell of Beelzebub[2], with mystics and indifferent people.

The fresco of Beelzebub in Bolognini Chapel.

“… In case the chapel placed in the church of Saint Petronio, of which the testator himself is supporter, at the time of his death wouldn’t be finished and painted, shoul be carried out by the executors of his will, as follows : 

building a double door, the two leaves half closed and half open, as a grating with nails in golden copper and, below, with tondoes including different characters as you can see in the door of Saint Mary of Porta Ravegnana. 

The chapel shall then be painted by a good painter as follows : the ceiling shall be light blue, in a good colour of the price of two ducats per pound, with golden stars as you can see in the chapel placed in the church of  the Lord of Sabina, 

and on the side wall of the same chapel toward the square of the Municipality of Bononia, up to the middle of the wall, shall be painted all the pains of hell, the most awful possible, 

and, on the other wall of the chapel, shall be painted the histories of three Magi kings, occupying the whole space…“[3]  

On February 10, 1408, almost at the end of the work, Bartolomeo Bolognini so dictated his testamentary wills to the notary Lodovico Codagnelli : descendant from a family of silk makers in Lucca who came to Bologna in the middle of XIII century, as attracted by taxes concessions offered to silk spinners and having great profits by that, in 1.404 he acquired the patronage on  the fourth and last chapel in Saint Petronio from the municipality of Bologna which built the basilica. 

Bartolomeo Bolognini was not then in his deathbed, and infact the coming years would have kept him aside further satisfactions, notwithstanding he did never engage in politics in those so unsteady years and not only in Bologna, so that his elegant town house – placed near the two spinning machines authorized to draw the hydraulic power for the two mills from Savena channel - could receive distinguished guests both of the town and of the antipopes. 

The Church infact was going through, since the death of pope Gregorio XI in 1.378 and the following election of pope Urbano VI, one of the most severe crisis of its history, culminating with the election of the antipopes at Avignone from dissident cardinals who didn’t recognize the legitimate pontifex of Rome, notwithstanding they acted side by side, as if Avignone had its own legitimacy : added to that, in 1.409 cardinal Cossa got to collect a Council in Pisa which led to the election of a third pope, also not legitimated, and named Alessandro V, which in January 1.410 made his entrance in Bologna, so become the third papal seat. 

As a supporter of one of the chapels of the Basilica, Bartolomeo Bolognini took charge of an official aim : and we wonder when he points out in his wills that “… pains of hell should be painted, awful the most is possible…“ 

As a matter of facts, Middle Ages excluded the possibility of Purgatory. 

At the center of fresco, clearly visible to the bystanders, here is Beelzebub, a meticulous officer but not able to procreate, lacking any sex : while serving a real Agency, time has gone over on earth where any sinner could still mend his, or her own ways, by judging the evil done. 

‘Thinking, a synthesis capacity and specific for humans, here is no more possible, as this is the    kingdom of the indifference : and of the no-difference, among sexes, too. 

The betrayers – as Judas and Brute – are the most bitterly punished, in their own indifference to the benefit received and to their benefactors : they are condemned ‘not‘ to be recognized, gulped down at the entrance and rejected at the exit, in an in-different and endless automatism of Beelzebub-machine - grindstone, mill or ‘tortellini machine‘ – which doesn’t distinguish an ‘object‘ from a living creature, and woe to end up in those torture gears! 

Adulators, greedies, second-rates, enchanters, seducers usually neglected on earthly live, here on the the contrary are condemned to awful penalties right on the body which they were so much offending. And looking at the fresco is cathartic indeed, and not worrying about : even that does still collect consents, as you may see on satisfied faces of whom, nothwithstanding the ticket paid, goes out from the chapel and fully approves. 

To put an end to that mess, Sigismund emperor of Luxembourg then started a Council at Constance until 1.417 when, deposed the last popes, the sole legitimate successor of Saint Peter was elected as Martin the 5th : in May 1.415, date of deposition of Johannes the 23rd it may also be considered the end for frescoes of Bolognini family Chapel, to whom now it would convenient dismantling, fastest as possible, scaffolds and internal frames, just not to go on decorating with the picture of the latest anti-pope of Bologna. 

As a matter of facts, the lunette on the right is still the only unfinished part of the Chapel. 

                                                    Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - January 25, 2020

[1] The first ‘tortellini machine‘ has been patented at Bologna by Zamboni & Troncon, factory founded by two workers coming from the Military Arsenal which in 1912 got for that machine the Prize Umberto I : a model has been exposed in 2015 at Milan, at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia in the itinerary #FoodPeople, together with Italian ancient menus and contemporaries.

[2] The program of frescoes on the left wall of the chapel were cited in the Bartolomeo Bolognini will, and carried out by Giovanni Da Modena after 1408, when he was called to replace the painter Jacopo di Paolo who had to drop the work.

[3] Although not an original, the will of Bartolomeo Bolognini does remain in a few copies, both by Archivio di Stato in Bologna, and by Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, and also by Archivio della Fabbriceria di San Petronio (Libro rosso III dei testamenti). The “church of Lord of Sabina” refers to the church of Saint Clemente, into the Collegio di Spagna founded by card. Gil de Albornoz, archbishop of Sabina.

In the picture the great partition wall of 1529, fairly considered the most famous Renaissance fresco of Swiss, a work not just given by Bernardino Luini, but to him commissioned and paid as his own payment receipts to the Sponsors can document.

It is about the rising again : a human experience, then an unavoidable thought, ascribable indeed to an added value and to a further profit. However it is easily rejected… The Sun rises without any work, (that is, it cannot resurrect).

I was thinking about the above, when I was in front of the complicated fresco made by the great master Bernardino Luini, excellent disciple of Leonardo Da’ Vinci and here in his professional maturity making him a demanded teacher throughout  Lombardy, Piemonte and up to the Swiss Canton Ticino.

We are in ‘Santa Maria degli Angioli’, charming and simple Romanesque church, standing just a little back on the Lugano lake-front : what visitor would you ever expect, coming to this largest partition wall, about one hundred ten square meters and richly painted, without any visual pause on which a lively city is described, with garnished horses and elegant knights, armed guards and mothers with children, passers-by and common men and women, merchants busying, notaries and shopkeepers while bustling about their daily and provincial jobs ?  

If it weren’t for those refined spears, pointed at the three men on the Cross, half-naked and grieving but up there where any glance can’t get. Who ever infact would like to be in their place?

The heresy therefore is winding and winking, indulgent however among the Observants, minor friars coming from Milan, who around 1473 were  well received at Lugano due to their work of pacification accomplished among the opposite city factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines, and to their own assistance to plague patients : the convent was founded in 1490 and the first stone of the church was placed in 1499.

Loyal to the ‘Bernardinian module’ which had single nave churches equipped with a partition wall high to the ceiling in order to separate the area reserved for religious, the believers of Lugano were coming here and got Eucharist, but they were assailed by dark sermons and nihilism. Resurrection was an uncomfortable item indeed, in these churches and we find it just allocated into a little corner, upwards on the right side of the fresco, like into a  cupboard under lock and key.

In brief, on that enormous and colourful blackboard, the ‘lectio’ clearly says to the assembly to deal with what everyone is entitled to on Earth, so dodging the divine punishment but, on the other hand, thanking the Sponsors, who renewed in 1496 that agreement in remembrance of the peace already drawn up in 1445 among  the factions of Lugano, to get an earthly Power in the name of God.

The title for the fresco is ‘Passion and Crucifixion’, where Jesus is  diminished to just one of the three men and the ‘imitatio Christi’ – spoken ironically indeed – can’t be a human ambition, but only a leaden servant premonition.

It is too early for that Council in Trento which in the second half of ‘500 had to recall the strength of  Carlo Borromeo Cardinal and Bishop of Milan, maybe the only one protagonist, in order to put out the greediness of heresies culminated in the Schism of the Protestant reform ?

Engaged without any energy saving on such a vast field, that saint and also so torn man could at least indicate, by his own humanity, that resurrecting is then possible.

Neverthless, without any delegation.

                                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – August 5, 2019

From 'Speak Book Date' by Alessandra Pagani.