Dear Readers,
January jotting with an Italian Connection:
Artist Michele Cascella was an important Italian artist born in Abruzzo in 1892. He had his first show in Milan in 1907 at the age of 15, and exhibited regularly at the Venice Biennale from 1924 until 1942. His works are held in major museums in Italy and Europe. Cascella spent much of the 1960’s and 70’s in Palo Alto, CA and Tuscany where he married his second wife, Isabel Lane, mother of Museo teacher Francesca Lane Kautz.
Among his collectors at that time were many prominent Californians, including two U.S. Presidents and the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. One of Cascella’s Portofino oils, in fact, hung over the fireplace in the Governor’s mansion. This exhibit features many oil and watercolor paintings from that era, though it also includes several early pastels, pen and ink and pencil drawings, ceramics and even some textiles. The S.F. Museo Italo-Americano is proud to present the first exhibit of his works in the U.S. in over 30 years.
Michele Cascella “Un pittore senza tempo” opens February 25–May 15.
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Arberesh, or Italo-Albanians, are descendants of refugees from Albania who fled to Italy to escape the Ottoman Turks in the 1400’s. Circa 1459 the King of the two Sicilies begged Albanian leader, Prince Skenderbeg, to help him fight the rebel princes in the area south of Rome. Out of gratitude for his successful help, the Albanians were invited to stay in Italy. The Prince and his fighting men were given many acres of land to keep for themselves.
The Albanian Prince and his men also helped save the Papacy at a time when the Sultan bragged he was going to use the Vatican as a stable for his horses. After the death of the Prince, many more Albanians fled to Italy and Greece to escape religious persecution by the Turks. Most of the Albanians were Catholic or Greek Orthodox and they were mistakenly thought to be Greek, hence their settlement near Palermo was named Piana dei Greci.
Today the village is called Piana degli Albanesi, because in 1928, Mussolini realized the misnomer and changed
the name. Through the years nearly one hundred villages in Italy were inhabited by the Arberesh. Many Arberesh migrated to the U.S.A. to such places as Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Detroit.
Albanian fits into the Indo- European language group as a stock language. It has two principal dialects, Gheg in the North and Tosk in the South. In the U.S.A. there are many Italo- Albanian societies. One of the oldest is the Contessa Entellina Society of New Orleans, which draws together those Italians and Sicilians whose ancestors and families have spoken a language known as “Gheg-Gheg.” In effect, Gheg is but another term for Albanian.
Another Albanian exodus took place in 1478, after the fall of Kruj into the hands of the Turks.
Venice helped to evacuate these Christians who wanted desperately to flee the Turks. Many settled in Calabria and in the communities of Acuaformosa, Castroregio, Cavallarizzo, Cervicato, Cerzeto, Civita, Falconara, Firmo, Frascineto, Lungro, Mongrassano, Plataci, Porcile, Rota, San Basilio, San Benedetto Ullano, Santa Caterina, San Giacomo, San Lorenzo, San Martino, Santa Sofia. More Albanian arrived in 1533 and many of them settled in Napoli and the Sicilian Island of Lipari.
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Bingo has been around since the 1500’s, when Romans were playing a form of it in their Provincial Lotteries.
When Italy was united, the Italian National Lottery Lo Giuoco Del Lotto d’Italia was organized and has been held, almost without a pause, at weekly intervals to this day. Bingo as we know it today is a form of lottery and is a direct descendant of Lo Giuoco Del Lotto d’Italia.
On its way to the New World, the game of Lotto took on a chic and youthful mode of play in France, Germany and England. By 1880’s Educational Lotto games became popular and were used to teach children numbers and spelling via such games as “Number Lotto” and “Spelling Lotto”.
European Lotto was “born again” as Bingo during the American depression.
In December of 1929 a New York toy salesman, Ed Lowe, drove to Jacksonville, Georgia. Lowe, with two employees and $1,000 capital, had set up his own toy company. Soon after, the market crashed and the outlook for his budding firm looked bleak.
A few miles from Jacksonville, Lowe saw the bright lights of a country carnival. He parked his car and got out. All of the carnival booths were closed except one, which was packed with people. The action centered on a table covered with numbered cards and beans. The game being played was a variation of Lotto called Beano. The winner received a small Kewpie doll.
Returning to his home in New York, Lowe bought some dried beans, a rubber numbering stamp and some cardboard. Friends were invited to his apartment and Ed Lowe assumed the pitch- man’s duties. Soon his friends were playing Beano with the same tension and excitement as he had seen at the carnival.
One player got more excited as each bean was added to her card. Finally there was one number left – and it was called! The women jumped up, became excited and instead of shouting “Beano”, yelled “BINGO!”
The earliest Lowe bingo game came in two variations – a twelve-card set for one dollar and a two-dollar set with twenty- four cards. The game was an immediate success and put Lowe’s company squarely on its
feet. By 1934 there were an estimated 10,000 Bingo games a week. During the 1920s and 1930s there were games played in American movie houses with dishes as prizes to help bring in the crowds.
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Coviglia is a frozen dessert I first tasted in a fancy Gelateria in Naples, on Via Caracciolo, about a block away from Mergellina Hydrofoil port, in the 1950’s.
Years later, Signor Ralph Monty of San Marcos, California, tracked down a “coviglia” recipe for me, which he obtained from a “cugino” who ran a small hotel just outside of Napoli. He wrote “I found out ‘coviglia’ isn’t anything unusual – we made them at the hotel and I didn’t even know it! It is nothing more than the Neapolitan version of the indi- vidual charlotte russe.
A small paper cup is used (the type that you usually find at a water fountain – about 4 or 5 oz). Fill the bottom third with regular whipped cream, then a piece of sponge cake which has been soaked in liquore of your choice, is stuck in the center, then a middle layer of chocolate whipped cream, and over this another layer of regular whipped cream. If you want to you can shake some ground amaretti over the top, then the whole thing is frozen. Et voila – all you have to do is eat.”
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Capo di Monte porcelain pieces or their reproductions once graced the sideboards of “Signoras” throughout the U.S.A., once their “marito” became economically upward mobile.
The Capo di Monte factory in Naples was one of the most important Italian factories of the eighteenth century. It is astonishing how much the factory accomplished during the short period from 1743 to 1759. Charles of Bourbon, the son of Philip V of Spain, became King of Naples and Sicily through his second marriage to Elisabeth Farnese. His third wife, Maria Amalia Christina, daughter of August II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony brought his seventeen porcelain services from the Meissen factory as a marriage gift in 1738. Charles was so delighted with his wife’s porcelain, he decided to found a porcelain factory in Naples.
Near his newly built castle in Capo di Monte, diligent experiments were conducted to produce the new paste. In 1743, the king founded his porcelain factory in Naples.
The paste was a fine white patè as in France and the king was satisfied with the paste mix. Soon Giuseppe Gricci was superintendent of the modelers, and the painters worked under Giovanni Caselli.
The paintings of Capo di Monte are exquisite. Giuseppe della Torre specialized in battle scenes, seascapes and land- scapes. Maria Caselli painted flowers and was also noted for her chinoiseries. The technical expertise appears to have been well advanced.
Capo di Monte modeled numerous figures. The old commedia dell’arte figures, much in demand, were modeled by Gricci. The street vendors, young lovers, men and women servants, and allegorical presentation of the seasons belong to the most outstanding works of art ever created in porcelain.
King Charles was an able monarch and his name, linked to the excavations of Herculaneum, has survived through posterity.
If you are ever in Naples you might want to visit the Museo e Gallerie Capodimonte. Set in a large wooded park, the 18th-century Capodimonte was built as a Bourbon homestead. It now houses a collection of big-name Renaissance paintings. Italian and Spanish works share space with furnishing and portraits from its days as a royal residence.
