THE INTERIOR

The walls are completely painted and illusionistically divided into four bands.

The lower band depicts simple, modular geometric squares, while in the two central bands the theme of the marsh is developed. Algae, marsh reed roots, but above all fish, frogs and turtles move in the muddy bottom of the Bentivoglio valley. Water lilies and rushes dwell in the water, while ducks fly overhead.

The upper band depicts the signs of the zodiac and the constellations, within an illusionistic architectural structure, against a blue sky barely illuminated by stars and above ribbons with Latin inscriptions indicating their names. The ceiling is framed by two continuous, fluttering ribbons that intertwine, display short Latin inscriptions and highlight at the corners the personifications of the four winds: mistral, libeccio, scirocco and grecale. The winds have gilded faces and long wavy hair, illuminated by the silver pastille, as well as the wind they emit from their narrow, almost clenched mouths. In the east, inscriptions are found at the base of the sun rays that illuminate the moon and the planet earth, at the point where Italy is visible. These inscriptions read: VITA . LUX . CALOR . SALUS. To the west, inscriptions are found at the base of a starry sky, made of stars illuminated by silver leaf. These inscriptions read: PAX . UMBRA . SILENTIUM . OVIES. It is worth pausing to admire the beauty of the moon depicted as a sleeping blue maiden, illuminated in its eight phases by the silver tablet and surrounded by cartouches with Latin inscriptions. New Moon CADENS REGITUR, crescent SQUALLIDA MICAT, first quarter ARIDA INUNDAT, rising gibbous OBSCURA LUCET, full PARVA EMINET, waning gibbous ASPERA NITET, last quarter INERS COMMOVET, waning TRISTIS AMATUR.

While the paintings along the staircase, executed in full Bolognese Art Nouveau style, are attributed to the Minerva painter Achille Casanova, the paintings in the Zodiac room, full of Jugendstil contaminations and references to Japanese art, are attributed to the Florentine painter Augusto Sezanne. Both belong to the guild of Alfonso Rubbiani.

THE BELVEDERE

From the belvedere, the view sweeps towards the Navile canal and the hills of Bologna. Some letters from Giulia De Rham, wife of the agronomist who managed the Pizzardi Estate on behalf of the estate in the second decade of the 20th century, bring back some poignant suggestions. One concerns the view of hills and fiery sunsets. One relates to the tenderness of the paroniers advancing with their boats on the canal. Yet another concerns the roar of the water at the support that was placed next to the palace.

GIULIA DE RHAM: THE HILLS

Without being a monumental work the Palazzo Rosso, is a noble gem of masonry art that creates a highly suggestive environment; all of its architecture honours it, but one of the greatest seals of artistic refinement comes from that balcony, which is a true work of refined beauty. But the noblest gem and the loggia that over the waters of the two canals stretches out, it is there where the point of the palace divides them, and it does so like a sea-cutter; but if those waters are as big as they sometimes are, then this belvedere of mine… turns into the spear of a ship in the midst of the current, whose waves the ship breaks.

However, when the sun reappears, and the barges calmly return to ply the waters of the smooth Navile, you feel an immense joy explode within you. This loggia, this belvedere of mine, which is the soul of my abode, dominates the plain: the gentle hills rise undulating, leaving the Apennine chains discernible.

And San Luca is there. It appears tiny on the summit, and the virgin of Constantinople, from up there, sees all her devotees thickly scattered over this plain.

From here on, I contemplate the moon that gives the castle its fairy-tale atmosphere, and I witness the spectacle of the fiery October skies reflected in the rubble lying everywhere, I see the Apennine profiles of the high Tuscan peaks suddenly leap into the January atmosphere; they are crisp snowy crystals shrouded in cold: eighty kilometres away is the Corno alle Scale, beyond the silver Cimone; even further away, mysterious and isolated is the ethereal Rondinaio.

Then those chains vanished behind the mists rising from the Valpadana; that crisp scene then dematerialised within five minutes. It had the short life of two hours.

The spell is over, but I have in me the diaphanous piers that without the privilege of the belvedere, the Bentivoglios -I think- would have admired the spectacle. Instead, the next day I learn that this was not the case at all.

In this regard, I wanted to ask an elderly Bentivoglioese woman, Delina di Cicchi, who is a well-known figure here, not least because for almost thirty years she has been fulfilling the task of municipal lamplighter every night. Perhaps not for long yet, because in the coming months, it is said, the electric light will arrive.

But how is it, I asked her one day, that you don’t know the names of mountains that you certainly saw as a child?The candour of her answer completely disarmed me: me, madam, I was in the third grade and I was 14 years old going to the rice field… parents dead and little brothers to support, but I could see those mountains there! In those peaks there are witches! You, who went to school, is it true that they are across the sea? What do I care… the rice grew anyway.

Dear good Delina di Cicchi fraternally I love you and I wish you that the electric light in the village will still be a little late getting here. I am sure I could not wish you a better wish, because the light of the oil lamps will always seem the most beautiful of all.

GIULIA DE RHAM: PARONI

I love the parons. And I am an admirer of them. I consider them the nobility of all the staff working on the canal; I admire them and feel tenderness for the love they show towards their horses. But unfortunately those strong and noble men are about to enter the past. Those we are seeing are the last heirs of a progeny that De’ Rham says has its roots in the land of Polesine; whether this is true I do not know, but of one thing I am certain: the trade passed on from father to son for centuries, with the current generation their story comes to an end.

These men, whether they carry boats or drive horses, have always been one family. A glorious family that is disappearing amidst everyone’s indifference. In the past, in the golden age of navigation, they boasted the possession of horses of the strongest breeds, their ambition. Their ideal was the Brabant breed, with their platinum-coloured manes on their mighty necks. I with my two eldest sons during the summer sometimes went to the embankment as far as the Ringhiera to meet the tow of a certain parone Geppe who still owns a pair of those superb animals. It was a beautiful and touching spectacle that took me back four centuries, when, on that same embankment, other splendid horses advanced dragging the great bucintoro of Giovanni II Bentivoglio.

And how curious it was to think that nothing had changed since that time! Even the harnesses were the same: the line attached to the hauling bar, which is nothing more than a trapeze on which the horse stands to cancel the tugs of the towpath.

GIULIA DE RHAM: IL SUPPORT

Where the Navile bathes the Red Palace to the west, there is a bottleneck where the water, very deep, is in periods of overabundance undermined by a turbulent current that lurks deviously beneath a harmless-looking surface.

The canal is in flood, and the waterfall of the lock, here below my windows, now makes a great noise, but it is not disturbing, because the noises made by water are never disturbing.

Textual content curated by Marianna Biondi