I.v. Opposites in the plain

We soon believe the things we would believe"
-Ludovico Ariosto

What never fails to strike me about Italy is the extent of the variety one encounters. Not just between the businessmen and Punka-bestia (a rather unaffectionate nickname given to the mendicant punks who loiter around the university) in Bologna, and not just between the South of the country and the North. In Italy, you can be half an hour away and in a different world.
   I went to Ferrara today, my first excursion, my first venture beyond the fictive confines of Bologna’s old city walls, long since destroyed but a presence nonetheless. I went to Ferrara because it is close, it is storied, and most importantly, it doesn’t overwhelm. I need to give myself time before re-acquainting myself with the glories of Venice, Florence, and Rome. It has been six years since I have been to those three, and in the meantime all I have done is study them. Not that I was unaware way back then, thirteen years old and on a school trip to tour the glories of the Renaissance.

---

    “Quick sir, this way. They’re catching up”
    “Ah, the hoard. But they must see this Church, it contains a Piero.”
    “Honestly Mr. D., I don’t think it’s worth it, for the complaints we’ll get…”
   These are my memories of visiting Italy in grade eight, running ahead of the other students along with our teacher, a charismatic and cultured Italian, trying to see as much as possible before the others would catch up and lament having to see another Church. They wanted more time to go shopping, and perhaps they were right. Bernard Berenson once said that a human being could only spend an hour at a time absorbing art. I disagree with him (a lifetime, surely…), but many don’t.

---

   Ferrara was a daughter of the Renaissance. Ariosto lived there and drew his inspiration from its courty intrigues. Its population now is about the same as it was in the fifteenth century, perhaps only a little larger. It was once on par with Venice, Florence, or Milan. It would have considered Bologna a backwater, but now the opposite is true. The d’Este family, ruthless sponsors of the arts, made Ferrara what it was, but they left it for Modena soon enough, and took most of their treasures with them. Such is the fate of cities; the rivers they were built on silt up, plagues wipe them out, and princes leave.
   But there are still treasures left in Ferrara. They need to be sought out. They had their school of painting, and it had its strange masterpieces. Second-tier artists like Lorenzo Costa and Cosmè Tura, who delighted in weird, contorted forms before it was the fashion to do so. But I am not writing exclusively to eulogize a few long dead scribblers, and I will spare you accordingly. But still, even in its art, Ferrara is Bologna’s reverse. It is a quiet city, broader and less dense, clean, visibly closer to the sea, noticeably closer to Venice. Bologna had its university where Ferrara had its court, and the two are opposites for it. Scholasticism versus Humanism. Academics versus the upper class. It’s a familiar story. Most of us know it too well.