Camera Etrusca Photography Holidays & Workshops in Europe

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
  • RSS
  • Home
  • About
    • Testimonials
  • Location
    • Tuscany & Umbria Landscapes
    • Accommodation
    • Wining and Dining
  • Photo Tours and Workshops
    • Exclusive Photo Tours and Guided Tours
    • Master Class
    • Typical Tuscan Photo Tour
    • Rome Photo Tours
    • Venice Photo Tours
  • Dates and Prices
  • FAQ
    • What to Bring
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Home
  • PHOTO WORKSHOPS and PHOTO TOURS in ITALY
  • A Tale of Three Cities – Part 2

A Tale of Three Cities – Part 2

Posted on 20 April 2017 by patnicholas in PHOTO WORKSHOPS and PHOTO TOURS in ITALY 1 Comment
Flying Devil carries prostitute

A fallen woman flying on a devil’s back, one of the images by Signorelli that so stimulated Freud

Freud, Orvieto and Signorelli

 Freud, Orvieto, Signorelli: the Renaissance frescoes by Luca Signorelli had a profound effect upon Freud. In the entrance hall of Freud’s last home in London, on the right, is a picture of Tivoli, a reminder that Italy was his favourite holiday destination and his spiritual home.

 

Tivoli, hall of Freud home, London

Gardens of Villa Este, Tivoli

50 years after his death in London a collection of black and white Italian postcards was found in a drawer. Purchased during his first of three visits to Orvieto in 1897 they depict frescoes by Luca Signorelli from the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto cathedral. His encounter with the Renaissance artist from Cortona had a profound effect upon him that profoundly influenced his life and work.

It was Freud’s interest in sexuality that first brought him to Trieste, now in Italy, but then part of the Austrian Empire in 1876. He was a young research scientist when he came to study one of the burning issues of academia at that time: were eels bisexual hermaphrodites?

When Freud arrived in Orvieto 120 years ago in 1897 he was going through a turbulent period for several reasons: he was mourning his father who had died in December; partly as a result of this he was in the process of jettisoning his conclusion that hysteria was caused by paternal seduction in childhood turning instead towards the idea of infant sexuality; curiously, the man who sought the source of almost everything in sex had recently set out on a life of celibacy after siring six children in nine years.  Furthermore, two years before he had embarked upon self analysis, then an uncharted journey into the unknown, and in 1896 coined the term psychoanalysis.

Orvieto cathedral facade and stars of David

Orvieto Duomo and Stars of David

Freud was an irreligious, unbelieving Jew, but he was not immune to spirituality and maintained a lifelong interest in paganism and mythology.  A Jewish upbringing was not during the 19th century likely to owe much to the visual arts, rather it was intellectual and musical. Though Freud read Shakespeare in English throughout his life he seems to have had no interest in music. His Interpretation of Dreams was, he said, guided by Dante’s Inferno.
This then was the 41 year old man who stepped into the San Brizio chapel in Orvieto cathedral that September day.

The vaulted ceiling was  gorgeously painted by Fra Angelico the Dominican friar in purple and gold in the mid 15th century. He abandoned the project after his favourite assistant fell to his death.

 

 

San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto Cathedral. Signorelli and Fra Angelico frescoes

The wonders that Freud saw when he walked into the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto Cathedral. The Fra Angelico frescoes on the ceiling, the Signorelli on the walls.

The frescoing of the walls was undertaken by Luca Signorelli in 1499 aged about 54. Signorelli’s vision is apocalyptic.

Signorelli Antichrist and the Elect in Paradise by Signorelli

The Antichrist panel left and the Elect in paradise right. Fra Angelico frescoes above on the vaulted ceiling.

On the left is the preaching of the Antichrist followed by the elect cavorting, largely naked, in paradise.

Signorelli, Antichrist and Paradise

Antichrist left and the Elect in Paradise right. Bottom left corner are Signorelli himself left with hat and Fra Angelico behind, both in black.

Other walls and lunettes show scenes of angels smiting the ungodly with death rays – in fact there is a lot of smiting going on all over the chapel, a veritable orgy of sex and violence.

Signorelli- the wicked smitten by death rays

the wicked smitten by death rays from on high

On the wall opposite are two tableau, both a riot of eroticism and naked flesh, not perhaps what what one would expect in a church, the damned thrown into inferno by devils followed by the saved hauling themselves up from their graves to eternal life.

damned in inferno by Signorelli

The damned thrown into hell.

Signorelli, the resurrection of the dead

The resurrection of the dead

The tableau that seems to have exerted the greatest fascination upon Freud is the Antichrist. An unusual subject, it was commissioned by the powerful Monaldeschi, a Guelf family, always close to the papacy and in opposition to the Ghibellines who supported the Emperor; the scene is a polemic against heresy, especially the Cathars who had been particularly bothersome in Orvieto, but also against Jews.

Antichrist, devil and usurious Jew

The devil whispers to Antichrist, probably based on Savonarola. On left the usurious Jew bribes a blonde.

Freud was sensitive to increasing antisemitism in the Empire and would have noticed the swarthy figure in the centre foreground handing money to a well dressed blonde woman, he is the usurious Jew.

Freud had been aware of antisemitism since his childhood in Moravia when his father had told his young son that he had humbly turned the other cheek when accosted by an aggressive antisemite on the street. Ever since, Freud had admired more martial father-figures like Cromwell, Hannibal and significantly, Moses.

Spectator looks up at Signorelli's frescoes

A spectator watches the mayhem above. He is surrounded by ‘grotesques’, painted just after the recent discovery of the grottoes of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome.

The Catholic Church at the time saw Jews not merely as infidels, but Jesus-killing heretics. Freud, who was suffering emotional and intellectual turmoil after his father’s death, stood surrounded by Signorelli’s apocalyptic maelstrom and saw the son, Christ, effectively slaying the father, Judaism.

smitten Dante

A smitten Dante figure

Freud was a year later to famously forget Signorelli’s name, but never the images. His encounter with Signorelli in Orvieto was to lead to the development of his theory of Parapraxis, the psychology of forgetting, the Freudian Lapse.
Freud repeatedly stated that artists and writers got there first, had effectively prefigured the discoveries of psychoanalysis.

“I saw before my eyes with especial sharpness, the artist’s self portrait next to his predecessor in the work…”

 

 

 

 

Signorelli self-portrait with Fra Angelico

Self-portrait of Luca Signorelli surrounded by mayhem looks out of the frame. Behind him stands Fra Angelico or perhaps not – it could be the Archdeacon.

The artist almost by definition is in touch with his subconscious and that is what Freud saw as he looked up at Signorelli’s creation, a realisation of the subconscious. The unconscious has no conception of time, and as Freud said, ” None believes in his own death. In the unconscious everyone is convinced of his own immortality.”
And while Freud looks up, Luca Signorelli looks down, on him and us.
(final part will follow)

Related posts:

A Tale of Three Cities – Part 1 ripatonna cicogninaHidden Treasure to photograph: the hermitage of Ripatonna, South Tuscany. Orvieto Umbria April DawnOrvieto, Umbrian Jewel flooded OrvietoFlooded Orvieto

Powered by YARPP.

Etruscan city, Freud, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Luca Signorelli, not just photography, Orvieto, photography workshop tour

One comment on “A Tale of Three Cities – Part 2”

  1. Location, Location, Location | Patrick Nicholas Photography says:
    22 November 2017 at 14:58

    […] Sigmund Freud visited Orvieto three times and was much influenced by the Signorelli frescoes in the Cathedral, by the Etruscan cemetery and even noted the tunnel through which he came on the Funicular railway and yet curiously he never mentioned the well. Or did he? He was known to correspond regularly about his work and his travels to his wife’s sister Minna Bernays. […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search

contact: Patrick Nicholas

  • +39 347 2752630
  • info@cameraetrusca.com
  • Contact Us
    • Facebook
    • Google+
    • Vimeo
    • YouTube
    • Pinterest
    • Linkedin

Categories

  • Endangered (1)
  • ETRUSCAN PLACES (20)
    • Civita Bagnoregio (1)
    • Lake Bolsena (2)
    • Pitigliano (2)
    • Pitigliano Little Jerusalem (1)
    • Sorano & Sovana (1)
    • The Sacred Ways (1)
    • Vulci (2)
  • Festivals in Tuscia (1)
  • GETTING ABOUT (3)
    • new Discovery for Camera Etrusca (1)
  • ITALIAN WAY OF LIFE (4)
    • Orvieto Olive Oil (1)
  • Landscape Photography (1)
  • LOST SITES (12)
  • PHOTO WORKSHOPS and PHOTO TOURS in BOHEMIA (1)
  • PHOTO WORKSHOPS and PHOTO TOURS in ITALY (18)
  • PHOTO WORKSHOPS and PHOTO TOURS in PORTUGAL (1)
  • PHOTOGRAPHY KIT, tips and accessories (7)
    • filters in the digital age (1)
    • instant smoke (1)
    • is film dead? (1)
    • what digital camera? (1)
  • Picturesque (1)
  • POST PRODUCTION (2)
    • making photo books (1)
    • Showing Off (1)
  • Rome (4)
  • Uncategorized (1)

Recent Post

  • Radicofani and the Grand Tour – Part 2 2 July 2020
  • Old Transparencies 16 November 2018
  • Fixing a stuck zoom and sensor cleaning 27 July 2018
  • Photo Workshops in Lisbon and the Coast. Start dates: May 25 and November 2. 12 March 2018
  • Winter Photo Workshop in Bohemia, Part 1 23 February 2018

Related Posts

  1. A Tale of Three Cities – Part 1
  2. Hidden Treasure to photograph: the hermitage of Ripatonna, South Tuscany.
  3. Orvieto, Umbrian Jewel
  4. Flooded Orvieto

Photo Workshops, Photo Tours and Learning Holidays

  • cypress grove on via Cassia Tuscany
  • Flying Devil carries prostitute
  • Patrick Nicholas ruins Castro
  • Cahen_Tomb
  • Castelluccio_Norcia.wild_flowers.PatrickNicholas.-0960
  • Radicofani
  • Vatican.roof.saints.PatrickNicholas.-6965
  • corpus_domini_orvieto.PatrickNicholas
  • S.Lorenzo.vecchio_LakeBolsena

Camera Etrusca --- Corso Cavour, 176 05018 Orvieto - Umbria , IT
p.iva (VAT) 01815061203

Click here to call my mobile: +39 3472 752630

Please click here to send a text message to my mobile, if you can’t get through.

email: info [at] cameraetrusca.com

©2020 Camera Etrusca - Photo Workshops - Patrick Nicholas Photographer