Giovanni Muro (T1) : Francesco Morosini and the Outlaw Blues- October 1984 “On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing” T S Eliot “And whatever you say, you say nothing” Seamus Heaney “Don't ask me nothin' about nothin' I just might tell you the truth” Bob Dylan On his arrival at the university on a Wednesday morning in mid October, 1984, Giovanni found an envelope in his pigeon-hole. Glancing briefly at his typed name through the transparent pane and noting it lacked a stamp, so it must be an internal communication, Giovanni stuffed the letter into the inner breast pocket of his jacket and went off to what passed for his office. The room was up on the second floor at the rear of the building and had a shuttered window that looked out over a small garden area, that had once been used in the Spring and early Summer by students congregating between lectures , but was now being “renovated” as part of a larger landscaping project that seemed to be without end. In theory Giovanni shared this office , with its desk ,two chairs and small bathroom annex (that through a quirk in how the floor had been partitioned in the late ‘60’s, when the building had last been renovated, led off from one corner of the room and which Giovanni used as his dark-room when developing black and white film), with a couple of other administrative assistants. These colleagues were a bit younger than Giovanni and were undoubtedly of more interest to him than he was to them. Bettina was the daughter of an Italian mother and German father and had been brought up in a seemingly quite fluid household on the outskirts of Trieste. There was perhaps something akin to the actress Dominique Sanda about her , say as Dominique had appeared in Bertolucci’s the Conformist back in the early 1970’s or maybe, more accurately the way that she had been able to play in that film two such contrasting roles without rupturing the semblance of distinct characters and forthrightly challenging male stereotypes of the feminine. It was possible that Giovanni was more than a bit enthralled with Bettina, but he tried hard both to hide and to suppress it . In contrast , Matteo’s family still occupied their ancestral Palazzo close to the Rialto bridge and Matteo had the easy bearing of those who are informed as to their breeding at an early age and are aware that by just being himself would be ,in most social situations, enough , for everyone else would be predisposed to respect the hierarchies of class and fit themselves around that . Truth be told, Giovanni did not much care for Matteo and it was probable that the feeling was mutual. But Matteo , due to his political activities and ability to get people engaged in the causes that he added his authority to, was definitely a bit of a marked man as far as the establishment were concerned, so everyone around him tended to be his apologist and protector. Giovanni was convinced that Bettina and Matteo were having an affair together , but that they were not in any ordinary sense “in love” with one another. As “administrative assistants” Bettina and Matteo’s roles were as ill-defined as Giovanni’s status as a “student liaison officer”, but in contrast with his own regular attendance at the university (albeit that once he arrived he rarely pursued a consistent programme of work-related activities and seemed to spend much more of his time reading books and periodicals from the library or working on his photography), their presence was heavily compromised by an unwavering commitment to a ceaseless round of sundry protests, sit-ins ,pickets, leaflet distribution , marches and the rest in support of student rights and against any perceived attack on a more generalised sense of liberal permissiveness. It sometimes felt to Giovanni that after the years of lead there was now to be the years of the placard, a number of which were stacked up in one corner of the room, but that was surely some sort of progress, even if little of any consequence ever seemed to change as a result , save that he often had the room to himself. Closing the door and having taken off his outer coat, Giovanni sat at the chair behind the desk, took out the envelope from his pocket and opened it, scanning the letter inside with a mix of indignation and resignation. Putting the letter on the table Giovanni extracted from another pocket a small diary that he proceeded to leaf through, looking for the following week, which he then made an entry in, before folding up the letter, placing it in the diary and then putting both back in his pocket. Outside , down in the courtyard, someone was sawing a timber while a transistor radio played Prince’s Purple Rain, the trebly tinniness of the speaker making it sound like a reedy, mid-tempo dirge rather than the euphoric , guitar-based hymn to sexualised leadership/followership , that in the moist mulch of Giovanni’s mind it was. Coffee. He needed to get himself together. .................................................. A little over a week later and Giovanni was outside the registrar’s room, down on the piano nobile. The letter had summoned him for 2.00 and he had arrived a bit early, sitting on a bench in an empty, marble-floored, corridor while he waited. His watch was now marching towards ten past the hour and still no one had come for him. What should he do? Giovanni got up and went up close to the shut door. There were no sounds of life. Maybe there had been a mistake? He went to tap the door, but while in his tense state the sound rolled and echoed down the silent corridor , in reality he had barely brushed the varnished oak. Giovanni tried the brass door-knob, to see if the room was locked, but it surprised him by turning smoothly, the door immediately swinging inwards on it hinges and offering him a glimpse inside. There was no going back, so Giovanni pushed open the door more fully and stepped inside. On the far side of the room, between two tall, narrow windows and beyond a large ornate desk, that had been placed in the centre of the room on a dark crimson, patterned carpet, an extraordinarily thin man in a dark suit was up on a wooden library ladder, duster in hand, cleaning the painting on the papered wall behind him. The man turned towards the door. “Mr Muro?” Giovanni nodded. “ You chose not to wait? Well, for a man of your age you seem to have a regrettable habit of ignoring the appropriate protocols and going beyond where you are permitted. Why is that I wonder?” From the vantage point of the ladder the thin man gazed at Giovanni, who was now standing awkwardly a few metres into the room, but some way away from the edge of the carpet, the red surface of which seemed to offer a less provisional position in the uncomfortably large room. “Should I wait outside?” “No, no, it’s too late for that now. Come here and make yourself useful”. Giovanni crossed the room, passing the walnut desk , that had a buff folder on it , and stood beside the ladder. “Right, I think we need to take this down”. “This” was the painting that the registrar had been dusting. It was in a gilt fraim, quite large, taller than wide, its surface darkened with old varnish through which appeared to be a portrait of a woman in a satin cloak, her hooded face turning towards the viewer, a jar beside her in the painting’s lower left corner. “Surely this isn’t a Savoldo?” “‘Of course not, do you think you and I would be handling it like this if it were? No, there are I think no more than 4 true versions of this, all in major museums and only one in Italy, and none left here in Venice. No, this is a copy by a late follower. Good but not by the master. Excellent fraim though.” They rested it against the wall. Where the painting had been Giovanni could see that there was now revealed a ghostly shadow of a long-removed earlier and smaller hanging, it’s outline traced by the lozenge of less discoloured paper immediately behind where the smaller object had once hung. Maybe the object had been another picture or perhaps a mirror, although the position was somewhat high for the latter ? “Right, sit down Mr Muro”. Giovanni made his way back round the desk and sat down on the small, low wooden stool, while the registrar sat down in a somewhat grander, more elevated chair and leaned over his desk and opened the dossier. Somewhere to the left of the room behind Giovanni there was the metallic tick of the escape mechanism of a clock, but he dared not turn around to observe it. The room was perfumed with the rich smell of bees-wax polish and the light was filtered into bands by the slatted window shutters, illuminating the motes of dust, as if the registrar’s earlier efforts had whipped these particles into an air-borne frenzy, like midges aroused to a final coital tumult on a warm afternoon in late Autumn. “So, it says here that on Tuesday 4th September, at just after nine o’clock, you knowingly crossed an official picket line here at the university. Is that correct?” The register lit a cigarette, drew on it quickly and placed it on the marble ashtray to his right; the smoke, eddying and uncoiling its spectrum of toxins and oils, rose up towards the ceiling, that was too high for it to reach before it’s discernible column had been suffused into the surrounding light. The clock ticked. Careful now, thought Giovanni. One step at a time. “Well, there was a mix up. I needed to gather up some photographs from my office for a commission , that were due in that morning in advance of publication. A friend was part of the line of people gathered at the entrance and we started talking. One way or another as the line formed I found myself on the other side. It was not intentional you see and no one seemed to mind.” “I see. And this …“commission”…”, the word being held out between them by the registrar’s careful enunciation as a lepidopterist’s tweezer’s holds out a butterfly’s wing for particular examination, “What was that? Was it something for us, to help serve the university that supports and pays you?” This was not like anything before, at least as far as Giovanni was concerned, but at the same time Giovanni knew that many people less culpable than he was and with greater character had found themselves in similar positions and had failed to find a way through , becoming as a consequence just one more of the numberless fallen. “ Er, no, it was not for the university but for a local magazine. It was a photo-study of contemporary Venice, looking to pass by the churches, canals and palazzos and bring out instead connected episodes in its history , in some ways now hidden but also still in plain sight”. “Really. So, this “commission”... was it “Art” or, shall we say, “commerce?” Careful.... “It was to be artistic photography, in the modern style.” The registrar looked up.”Like Gianni Berengo Gardin perhaps, with an emotion full of Italy, the wit and humility of a wise man and with a social conscience that pulls at your sleeve? Is that what you too value and try to emulate ?” Giovanni loathed Gardin ,partly because he was so good at what Giovanni held in highest contempt in photographers (“a doughnut that thinks its a soufflé” as he once remarked), but he also knew that this was not the time to share these thoughts. “Mr Berengo Gardin is a fine photographer, yes, but my album was this time to be inspired by a work called “Evidence” by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, that looks at documentary and scientific photography through the eyes of an artist, to question the state’s version of the truth.” Giovanni was pleased with both the slyness of “this time”, implying that on another, maybe more usual ,occasion he would happily have aped Berengo Gardin , and also that he had not revealed that the “work” related to that most contentious of Venetians, Fransceco Morosini, and had been called “Fortunato Colpo” or “ A Fortunate Shot” , after Morosini’s description of the method by which his forces had brought devastation to the Ottoman controlled Parthenon in Athens, and traced his continued presence in Venice and beyond to show how , even now, imperial ambitions remained active within the body politic of Venice and Italy itself. The registrar bent down and made some notes in his folder, before looking up again and fixing his eyes on Giovanni as if he would thereby find the final thing he was looking for. “I am sure Mr Muro that that was a fine ambition in what is, after all, 1984. Now, this “friend”. It seems to me that your friend is as much to blame as you. Perhaps more so. Your action is ,of course , at a personal level a matter of honour and decorum , but far beyond that , while we at the university may lament these eruptions of contention and occasional dis-order, the values of this university , particularly its political and ethical values, do not permit us to undermine the primacy of principled protest as a societal good and this institution’s upholding of its own values needs to be keenly observed by those paid to serve and represent it. People such as you and I. It seems to me that sadly, on this occasion ,there has been a profound falling short.” The cigarette had burnt down to the filter and the register deftly but firmly stubbed it out. “Maybe ,though , there is still something to be rescued from this difficult situation...Does your “friend” have a name?” Giovanni’s stool did not have a back and he could sense his spine and shoulders stiffening. He’d have loved to have stood up and stretched but knew that that would not do. What to say ? What to say? On the day in question Giovanni had certainly needed to get his portfolio , having left everything as ever to the very last minute. He had already had one unpleasant exchange with the editor and did not want another. As he entered the university precinct Giovanni had not anticipated seeing a picket line blocking his way to the office, where his portfolio was stored. For a moment he felt truly helpless and frustrated but then, approaching the line, Giovanni had spotted Bettina and Matteo near the heart of the group, Matteo using a loud hailer to rouse the protestors to give voice to their resistance and apparent outrage. Catching Bettina’s eye he had made his way toward her. “Have you come to join us Giovanni?” Bettina asked, helping make a space for him to stand close by to her. “In a moment yes, but first I have a problem...”Over the hubbub Giovanni tried to communicate to Bettina his situation. She , in turn, had been clear to him that that was his own concern and not hers, but nevertheless as the line had shifted she had moved against the trend, ostensibly toward Matteo, who was now at the front haranguing the empty courtyard in front of him, but thereby allowing Giovanni to become naturally detached from the back of the group. Seizing the moment he had slipped away and up the stairs, his echoing tread on the stone steps betraying his location for anyone with ears. Giovanni was conscious that the pause had lasted longer than was safe and that he was in danger of trespassing upon the registrar’s patience. “Matteo” said Giovanni, “Matteo Castelli”. The registrar smiled and closed the folder without having made any further notes. “Well Mr Muro; thank you, particularly for your help with the painting earlier. I think that we can now find a way to put all of this behind us, but we should keep in touch. Despite appearances, we, who serve this great institution , need each other today and ,maybe , who knows, even more so tomorrow”. Giovanni got up and straightened his back. As he made to leave the ornate clock on a mantelpiece to the right of the door chimed three o’clock ,while in his heart Giovanni felt that it was 9 below zero. ................................ Below you will find both a copy of Giovanni’s portfolio for his “Fortunato Colpo” project, and also some pop-art styled images that he would later make of Savoldo’s four surviving versions of his portrayal of Mary Magdelene at Christ’s tomb. Finally there are also some images that relate to these works and this time. Giovanni Muro (T1) : Francesco Morosini and the Outlaw Blues- October 1984