- Art - Culture - Tourism
- Aug 14
- 11 min read
Updated: Oct 2
By Patrizia Poggi
16 August 2025
Ravenna
In Ravenna, the stones whisper verses. Dante found eternal exile here; Byron ignited the myth of rebellion within its walls. But it was a twenty-three-year-old Irishman, Oscar Wilde, who grasped the city’s most secret soul—that of a "Queen uncomforted" whose splendour had not faded but lay intact beneath the patina of time, preserved in Byzantine mosaics shimmering with reflected light. Those golden tesserae were not mere decorations but cells of a hidden hive, where Ravenna had safeguarded its purest essence for centuries: art as nourishment for the soul.
It was 1877 when Wilde, fleeing Victorian greyness, composed his poem Ravenna here, winning Oxford’s prestigious Newdigate Prize for English verse. The poem already contained the seed of his genius: the ability to see beauty where others saw only decay.
Today, as then, Ravenna remains a crossroads for souls seeking refuge. This was evident in Professor Gabriello Milantoni’s recent lecture, "Ravenna - A new dawn: Oscar Wilde, Corrado Ricci, and Byzantium" at the Circolo dei Ravennati e Forestieri. Within the same walls that once hosted Byron "for love and dreams" and Wilde himself, President Giuseppe Rossi remarked with emotion:
"Here, Wilde found what England denied him, not just inspiration, but freedom. For him, Ravenna was what it had been for Byron: an act of poetic justice.".
Some lectures tell stories; others reveal souls. Milantoni’s - art historian, philologist, curator, novelist, and polymath - belongs to the latter. He does not merely describe; he conjures. With a poet’s sensitivity and a scientist’s rigour, he paints an unprecedented dawn for the city, where the gold dust of Byzantine mosaics blends with the ink of two seemingly distant geniuses: the multifaceted Oscar Wilde and the pioneering archaeologist Corrado Ricci.
Left - Palazzo Rasponi then Bellenghi, mid-16th century, home of Circolo Ravennati e dei Forestieri..
Photo credit: Paolo Santelmo
Right - Dr. Giuseppe Rossi,, President of the Circolo Ravennati e dei Forestieri, club founded in 1860
Oscar Wilde and Corrado Ricci: Ravenna as a shared muse. What binds these two spirits?
Oscar Wilde, 28 years old Corrado Ricci, 20 years old
By Napoleon Sarony, 1882, Wikimedia Commons/MET
Wilde and Ricci shared a love for the unfinished. For both, Ravenna—with its contradictions—was a laboratory of beauty and knowledge. Wilde, the poet, sang its soul; Ricci, the archaeologist, tended its wounds. Their work reveals the city as a living palimpsest, where every layer of history—Roman, Gothic, Byzantine—is not erased but transformed into art. Wilde captured its essence in Ravenna, celebrating its "sleeping majesty" rather than perfect monuments. Ricci redeemed its art through groundbreaking studies, proving that its stones "spoke Byzantine" in an Italy enamoured only with Rome.
Oscar Wilde in New York, 1882 by Napoleon Sarony Ravenna: recited in the theatre, Oxford, June 26, 1878 photographic print on card mount: albumen.
Library of Congress, Washington, USA
Wilde (1854–1900): The Irish nonconformist found in Ravenna a refuge from Victorian morality. To him, the city was a "living museum," where decay itself became art.
Ricci (1858–1934): A Ravenna native and controversial archaeologist, he dared to declare that "Ravenna’s Byzantine mosaics rival the Colosseum" amid a unified Italy’s Roman obsession.
The Grand Tour and lost mosaics: A journey that inspired the Oxford Newdigate Prize
Wilde arrived in Ravenna in spring 1877, completing the continental Grand Tour expected of young aristocrats. Yet he was no ordinary traveller—he followed in the footsteps of Shelley and Byron, whose names stirred the young poet’s soul. He came south, rejecting Neoclassical certainties for Ravenna’s "doubtful interiors," its drowsy streets still tinged with the Orient. Here, Wilde found what Rome could not offer: the privilege of witnessing history, not serving it. In its worn stones, he discovered the perfect metaphor for beauty outlasting glory—a theme central to his later work. For Wilde, Ravenna was a metaphysical stage where history became poetry.
Ravenna, the Orthodox Baptistery (or Neonian) between the Duomo and Arcivescovado Squares
Credit photo: Stuart Baird
On Saturday, March 31, 1877, the sunset welcomed him with vivid, melancholic hues:
«… And musing on Ravenna’s ancient name,
I watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame,
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.
O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers!—On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna’s walls at last!».
The vision of Ravenna rising on the horizon, crowned with towers like a squalid queen. Wilde captures that fleeting moment when the vermilion glow of sunset fades as he passes through the city gates - a transition from light into history's shadowed quiet. This sunset becomes a metaphor for Ravenna's lost greatness. Not merely a picturesque image, but the twilight of an era. The same sun that sinks behind Ravenna's towers sets too on its identity as a capital, crushed between Byzantium, which abandoned it and the Papacy, which absorbed its voice without restoring it.
Ravenna paid dearly for being too Byzantine for the West, still nostalgic for Theodoric yet too Western for Byzantium, which sacrificed it in the 8th century. The post-756 silence became a kind of damnatio memoriae. The city lost its role as bridge between East and West, becoming instead a "political ghost" relegated to history's margins.
Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, Apse mosaic details
Ravenna, UNESCO World heritage site, Wichimedia commons
Oscar Wilde alone grasped its pathos. He saw what even Ravennates no longer perceived - not a dead city, but a heart still beating beneath history's rubble. This is why his poem remains, now more than ever, the most authentic love letter to Ravenna. It celebrates no single monument or era, but Ravenna's vital essence - its light and shadows, its landscape, its very breath. His "Queen uncomforted" is that perfect oxymoron uniting decay and nobility - a love complex, imperfect, and therefore truer.
Wilde’s Epiphany: "A year ago I breathed the Italian air..."
This is no mere descriptive opening, but an act of initiation. The young Wilde records not a journey, but a revelation. Ravenna became the epiphany of that inner Italy he sought. That "breathing" is no metaphor: it's a physical absorption of the spirit of place. Wilde doesn't say "I saw" or "I visited," but lets himself be permeated by the city's very essence - as if Ravenna's air, heavy with Adriatic salt, pine resin and mosaic dust, had transmitted to him a new poetic code. It was as though Ravenna whispered to him the secret of decadent beauty he would later develop in Dorian Gray. This was a spiritual encounter.
Wilde wasn't seeking monuments, but correspondence. Ravenna offered him glorious death: the mausoleums, Dante; sacred nature: the pine forest as cathedral; suspended time: Byzantine mosaics that arrest the light. He doesn't describe a city, but transfigures it into a state of mind. Ravenna wasn't a Grand Tour stopover, but the first station of an aesthetic pilgrimage. And that Italian breath - so young, so potent - became the first true act of the poet he would become.
The secret Resurrection: how two young men saved Ravenna
Some cities die twice - first when they lose their power, then when they lose their memory. Ravenna stood on the brink of both fates. Yet in 1877, an Irishman in a top hat and an archaeologist with a magnifying glass performed a secular miracle: they restored to Ravenna not its former glory, but its memory. Unknowingly, they signed a secret pact with history: Ravenna would live forever as a work of art.
The city forgotten after 756 AD was about to be rediscovered as a "new dawn" between East and West. Wilde captured its decadent beauty, Ricci unearthed its buried grandeur. Today the mosaics are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it was this unlikely pair - the dandy poet and the methodical archaeologist - who first revealed their true potential. As William Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
The twenty-year-old Ricci, while sketching the pine forest, already dreamed of archaeological maps. Though they never met, their breathing the same Byzantine air in that fateful year became destiny's knot: art requires both visionary and cataloguer. Cities like Ravenna don't die when empires fall, but when dreamers cease to imagine them. Today that Byzantine heart still beats because two young geniuses conquered ten centuries of silence. The Irishman's poetic vision and the local scholar's
Corrado Ricci, Pine Forest of San Vitale near the cemetery
destroyed by frost in 1889-1890,Ravenna,
Classense Library, Ricci Collection
meticulous documentation together resurrected what time had nearly erased - proving that memory, when nurtured by both passion and precision, becomes immortality.
The Sacred Pine Forest: where mosaics and pines weave Ravenna’s soul
"« A year ago!—it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was—and by rich flowering vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines...»
Right - Luigi Ricci, Pine forest with frost, photograph taken during the winter of 1879-80, which destroyed much of the pine forest, Ravenna, Classense Library, Ricci Collections
The verses mark the beginning of a new perception of Ravenna's great pine forest.Wilde did not call it majestic or silvered, but "noble", a revolutionary adjective for an era that saw it merely as economic timber to exploit. He transformed those trees into columns of a natural cathedral: "dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines" standing guard over the mosaics like sentinels of time.
With pencil in hand, Corrado Ricci traced their contours with scientific precision, while his father Luigi captured them in some of the earliest photographs. For them, documenting the pine forest was an act of love toward a neglected symbol: if the mosaics were Ravenna's golden heart, the pines were its lungs, breathing between East and West.
Wilde understood that without this green expanse, Ravenna would have been but a marble tomb. He described it as part of a Byzantine tapestry, where each pine needle was woven like a golden tessera. Today, as the wind caresses those boughs, the poet's words still echo: "Love only knows no winter" and the pine forest, like art, does not die.
The combined work of Corrado Ricci and Oscar Wilde reawakened the city's identity, proving that Ravenna's essence lay not only in its mosaics and monuments but also in its wild, luminous nature. Ravenna's modern rebirth began not through politics or economics, but through art. A foreign poet and a local visionary made the invisible visible again, binding the ephemeral beauty of landscape and architecture to the city's eternal history.
Corrado Ricci, Ravenna e i suoi dintorni, Ravenna, 1878,
Fratelli David Editor, Classense Library, Ricci Collection
Without them, Ravenna might have remained a forgotten relic. Instead, it became and endures as a living dialogue between earth and art, between pines and poetry. That Ravenna exists today, woven into our biographies and the grand narratives of Rome and Byzantium, we owe to two young geniuses: Oscar Wilde, a twenty-three-year-old Irishman from Dublin and Corrado Ricci, a twenty-year-old son of Ravenna.
Byzantine Mosaics at the Nave of the Basilica of
Sant ‘Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, UNESCO World heritage site
Wichimedia commons
Oscar Wilde’s “Ravenna”: the most beautiful love letter to a city
Some poems caress cities like a lover's hands. Wilde's ode to Ravenna is a Byzantine kiss - still burning after 150 years.
Milantoni is right. "Ravenna": no other city poem achieves such emotional intensity. Dante wrote of Florence with nostalgia, Baudelaire of Paris with fury, but Wilde embraces Ravenna in all its paradoxes. This is no celebration of power or beauty, but of a place's profound identity.
Let me say it once more: Wilde's "Ravenna" stands as the most beautiful love letter ever written to a city. It reads like words from one who loved deeply to the beloved itself - not describing a place, but breathing its very soul.
"Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.
Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the Summer’s lordly bloom;
And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow,
And send up lilies for some boy to mow.
Then before long the Summer’s conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season’s usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks of snow.
Love only knows no winter; never dies:
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies
And mine for thee shall never pass away,
Though my weak lips may falter in my lay…"
[...]Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell."
Left - Portrait of Dante by Sandro Botticelli, 1495
Right - Byron portrait as painted in 1813 by Thomas Phillips, UK Government Art Collection
Contemporary Vibrations
Today, Ravenna is no "Queen uncomforted" but a phoenix risen from Byzantine ashes.
At the Ravenna Festival, Riccardo Muti’s "Roads of Friendship" choirs echo the "gentle silence" Wilde once heard whispering through the pines. Inside Palazzo Guiccioli, Byron's holograms lingers over love letters to Teresa Gamba, while Garibaldi’s marble bust murmurs Wilde’s verses - two exiles who found here what England refused them: freedom in beauty, beauty in freedom.
Right - Palazzo Guiccioli, Museo Byron, Credit photo: Stuart Baird
When Muti lifts his baton, the orchestra’s chords melt into words, answering Wilde’s longing:
«Love only knows no winter, never dies:
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies…»
Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra
Like a Byzantine mosaic, every shard of history here finds its golden setting. Ravenna is not just a relic—it’s a covenant. For as Wilde declared, "The past is never dead"—and in these streets, where Dante’s shadow lingers and mosaics glow like frozen fire, Ravenna breathes it back to life.
Patrizia Poggi
Ravenna
This blog was published by Marysia Zipser, Founder of Art Culture Tourism & ACT Ambassador
Please feel free to share this article blog via social media icon links and/or write any comments or questions in the Comment Box below. Thank you..
Patrizia Poggi is ACT Advisor, a native of Ravenna and has 30 years in the forefront to enhance the Italian heritage, art and culture sector, she is an art consultant and gallerist, formerly resident manager of the Relais Villa Roncuzzi, member of the Association of Social Promotion “Taste Italy Aps”, Ambassador of Knowledge and Flavors of Italy for Italy&Friends in Florence. For a fuller blog on the cultural significance of Ravenna – please see Patrizia’s last ACT piece.
Gabriello Milantoni
From the age of 23 in 1973 and for decades thereafter, he served in Rome as Chief Curator of Artistic and Historical Heritage for the Colonna Princes of Paliano, overseeing both the Gallery and Archives of their palace. His work included cataloguing collections, directing restorations of paintings and frescoes, and studying the majority of entailed collections belonging to Rome’s noble families—including the Barberini, Barberini Colonna di Sciarra, Borghese Salviati Aldobrandini, Caetani, Odescalchi, Orsini, Torlonia, and others. Beginning in 1973 and for 24 years, he led a groundbreaking digital archiving project for the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Provenance Index in Malibu, collaborating with NASA to pioneer the digitization of Rome’s aristocratic archives as sources for art historical research.
A prolific scholar, he has authored monographic essays on artists from the 15th to the 20th century, including 17th-century masters such as Francesco Albani, Guido Cagnacci, Carlo Cignani, Michele Desubleo, Domenico Fetti, and Mastelletta. He has also curated catalogues for international exhibitions and museums, while continuing his research on the cultural and familial ties between Byzantine-Islamic East and Renaissance Italy—with a focus on the Malatesta dynasty.
Currently, he directs advanced art history training programs established by the John Jacob Astor Foundation (New York) and the Fondation Prince de Liechte (Geneva).
L to R: Corrado Ricci, The Mausoleum of Theodoric, 1898, Ravenna, Classense Library, Ricci Collection;
Corrado Ricci, Bas-reliefs and basins of the bell tower of the church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, 1898, Ravenna, Classense Library, Ricci Collection;
Corrado Ricci, Finds in the Bell Tower of the Church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, 1898, Ravenna, Classense Library, Ricci Collection;
Corrado Ricci, Finds in the Bell Tower of the Church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, 1898, Ravenna, Classense Library, Ricci Collection
L to R: Ravenna Pine Forest; Ravenna, Piazza del Popolo, photo credit: Stuart Baird; Ravenna, Dante's Tomb
L to E: Ravenna, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, ceiling detail, UNESCO heritage; Ravenna, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, ceiling detail, UNESCO heritage; Ravenna, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, detail of the apse mosaic, UNESCO heritage
Links:
Updated: Aug 27
By Marcus Bicknell
26 August 2025
Buckinghamshire and Bordighera
Nottingham has an enduring academic relationship with Clarence Bicknell, the Victorian polymath, and his adopted hunting ground in Liguria, north west Italy, and it’s likely that the two will meet again soon; an exhibition (seen in Bordighera, Nice, Cambridge, Boston and elsewhere) with a conference in Nottingham on Bicknell are at the early planning stage.
The University of Nottingham has a 25-year history of teaching partnerships, including an annual field trip to Varese Ligure in the Val di Vara, co-taught with Prof. Diego Moreno from the University of Genoa and don Sandro Lagomarsini, parish priest of Cassego. Topographical art, landscape history, and comparative species of wild mountain animals in Liguria have been the subject of theses by
Nottingham PhDs. Nottingham worked with Genoa and the EU on the Pitoti project in Val Camonica above Bergamo, where the rock engravings of prehistoric times were brought alive in animations (image right). University of Nottingham worked with seven other institutions around Europe 2013-2015 on putting together a multi-disciplinary study on Bicknell, even if EU
funding was not forthcoming. Similarly, Genoa professors of archaeology, environmental history, human geography, zoology, botany and biodiversity have based research projects on the principles which Bicknell espoused.
Le Sorcier, rock engraving of the Vallée des Merveilles.
Bicknell had identified, copied and logged over 11,000 rock engravings in the Vallée des Merveilles and the Val Fontanalba on the French-Italian border; he published the work in 1902 in The Prehistoric Rock Engravings in the Italian Maritime Alps using the Bordighera publisher, Pietro Gibelli. His finds had also been reported in 1901 by Arturo Issel, Professor at the University of Genoa, who had visited Bicknell in Casterino and had climbed with him up into the mountains. The two men developed such a close bond that Bicknell gave to the University of Genoa 3,165 rock engraving rubbings, his nine field notebooks, 10,146 pressed flowers and 3,248 botanical watercolours. The collections are highly prized by the present generation of scholars there including Prof. Mauro Mariotti (the first to describe Bicknell as a Citizen Scientist) and Prof. Stefano Schiaparelli (whose 2023/4 exhibition CHRONOS – The Human Footprint in Liguria – featured Bicknell’s work and an avatar of him speaking in Italian).
Dssa. Daniela Gandolfi of the Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri / Museo Bicknell in Bordighera has recently offered new support to the studies; recent acquisitions by IISL, a collections of landscape watercolours by Bicknell and nine photo albums documenting his travels in Italy and abroad Clarence could be of interest to the field of landscape history.
Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) was a man of letters, an artist, author, traveller, botanist, archaeologist, pastor, humanist and Esperantist. Born at Herne Hill near London, Clarence was the 13th child of Elhanan Bicknell, whale oil magnate and art patron. Clarence's mother, Lucinda was the aunt of the artist, Hablot Knight Browne, "Phiz", the illustrator of Charles Dickens's novels, and taught Clarence the art of botanical watercolours.
In 1862 Clarence went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read mathematics. At the university he was much influenced by an enthusiastic group of young churchmen; and soon after he had graduated in 1865, he took orders in the Church of England. For some years he was curate at Walworth, a tough parish in the slums of south London which supported the Order of St. Augustine, a passionate, ritualistic community, mysteriously linked with Rome. Here he lived a simple life, devoting himself and much of his income to the poorest people - notably during a devastating outbreak of smallpox. This pattern of simplicity, generosity and service was to be with him for life. He left Walworth and joined some of his Cambridge friends in The Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit in the village of Stoke-on-Tern in Shropshire, 70 miles west of Nottingham, where he lived in a high church community devoted to the mission of preaching.
Bicknell treasured the eagle logo of The Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit
After thirteen years he began to have serious religious doubts, and decided to avail himself of his inherited private means to see the world. He came to Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, in 1878 (image, below), invited by the
Fanshawe family to act as chaplain to the English church. But his religious doubts were growing. He found the church too ritualistic, too dogmatic and too chauvinistic. Within a year he had resigned. He gave up any active participation in church matters, asked not to be referred to as 'The Rev.', and ceased to wear a dog collar. He was later to say in a letter to a friend, "I fear I have become rather narrow about all church things, having become convinced that the churches do more harm than good & hinder human progress, and look upon the pope, the clergy & the doctrines as a fraud, though not an intentional one."
Though disenchanted with the church, Clarence had become enchanted by Bordighera. At that time Bordighera was almost an English colony. Foreign visitors, many of whom became residents, flocked there for the winter sun in a climate which was considered particularly beneficial for sufferers from the still incurable disease of tuberculosis. Clarence immediately became involved in
the activities of the English colony - activities leading to the building of his Museo Bicknell (image, right, with Clarence in 1888), the foundation of the International Library, the building of a hospital, the organising of lectures and concerts and so on. But he was also deeply involved in giving generous active and financial help to the poorer of the resident Italians, notably after the severe earthquake in 1887. The Museo Bicknell has been expertly managed as part of the International Institute of Ligurian Studies since 1937 so the museum holds its position as a star in the Ligurian firmament.
Clarence's principal passion was the study of botany and a love of flowers. The richness of the flora of Bordighera and its neighbourhood was for him one of its main attractions. He immediately set about collecting the plants and recording them in explicit and attractive water colour drawings. By 1884 he had made over a thousand of these drawings, 104 of which he selected as illustrations for his Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera and Neighbouring Mountains, published in 1885. They show his highly developed sense of design combined with skill in producing accurate and informative botanical images, like this Iris in the collection of the University of Genoa.
It was in 1881 that the son of Clarence's sister Ada, Edward Elhanan Berry, came to Bordighera as manager of a bank, as Thomas Cooke's agent, and later as British vice-consul. Edward and his wife Margaret became essential team support to Clarence’s enterprises. The relationship between Margaret and Clarence is beautifully illustrated by the story of the vellum albums. Shortly after her marriage Margaret saw in Lorenzini's shop in Siena some exquisite books of superior drawing paper elaborately bound in white vellum. She bought one and gave it to Clarence. He was delighted. A few months later he gave it back to her, now filled with flower designs. This became a ritual. At least once a year until the outbreak of war in 1914 an album was exchanged and dedicated to Margaret Berry. Seven of these are now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, as part of their outstanding collection of flower paintings, many using arts-and-crafts motifs (image of Gentians, left).
Each album has a theme - for instance, one is a Book of Marguerites for Margaret; one is a Book of Berries for the Berrys. The album dated 1911 is a Coronation Procession of the Flowers of Fontanalba to celebrate the coronation of King George V. The last dated 1914 is an elaborate fantasy, The Triumph of the Dandelion in which the flowers compete for the crown of the Beauty Queen of Fontanalba (image, right). Page by page each flower presents her claim in enchanting drawings, supported by descriptions of her charms (sometimes medicinal) in prose and in verse (often facetious).
The largest and finest of the albums is that of 1908 which is a complete botanical catalogue of 400 wild plants that grew in the garden of the Casa Fontanalba. The book ends with the couplet, "Now if you say, Oh what a show of plants. I beg your pardon. This book is finished; not so the treasures of my garden."
Clarence continually expressed his preference for wild plants rather than garden varieties. His delight in playful fantasy has much in common with the nonsense of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. He loved puzzles, riddles, jokes, puns and parlour games. For Margaret Berry he made a botanical version of the popular Victorian game of Happy Families. His childish sense of fun often invaded the area of scientific order. His drawing of a cat on a log is the title on the cover of his catalogue of the 10,000 rock engravings which he identified in the Vallée des Merveilles (image, left).
The humane rational spirit which Clarence Bicknell showed, particularly in old age, was characteristic of liberal progressive thinking of the period. He was a pacifist who devoted himself to works of charity in times of war; an enthusiastic supporter of women's suffrage who deplored the excesses of the suffragettes; a vegetarian who never embarrassed others with his prejudices; a man of means who lived in simplicity and devoted his means to others; a master who treated his servants as friends, and embarrassed hosts and hotels by expecting his companion Luigi Pollini to be treated and accepted as a guest and not a servant.
It was not till 1905 that Clarence embarked on the enterprise of building a house for the summer at Casterino, 4,500 feet up in the Alps, the Casa Fontanalba (image, right). He had first visited the Vallée des Merveilles on the west side of Mont Bego in 1881. With further visits in 1897, 1898, 1901 and 1902, and the discovery of more rock engravings in the upper Fontanalba valley, on the Casterino side of Monte Bego, the study and recording of the engravings had become almost as absorbing of his energies as the flora; and Casterino was an ideal base for the field work of both activities.
Clarence had become enthusiastically involved with Esperanto, the international language which had been thought up in 1887 by Dr. Zanenhof, an oculist in Warsaw. In it Clarence saw a medium which could unite mankind in peace and loving friendship in a way which the Christian faith had failed to do. With characteristic energy he devoted himself to the cause, organising an Esperanto Centre in Bordighera, annually attending conferences from Cracow to Barcelona (generally accompanied by Luigi), translating into Esperanto poems such as Macauley's Horatius, and winning prizes for his own Esperanto poems.
Clarence painted the shutters of the Casa Fontanalba with flowers and inscriptions in Esperanto. This one says "Pro multo da arboi, li arbaron ne vidas" - "He does not see the wood for the trees".
It was at the Casa Fontanalba, for the 4 months of the year that the house was accessible, that he spent the happiest days of his old age. Luigi Pollini, who had become his gifted and efficient assistant, was his constant support. Clarence remained amazingly energetic. He would spend the day with his friends, energetically showing them the Vallée des Merveilles and the flowers, entertaining them enthusiastically. Then when they had retired exhausted he would get down to serious drawing, letter writing, or some other task. Next morning he would be up long before them, collecting specimens or drawing again.
Marcus Bicknell
This article/blog is published by Marysia Zipser, Founder of Art Culture Tourism & ACT Ambassador
Please feel free to share this blog via social media icon links and/or write any comments or questions in the Comment Box below. Thank you..
With thanks to Clarence Bicknell's great-nephew, Peter Bicknell (Lecturer in Architecture, University of Cambridge) for the inspiration provided by his 1988 paper.
Marcus Bicknell is the great-grand-nephew of Clarence Bicknell, curator of the family collection, editor of www.clarencebicknell.com and chairman of the Clarence Bicknell Association. He was awarded Bordighera’s 2017 Parmurelu d’Oru prize and the 2025 medal of the City of Genoa for services to culture. After his Masters in Physical Anthropology from Cambridge University in 1969 he was a marketing executive in the media business all his career; he managed Genesis and worked for CBS, A&M Records, television satellite operator SES Astra and the BBC. He supports the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Royal Academy of Music and other community associations. He was born in the USA, is a British national, motor-racer, horse-rider, has lived in 7 countries, speaks German and French and lives with his family in the Chiltern Hills.
By Marysia Zipser
3 August 2025
Nottingham
Photography by Marysia Zipser Click on images to enlarge
Setting the scene at Chatsworth. In July my friend and I made a day outing to this beautiful place. In fact I hadn’t visited Chatsworth for many years so was really looking forward to being inspired and uplifted by its greatness.
The long driveway that sweeps before and up to the grand house really sets the scene building up the excitement.
You see the house majestically placed behind the calm River Derwent, with grazing cattle and sheep beside it, luring you along the way making sure you, the visitor, is making the grandest entrance. (Photo credit right by Marianne Coxon).
All had been arranged for us to make our visit as smooth as possible. After parking our car and grabbing a coffee to drink/sit down, we walked to the golden gateway entrance where a small group of Chatsworth guides were standing and smiling as we approached. We passed through the gates and walked to the house entrance through the North Entrance Hall. Our tour began.
The Gorgeous Nothings - on until 5 October 2025. This exhibition was staged to dedicate to flowers, horticulture and the ongoing relationship that plants have had with the house, garden and its contents. Guest curator Allegra Pesenti explains that “The Devonshire Collections are at the source of this survey that stems from the rare botanical books and herbaria in the Chatsworth library and extends to the grounds and gardens that mark the estate’s compelling environment.” A living compendium of the natural world which continues to be nurtured today for the future.The exhibition takes its cue from the American poet Emily Dickinson’s habit of composing poems on scraps of paper and used envelopes. They were vital and mattered to her, not dissimilar to the specimens of ferns in a 19th century album. “The installations presented evoke the tenacity and focus of ‘gatherers’ - be it gardeners, scientists, archivists, artists, poets or collectors. Each flower is associated with deep-rooted and geographically diverse histories and myths.” Installation areas are named Mythology and Magic, Still Lifes, Gatherers, In Place and Out of Place, Sexuality and the Senses, Beauty and Horror, The Agony in the Garden, Permanence and Transience, A Flower is a Symbol plus a series of immersive films taking inspiration from the goddess Flora in a live trail through the garden and grounds.
The exhibited artists are: Eileen Agar, Ruth Asawa, Anna Atkins, Frank Bowling, Chiara Camoni, Dorothy Cross, Maurizio Fioravanti, Simryn Gill, Gluck, George Graham, Donna Huddleston, Elliott Hundley, Konstantin Kakanias, Michael Landy, Cecil Lasnet, Liza Lou, Jonas Mekas, Chris Ofili, Alessandro Piangiamore, Ana Prvacki, Elias Sime, Dorothea Tanning, Emma Tenant, David Wiseman
Throughout the house tour, I photographed a number of these artworks placed in the rooms and halls. All enhancing and enticing you into wonder.
The Things that bedazzled me…
The Painted Hall. This is the BIG impact welcome area. You can imagine arriving in your finery and being greeted by the Duke and Duchess in the largest and grandest room in the house. First impressions count! And built to flatter the new protestant monarch, King William III. William Cavendish 4th Earl of Devonshire was one of a company of Protestant loyalists, the Glorious Seven, who was instrumental in bringing William of Orange across from Holland to replace James II, a Roman Catholic, who had abdicated and fled to France. William was invited to be England’s joint ruler with his Consort Mary II, James’ elder daughter. For his loyalty, William Cavendish was granted the title of 1st Duke of Devonshire. The painted decoration interior has a Roman theme with scenes from the life of General Julius Caesar. The theme also includes the assassination of Caesar by members of the Senate on the north wall, possibly a reminder not to exceed his power. Between the windows are painted with large arrangements of arms and armour in the style of Roman trophies. The top of the staircase was designed to represent a Roman triumphal arch. You can imagine the fan fare trumpeters and soldiers in their' ceremonial plumed helmets.
You may wish to know that the land for the original Chatsworth was acquired in 1549 for £600.00 by Sir William Cavendish, 2nd husband of his wife Elizabeth, better known as Bess of Hardwick. The Tudor house itself was commenced in 1552 and was eventually rebuilt in the 1680’s by William Cavendish, the 4th Earl who died the 1st Duke of Devonshire.
The Grotto, an entirely stone space which supports the Great Stairs above, is enriched with applied carvings in Roche Abbey stone. The fountain here was originally fed by gravity with a supply of water from the moors above the house. Note the bas-relief of Diana at her bath.
Samuel Watson (1662–1715), an English sculptor in wood and stone, was a native of Heanor, Derbyshire. Watson was employed at Chatsworth between 1690 or 1691 and remained until 1711. He was greatly influenced by Grinling Gibbins and rose to be chief carver during his time in the great house. “Very fine... a most ingenious artist" his contemporary George Vertue commented. I certainly agree. I’d known very little about Watson before visiting Chatsworth and was enthralled to see his works in the Grotto and also in different areas of the house.
Images L-R. Fountain by Samuel Watson.
Maurizio Fioravanti featured artist (VAMGARD 2022). He dissolves the boundaries between magic and reality in a fantastical world of flowers and creatures. Details like tulip petals and butterfly wings are rendered pictorially with tiny tiles of glass. Fioravanti uses a technique known as micro-mosaic to create unique pieces of jewellery.
Lost Valley Mirror - David Wisema, 2019. Bronze and mirrored glass.
The ‘holiday snap’ paintings in the Oak Room. The unusual oak panelling was fitted between 1839 and 1841 for the 6th Duke. Inset into some of the wooden panels are small oil paintings. Some record the 6th Duke’s holidays, eight being of the north east coast of England, painted by John Watson Carmichael (1800-1868). The oak fittings were taken from a German monastery and the woodwork of an old-fashioned pew…
Chapel. Inspired by the Chapel at Windsor Castle and built between 1688 and 1693, remaining almost completely unaltered ever since. The altarpiece was constructed of alabaster quarried at Castlehayes near Tutbury, Staffordshire. Samuel Watson created the interior architectural decoration, Chatsworth’s master carver. The focal point of the altarpiece is the oil painting of The Incredulity of St Thomas by Antonio Verrio (1639-1707). The Royal Chapel at Windsor, painted by Verrior a few years earlier, served as the inspiration of this Chapel.
The Great Stairs. Completed in 1691, it is one of the earliest examples of a cantilevered staircase in England, providing grandeur when rising to the State Apartment
State Apartment and Great Chamber
Very lavish interiors and of the highest quality. Occupying the position of the Elizabethan Long Gallery of Bess of Hardwick’s House, they are usually placed on the second floor of the building, not the first floor as would be expected in the late 17th century.
Trompe d’oeil violin and marquetry in the State Music Room. Here is Chatsworth’s most famous works of art, the trompe l’oeil painting of a violin hanging on a door was placed inside the new opening in 1836. Painted by Jan van der Vaardt (c.1653-1727), it survived the disastrous fire that destroyed old Devonshire House, the family’s London residence in Piccadilly. I particularly noticed the incredible leather covered walls, stamped and gilded.
The Gucci Butterfly Dress. Walking out of the State Bedchamber and directly facing me was the Gucci Butterfly Dress. Wow! I had to take a closer look. The oyster pink gown was designed by Alessandro Michele for Gucci, specifically for Duchess Amanda. It was featured in the "House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth" exhibition in 2017. The dress was inspired by the Devonshire Collection's herbariums and botanical illustrations, reflecting Michele's fascination with Chatsworth's history and the Duchess's collection of bug and butterfly brooches.
Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Thomas Gainsborough c1785-1787. This is such a striking and alluring portrait. I love it, and her. I found this to be a good read about Georgiana and her life. https://www.chatsworth.org/visit-chatsworth/chatsworth-estate/history-of-chatsworth/georgiana-cavendish-duchess-of-devonshire/
“...her youth, figure, flowing good nature, sense and lively modesty, and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon” - English writer and politician, Horace Walpole (1717-1797), on Georgiana.
The State Bedchamber
The Oak Stairs. This part of the house was designed by Wyatville for the 6th Duke of Devonshire, Georgiana’s son, and constructed between 1818 and 1832. The staircase connects the Regency/William IV block to the earlier Baroque house and its purpose in the main was to house the 6th Duke’s sculpture collection. Here, the dome and lantern tower above provide light for these stairs and for the great array of family and royal portraits, ranging from the 1st Duke to the 11th Duke.
Library and Ante Library leading to the Great Dining Room. There are 17,000 books in the Library and Ante Library covering six centuries. The furniture in the library comes from many different family houses.
The dining room was used by the family whenever there were more than six people for dinner until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Today it is used for a few exclusive formal dinners each year of up to forty people. The first dinner to have been held was for Princess Victoria and her mother the Duchess of Kent, who were guests of the 6th Duke in 1832. Victoria was thirteen years old and the first time she had dined formally in adult company.
Sculpture Gallery 1818-1834 including the Sleeping Lion. This amazing collection was created by the 6th Duke from 1818 to 1834. He had a passion for marble sculpture and the collection today remains one of the most important in the world still in its original location. Featuring works by John Gibson (1786-1866), Rudolph Schadow (1786-1822), Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), Michael von Schwanthaler (1802-1848) and Bertel Thorvaldson (1770-1844). There are also six works by the celebrated sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). The lions at the end of the gallery, which I love, are copies after Canova’s originals on the tomb of Pope Clement XIII (1693-1769) in St Peter’s in the Vatican. The 6th Duke so admired Canova that he even acquired the artist’s tools for sculpting clay models placing them on display.
Conclusion
So you can assume A LOT bedazzled me at Chatsworth! I wonder what bedazzled you the most, as visitors to the house? Have your say below in the Comments box together with any other comments and questions you have after reading this blog. And please share the blog as you wish using the social media icons. Thank you.
As you come out of the Sculpture Room you enter the impressive Shop which was once the Orangery. Today the Orangery Shop is one of four shops at Chatsworth selling a variety of gifts, souvenirs, garden and interior merchandise as well as a small outlet which sells products from the Chatsworth Estate Farm Shop. These other shops are located in the Stables.
I must comment about how extremely helpful all the guides were who we met during our tour. We had so many questions for them and they always gave fascinating and fullest answers. I learnt so much and on reaching back home, I avidly read the “Your Guide to Chatsworth” book in more detail and “The Gorgeous Nothings” exhibition leaflet. The guidebook provided me with nearly all the history reference material for the blog.
We were in the house from 11.00 am to 4.00 pm and we didn’t eat and drink anything until leaving the Orangery Shop and into the garden. Anyway, no one is allowed to tuck away any sandwich/ food/drink in their handbag; you are stopped at the entrance gate and warned of this. And no backpacks are to be worn on the back for safety reasons. Quite rightly so.
The beautiful gardens and parkland we will discover and enjoy on a separate day trip.
Sincere thanks to my friend Marianne Coxon, who is a guide at Hardwick Hall, and organised our visit together....and is a font of knowledge, of course!
Enjoy!
Marysia Zipser
Founder and ACT Ambassador
Beeston, Nottingham, UK
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