Author: Robert Hughes
Released: 2011
Format reviewed: Hardcover (library copy)
Pages of content: 383
Rating: 5/5
Rome: A Cultural, Visual and Personal History is a fantastic exploration of the Eternal City's 2777 years (and counting) of history by the Australian-born but mostly America-dwelling Robert Hughes. It is not a comprehensive history, of course. Any one century of Rome's
history could easily fill a book, and many single years are worthy of
such treatment. But the author covers the full extent, from the mythical founding through the cultural wasteland of the Berlusconi era.
All of the expected highlights are included - Roman emperors, Catholic popes, Renaissance painters, Baroque architects, and more. A full chapter is devoted to the transition from paganism to Christianity, and another on the emergence of Italy as a modern state. The later also provides some insights into the enduring north-south divide that I had not encountered before. In other chapters art and artists are the main focus. Bernini is the subject half of a chapter, the most of any individual creator. Elsewhere, the author runs through several schools of lesser artists in the same space. Most of the chapters are fairly upbeat, but the final two on Fascism and on the post-WW2 era less so. The former is for obvious reasons, but latter is less so. The author finds modern Rome basically bereft of interesting new art of the kind he likes - painting, sculpture, and architecture. He does mention the brief flourishing of Italian film from the '40s through the '60s, but finds the cultural output of the capital city since then to be lacking. I don't think that should be surprising, because the vast self-aggrandizing wealth of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church are both long gone. The notable high art production that exists in modern Italy mostly occurs in the northern cities like Milan, where the country's wealth is concentrated.
The book concludes on an even more sour note, as the author's complaints about over-tourism fill most of the epilogue. He's not wrong, but he also doesn't have a solution for what is now a globally recognized problem. Perhaps there is no good way to balance the personal benefits of incomes rising across the globe, which enable vastly more people to at least temporarily escape their daily drudgery through visiting world-class art, and the hard physical limits of something like the Sistine Chapel, which is only about 130 ft by 44 ft (40 by 13 French units) minus any restrictions to protect the space. The glibertarian/neoliberal response of pricing everything to the point of diminishing returns would be effective, but would also act to attract even more rich people who are simply hoarding exclusive luxury experiences, and exclude people for whom the art or destination in question actually has significant emotional, cultural, and/or educational value.
That vexing question is certainly not a reason to skip the book, as it is wonderfully well-written. The author effortless switches between art criticism to biographic sketches to political history, and makes all of many topics he touches seem interesting. It is also supplemented with two sets of full-color plates, which include many of the paintings, sculptures, and buildings mentioned in the text. I am not a historian or art critic, so as with most of my reviews I am not able to assess whether the book is factually accurate, or if this one provides good interpretations of history and art. But it is a great read, and a good introduction to what is arguably the most important city in European history.
