I spent my childhood up to age twelve in a small house in Via
B. Rotondi, the last house in what was once the outskirts of the village.
Adjacent to my home were farmlands, about 500 meters in, was the Iarrobino
farmhouse.
The horizons of a child of those times were far less extensive than those of
children today, but precisely because of this, sizes and distances seemed
much broader. We lived pretty far (200 meters) from the center of town and
I didn't have other children nearby to while away the long summer afternoons.
In truth, a girl a couple of years older than me, lived in the basement of
my house, but she loved to play with dolls and not guns, rifles and arrows.
Boredom, like happiness, was a constant in that era, but if it is true that
she is the mother of all vices, she is also very conducive to creating
fantastic dreams.
Sentenced to total isolation (so to speak), I had developed a good
imagination, a necessary counterweight to the frustration I felt every time
I tried to masterfully roll a hoop.
Much of my time was spent sitting at the gate, waiting for the end of the
damned "controra." This was the time between noon and five during which, in
summer, it was inconceivable that a normal person would be seen on the
streets of the country. The "controra" was to my childhood like
dictatorship is to democracy (to paraphrase a famous quotation of Mafalda),
because in those days there was no television and those hours were truly
interminable.
As I said, I spent a lot of time sitting alone on the front steps and could
not help but observe a building that, from strada Costarella stood over me
like a fortress. It had the appearance, with the first wall, of a moat (the
uncovered garage of the De Angelis family), a second wall of defense (the
garden) and, finally, the three-floored building, at the time inhabited by
four or five families.
Imbedded in the walls, at the second floor level, were two "masks", clearly
distinguishable from afar.
The distinctive stone sculptures according to superstitions
of earlier times, served to protect the homes from envy, slander and evil.
In Torre it is possible to still find many similar, some of which were
probably stolen in past centuries from local archeological sites. The two
masks depicted a lion and what appeared to me as an ancient Egyptian. I
often wondered if the Egyptian had killed the lion or been devoured by it.
Sometimes I would come to the comforting conclusion that the beast and he
man had been friends and returned together in harmony to the desert.
After the earthquake of 1980, that house was demolished and
rebuilt, but without the masks. A half a century later I was reminded of
those sculputures when I discovered that this was once the home of the
family of Eduardo Ardolino, the creator of our War Memorial and many other
valuable works in the USA.
After much searching, I learned that the two sculptures were
removed during the period of "post-quake reconstruction," but that they are
currently retained by the owner of the building, one Geppino Luongo.
Curiously, however, the owner did not recall one as an
Egyptian sculpture, but rather a Native American, an Indian. When I was
finally able to photograph the two figures I had a double surprise: The face
is neither an Egyptian, nor an Indian, as Geppino claimed, but surely that
of a prince. The royal face, noble and austere, was framed by long, wavy
hair, encircled by a royal crown.
The lion also proved to be a surprise due
to a characteristic quite different from other lion sculptures in Torre. It
had been carved with eyes closed, apparently dead or perhaps sleeping.
At this point I realized the greatness of our old craftsmen,
their culture and how they were superior to those few that remain today. The
difficulties of the times they lived in did not prevent them from having
knowledge of the classics.
Indeed ...! Raffaele Ardolino, the son of a stonemason, born
in 1869, (and cousin to Edward Ardolino, later famous), was sent to study
Fine Arts in Florence ... was a stone-cutter, although it would be more
appropriate to define him as a sculptor. And perhaps it was no coincidence
when Edward Ardolino, questioned by a U.S. Customs official regarding his
work, answered that he was a sculptor.
It appears the lion was not carved this way by chance, but
rather to complement the face of the prince. The lion was not carved in
that way by chance, but as a complement to face the prince. Through the lion,
it seems the scultptor wanted to reveal the identity of the prince.
So what historical or legendary character is linked to the
symbolism of a dead or dormant lion?
The potential candidates are five:
The Prince of Gilgamesh. He seems to be eliminated because
the only icon in existence at the Louvre Museum is represented by a man with
a beard (Assyrian and with long curls), strangling a lion, while our subject
is without a beard.
Samson, also a great strangler of large felines. He was a
judge of Israel, but in the Midrash was regarded as a prince (plus he
belonged to the tribe of Judah, the same as David and Christ).
Alexander The Great: After cutting the "Gordian Knot" he
subdued Egypt, which was represented as a tamed lion ( the reference is to
the Sphinx). The face, however, does not much resemble some of the
Hellenistic statues of the great leader.
David, the shepherd, had killed lions and was also an
ancestor of Christ. In medieval symbology the sleeping lion is
representative of the deceased Christ (but later awake and alive in the
Resurrection).
Finally, the last possible candidate, Cheops. We must not
forget that the Sphinx represents the great pharoah with the body of a lion,
which stands crouched to defy the eternity of the stars.The
fact that as a child
I saw it as an Egyptian
face is an inexplicable mystery
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