Ligabue Magazine 48

We have tried to avoided any formalistic pietism by involving Giobbe Covatta (a very serious comedian!) and our friends from the African Medical Research Foundation, a highly respected organisation for years committed to changing the fate of so many children condemned to death by the world’s indifference.

A rediscovered Leonardo – Giancarlo Ligabue purchased it in a Venetian antiques shop when described as a drawing by an artist in “Leonardesque circles”, despite the fact the bottom of the sheet clearly bore the name “Leonardo”. Even though it had no precise authorship, Giancarlo liked this drawing of an old woman, who could hardly be described as beautiful. He put her away in a large folder together with drawings by Tiepolo, Canaletto, Longhi and other great masters. Every now and then be admired it or showed it to a friend, before carefully putting it back in place without revealing his secret hope. Until one day he finally showed it to the experts, who were left gaping: it was a Leonardo! And now we’re pleased to present the drawing in our magazine so that everyone can admire it.

Fantastic maps – As any enthusiast of old documents is fully aware, a tattered faded historic map, even if spurious, is often more interesting than a brand-new atlas. In portolano charts, you don’t look for the accuracy of the ports or coasts represented, but for ambiguities, naive mistakes, still nameless lands or oceans with weird marine monsters. These are the things that get the connoisseurs raving. But some fantastic maps doing the rounds create confusion, such as the map of Vinland or the false Chinese planisphere passed off as being “earlier than Columbus”. I have tried to retell some of these stories and in doing so I found they often verge on being fables.

African masterpieces – For many years now in the West we have tried to look at African art without a “Classical” bias. This is no easy task for anyone nourished on ancient Greece and the Renaissance, but in the end, we have made some progress and have been able to penetrate the world of idols and their forms and look behind the masks of the black Continent. We thought we had learned a lot. But that was just not so. You only have to look at the Ife bronzes, the Nok terracotta’s or the Benin plaques to realise that you can never claim to know a whole continent.

So, here’s a piece of advice: when you look at these masterpieces don’t make comparisons with Westem art. This is such great art in its own right that it has no need of yardsticks.
The Cave of Crystals – Only the illustrator of Jules Veme’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth could ever have imagined a similar scene to the dream-like environment found in a Mexican cave 300 metres under the earth’s surface.

An unbearably hot cavern with a forest of crystals, up to fourteen metres long, sticking out of the rocks in all directions, like petrified beams of light. Some Italian speleologists have been into the cave, wearing a special cool suit to avoid being steam-cooked. They managed to stay there for around an hour – just long enough to take some photos to show us what the dream is like.
But they aim to return to study the cave again and try and understand how nature has transformed dream into reality.

Never-Never Land – Tall stories have often caused damage. They have even created non-existent lands. A Venetian noble, a certain Nicolò Zeno, invented one in the mid-16th century in a book claiming that two of his great uncles had discovered a large island called Frislandia along with others to the west of Iceland. Since no one had ever seen these islands, some claimed that Nicolò’s great uncles had discovered America at the end of the 14th century, long before Columbus. But it was all a figment of the Venetian’s imagination, and Frislandia vanished from the oceans on maps into very thin air.

The quest of the black boat – After finding a few fragments of a vessel 5,000 years old, some archaeologists decided to build a reconstruction of it in order to sail the ancient trade route from the ports of Oman to Pakistan and India. The boat was made of bundles of tarred reeds – just like ancient Sumer vessels – and launched with great expectations. But something went wrong, and the “black boat” sank just after setting off. Dreams never sink, however, and sooner or later another “black boat” will attempt to understand how the earliest seamen crossed the ocean.
Embroidered memories- People and goods have always stopped off in the oases of Central Asia on the way from East to West or vice versa. The caravans not only carried goods, but also ideas which were elaborated, crossed over, disappeared or took root, thus preserving knowledge that later seemed to have been lost.

This is what happened with the nuptial bedcovers that Uzbeki women patiently embroidered before their weddings. They created flowers never seen before – plants that grew not only in the countryside but also in the imagination, memory and nostalgia for distant lands. In this way they continued to dream under those nuptial bedcovers.