Colonnaded Courtyard and Fountain, Southern Italy, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Colonnaded Courtyard and Fountain, Southern Italy, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Colonnaded Courtyard and Fountain, Southern Italy, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-6B29EF

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Someone with access to a great many slender marble columns decided the only proper way to use them was in strict double file, like a classical regiment standing at attention around a fountain. The effect is meant to read as ancient cloister, and from a certain angle it does, right up until the eye reaches the scaffolding poking over the back wall, where the twentieth century is quietly still under construction.

The fountain itself gives the game away faster than the columns do. Its warm ochre glaze and stacked, wedding-cake tiers belong to postwar Italian resort taste, not to any Roman ruin, and it sits there confidently among the marble as though nobody would notice the mismatch. This is what mid-century hotel and convent gardens did with salvaged or reproduction antiquity: borrow the columns, keep the plumbing modern.

Behind the arcade a plain whitewashed building with green shutters goes about its ordinary business, laundry line and all, indifferent to the classical theater being staged in its own courtyard. The whole arrangement is a tourist's idea of history, built with real stone and real confidence, and it worked exactly as intended for anyone who didn't look too closely at the fountain.

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