La Luce Chiusa

LA LUCE CHIUSA © Carlo Carletti – All Rights Reserved

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“This collection of photographs of Siena, dedicated to her entrances, those wide portals where horse and carriage once stopped, inevitably recall the colors of Siena: black and white. They are the basic colors of human nature: hope and suffering, apertures of light leading to darkness and infinity. The light comes from above – skylights filter it down from the uppermost floors to the bottom of stairwells – the darkness has the color of the night, leaving in shadow sections of passageways, transitions from one floor to another.
Even feelings have their own secret recesses, their niches, their times, their outbursts and their pauses.
I contemplated these images by Carlo Carletti and wondered if these spaces, these partially illuminated stone paths, these quasi-stage sets and serviceways were Siena. They most certainly are with regard to those ageold aristocratic residences and the response is also affirmative in every other instance because even in those photographs of buildings and residences which are less ostentations, semi-bourgeois and even working-class, I found a sense of discretion, of propriety, even of elegance which is in every corner, even the least showy, of the architectural heart of the city. There is an urban nobility which emanates from below, beyond the stem portals, beyond the grand staircases of Rapolano travertine, beyond the stone gutters, the iron gates and bannisters. There I saw the art not only of the builders but also of the iron-workers: the Franci, the Zalaffi, with their co-workers which included numerous specialists and apprentices – all ofwhom have enriched a tradition which comes from centuries long past and which we find in the churches, in the “holy of holies”, in the chapel of city hall. One can speak of a real Sienese school of wrought iron and whosoever wishes to know more about this aspect should not fail to consult the work “Notes and Memoirs ofMyLife” by Pasquale Franci (published in the last century), where Siena’s decorative arts are interwoven with the works of architects resultin& in the multiform talent ofArturo Viligiardi. Many other craftsmen worked on the iron latticework, the ornate grilles and the humble handrails and to these we owe the iron gates, the fine lanterns and graveyard ornamentations as well as the shutters on the doors, the light brackets and the little bells.
Carletti has not neglected the major entrances of the Captain’s Palace or the City Hall, the parvis of the church of Saint Catherine, the miraculous rising spiral of the Vestri Palace, but what seems to interest him the most is the average home with its small size and its grand staircases. His quest is for dramatically falling light which relieves the darkness and bestows sculpturesque shapes on edges, corners and imitation columns, which highlights an ornamentation, exploits the plastic art of cornices and arches, iron gates and wrought iron which separate, block off and complete the picture for him. The latter at times bestow an elegance of virile dimensions which enrich the gaunt and modest scenery when a coat-of-arms, or a flourish lend a creative variation to a simple routine operation whose artful achievement, at first glance, did not seem to be the original intent of the photographer. But a discreet bond of esteem links these closed places, a certain poetry springs from these entrances which Carletti has been able to discover, understand, interpret and reveal to us, for which it is only proper to thank him.”

Mario Verdone

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