Talking Statues
Statua di Pasquino
Piazza di Pasquino
Rome Italy
2016

Piazza di Pasquino takes its name from the most famous “talking” statue in Rome, Pasquino, leaning against the corner of Palazzo Braschi . In the past this square was called " Piazza di Parione " and was frequented by booksellers, writers and artists, so much so that it even had the name of " Piazza dei Librai ". Pasquino is a fragment of an ancient Hellenistic statuary group, probably depicting Menelaus supporting the dying body of Patroclus, struck by Hector in the Trojan War. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa had bought from the Orsinis the building that once stood where Palazzo Braschi is today and he had worked hard to arrange the little square, paving its bottom. Thus, in the midst of the works, in 1501 this ancient marble group was pulled out of the mud which the cardinal had arranged in the corner of his palace, placed on a pedestal. There are various interpretations on the origin of the name Pasquino: some want it to refer to an innkeeper, some to a barber, some to a school teacher and some to a cobbler, all, logically, named Pasquino.

It probably began by chance to be used to expose biting anonymous satires towards anyone, but over time it "specialized" in ferocious political satires, mostly directed towards the pontiff or, in any case, towards prominent figures of the time, so much so that this genre of "messaging" was called "pasquinata". For this reason the statue ran the risk of being destroyed several times, especially under the pontificates of Adrian VI, Sixtus V and Clement VIII. Pasquino was part of the "coven of the witty", as the association between Pasquino and the other "talking statues" of Rome was called: Marforio , Madama Lucrezia , the Abbot Luigi , the Porter and the Babuino. The penalties for those guilty of "pasquinate" were very severe and reached the maximum penalty, capital punishment. There are many "pasquinades" that have come down to us and here we want to mention some of them, the most biting, even if a footnote is often useful to explain their meaning. During the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility, which took place during the First Vatican Council and under the pontificate of Pius IX, Pasquino exclaimed: " The Council is convened / The Bishops have decreed / that two are infallible: / Moscatelli and Pio Nono ", where Moscatelli was the name of the matches, on whose box was printed: “Moscatelli – Infallibili”. A little while later he continued: “ INRI I Do Not Recognize Infallibility“. As we have already said, he directed his satires also towards well-known personalities, the "VIPs" of the time: the famous Donna Olimpia , the " Pimpaccia of Piazza Navona " , certainly could not be missing . Olimpia had a chamber master named Fiume; moreover, it is necessary to remember the custom, in those times, of indicating the floods of the Tiber with a plaque and the index finger pointed at the level reached by the waters. One day a drawing was found on Pasquino's bust depicting a naked woman, undoubtedly resembling Olimpia Maidalchini , and a hand with the forefinger pointed at the height of the sex and the inscription: " Fin here came Fiume“. Even today there has been no shortage of “pasquinades”: when Rome was covered in cardboard and plaster to welcome the powerful leader of Nazi Germany, Hitler, Pasquino declared: “ My poor Rome of travertine! / they dressed you up all in cardboard / pè done rimirà by 'n' painter “. Or like the one that appeared on the occasion of President Gorbachev's first visit to Rome: “ Perestrojka won't be great / for two days there has been manna a pedagna / it would be a case of smammà / we're starting to turn “.

https://www.pasquinate.it/il-pasquino/

Originally scattered in various parts of the capital, the so-called talking statues are perhaps one of the best expressions of that all-Roman soul, inclined for satire and an irreverent attitude towards power and its most empty ostentations. Their tradition was born in the papal era, when the people began to hang signs with satirical writings around the neck of these sculptures.

If today the famous Pasquino is the only survivor, once upon a time the list was longer and included statues that often gave their names to the streets where they were located (this is precisely the case of Piazza di Pasquino or Via del Babuino). Among all we remember: Marforio in the courtyard of the Capitoline Museum, Madama Lucrezia in Piazza di S. Marco, the Abbot Luigi in Piazza Vidoni, the Porter in via Lata, the Babuino in Via del Babuino.

“Our” Pasquino is a statue from the Hellenistic period (the dating can be traced back to the 3rd century BC): what remains is actually a double fragment of two bodies, one of which probably depicts a Greek warrior, but it is also hypothesized that whether it is Menelaus supporting the dying body of Patroclus. It seems that originally the statue, found in 1501 following excavations, adorned the Stadium of Domitian, i.e. the current Piazza Navona. Following the discovery, it was moved to its current location, in what at the time was Piazza di Parione (which is also the name of that district) and which today is, in fact, Piazza di Pasquino.

The name of the statue itself is as mysterious as its origins and what it represents. There are several hypotheses in this regard: the most accredited traces Pasquino to a well-known craftsman of the Parione district (a barber or a tailor or a shoemaker), famous for his satirical vein. According to others it would be a restaurateur who exhibited his verses in that little square, while other versions speak of teachers of Latin grammar or protagonists of Boccaccio's Decameron . But we like to think that such a popular statue, which gave so expertly a voice to the Roman people, took its name from one of its humblest representatives, a shopkeeper, an artisan or a restaurateur with a passion for poetry and with a soul full of irreverent satire.

The pasquinades, i.e. the satirical placards and posters that were hung at night around the necks of talking statues, began to appear in the papal era, as invectives, jokes and verses against the representatives of the temporal power of the papacy. Often it was the popes themselves who were the targets of the harsh Roman satires, so much so that more than one pontiff tried to remove Pasquino, only to be "dissuaded" by the advice of those who knew the Roman people well and their possible, uncontrollable reactions in the face of such censorship. If at first, however, the gendarmes were even placed to watch the talking statues at night (but not discouraging the billboards), later the same temporal power sensed the potential of this custom,

Since the origin therefore linked to papal power, the history of the pasquinate was momentarily interrupted precisely following the annexation of Rome to the new Kingdom of Italy. But it was an absence that modern times have finally been able to remedy, reviving the glories of Pasquino with new daily pasquinades, linked to politics, current events, the ostentation of power, the vices of the powerful, with a breath at times international, sometimes local, aimed at the problems of the Capital. In any case, the period of "darkness" that followed the breach of Porta Pia was never total and sporadic pasquinades occasionally broke a silence that the decades to come would have definitively eliminated, bringing back one of the traditions that best tells what the invective is. Romanesque.