Spadolini (1907-1972) was a famous music-hall dancer in 1930s Paris and, after that, an appreciated painter both in France and abroad. He was also decorator, singer, actor, restorer and director.
Travaglini opens the book quoting another novel on Spadolini, Il Gioco di Spadò [Spadò’s Game] by Augusto Scano, published in 2015. Spadolini is dying in a hospital and somebody (Death? A friend?) asks him to dance and invites him to do so as he has never done before. This is a significant introduction because, as I stated in 2007, dance represents a fil rouge in Spadolini’s career, even after he stopped dancing, in that it constantly returns in his paintings.
The narrative is divided into two main threads: one set in 2015 and dedicated to the fictitious character of Dora, an Italian American PhD in Renaissance art who is given the task to write a book about 1930s dance in Paris; the other is centred on Spadolini’s life that spans from the 1920s to the 1970s. Dora’s publishing house asks her to find “a key, a protagonist, something or somebody who can become the subject for a book”. Surprised, Dora discovers the exhistence of an unknown figure who has her same surname, “‘Josephine Baker and...Spadolini?’ But it is my same surname!”. Thus begins her adventure in search of Spadolini that will bring her to Italy and France in the company of archivist Maurizio.
Spadolini’s life flows through the pages thanks to recurrent flash-blacks that move the action to when the artist met Gabriele D’Annunzio and Anton Giulio Bragaglia in 1920s Italy, when he became a famous dancer in 1930s France, when he danced in front of Hitler in 1940, when he performed with Walter Chiari in Italy after the Second World War and so on till his last years.
Many of these flash-backs stand out for their historical interest. For example, the Spadolini-D’Annunzio connection poses some reflexions. On the one hand, historian Giordano Bruno Guerri considers it a possibility, on the other, he highlights the fact that there are no documents about it. In truth there are, but they do not come from the period during which they met, that is the 1920s [1] but from a lot later, 1971, when Philippe Jullian published his biography on the Italian poet. Maybe Guerri refers to the lack of primary sources (precisely those closer to the period of the event) and not to the presence of secondary sources as Jullian’s book is. A debate on sources would imply a long digression, but we can briefly analyse this one.
Jullian thanks Spadolini in the acknowledgment page but does not name him in the episode about his encounter with the poet at the Vittoriale. One wonders why. Did Spadolini explicitly ask for his name to be omitted? Why would he do that? Jullian was not an amateur writer: born as illustrator, he wrote some novels to then focus on art history and biographical studies. His book on Symboism, Esthètes et Magiciens [translated into English as Dreamers of Decadence] contributed to the rediscovery of that art movement. Some of his books, including his biography of D’Annunzio, have been translated into Italian. Jullian dedicates a couple of pages to the encounter between Spadolini and D’Annunzio, pages that do neither represent a fundamental aspect of the poet’s life nor a considerable portion of the book itself: he could have simply taken them away, but did not. Furthermore, as Travaglini has specified, this source has been confirmed by Patrick Oger who knew Spadolini well.
Considering Jullian from another perspective, we could look at what he actually does not say. In fact, when he thanks Spadolini, he calls him “the famous dancer” without saying anything about his paintings. Why? Exhibitions on Spadolini’s work had been organised since the 1940s, why did he omit this aspect? At present it is not clear, but we know that Spadolini had been deeply attached to his paintings since the 1920s, when he was studying art in Rome.
One of his first notable paintings was a San Francis he completed in 1925. At that time he could not keep it safe at his place in Rome and left it in Ancona, at his parents’ house. Unfortunately, his father Angelo, who had refused to join the Fascist Party, lost his job and decided to sell it. When he discovered it, Spadolini became very angry. He tried to recover his work and discovered that it had been sold to a church in Bradford, New York, USA. When he went on tour to the States, he hired a photographer to have a picture taken of his painting and this is all we have of it today. His attachment also emerges from his decision to join the Third Order of San Francis, probably after the Second World War. Travaglini dedicates an intense page to his uncle’s devotion for the saint, quoting his own words: “Francis has taught me to give for the joy of giving, to be happy with what I have, to consider the rich as the real poor because they are often poor in their spirit and soul”.
Spadolini’s words return in other parts of the book, as in his 1935 article, “Impressions of America”, that Travaglini published also in his 2012 book, Spadò – Il danzatore nudo. Spadolini talks about the United States after coming back from a tour there, “an American city shows itself as a continuous example of human velocity”. He compares the Parisian music-halls with those in the States, highlighting the fame of the French capital, “in general, when the production shows a French label, it is skyrocketing”. He then criticises North American racism, after noticing its “unspeakable repulsion towards the yellow and black races” while dining with black artist Alma Smith.
Dora and Maurizio discover information on Spadolini thanks to this and other documents, commenting them and formulating questions on his life. In this sense, Travaglini’s book is as much about Spadolini as it is abut the complex act of writing a book on him. Connected with this aspect, there is another character, a blogger who publishes superficial articles on Spadolini. His work, inspired by an exhisting book, Ignazio Gori’s Alberto Spadolini – Danzatore, pittore, agente segreto [Alberto Spadolini – Dancer, painter, secret agent], shows the great difference between a fourteen years (and counting) long study, as Travaglini’s book is, and Gori’s work, where Travaglini’s findings are mentioned (beginning with the 1978 box of documents) but never acknowledged. One could recognise its unprofessional approach even only from the book cover, where a beautiful photograph of Spadolini is turned upside down (what are possible readers supposed to think of it? That Spadolini danced that way?). Worse still, the book is described as the ‘study’ that gives back “its right weight” to Spadolini’s work , creating a false idea in those who do not know anything about either Spadolini or his nephew, a very grave and disrespectful act. Through the blogger character, Travaglini questions and deconstructs Gori’s book, reclaiming the respect that his own work and his uncle deserve, “‘Your blogger – vehemently said Dora - ‘alludes to something, but what proofs does he offer?’. ‘None!’, replied Maurizio”.
NOTE
[1] There is an indirect source from that period that attests Duilio Cambellotti’s presence at the Vittoriale. According to Pierfranco Andreani, who wrote a brief biographical introduction on Spadolini in the brochure of his Roman 1967 exhibition, Spadolini became Cambellotti’s apprentice while studying at the Art Academy in Rome. It is therefore plausible to think that Spadolini went with him to the Vittoriale.
