Introduction:

Those who say fascism, say first of all beauty. - Benito Mussolini, Milan, 1923.

On the desolate island of Lipari, the Isle of Ischia by the Bay of Naples, and the secluded
Tuscan seaside of Ferte dei Marmi, one of the most controversial and influential writers of the
20th century endured a ten year relationship with the awful beauty of exile. Within the tradition
of a dictatorship established on the performative spectacle of symbol, myth, cult, and ritual, the
exiled Kurt Suckert turned inward and sketched the spectacle of his own symbolic image. Just as
Mussolini reclaimed the Latinized title of Il Duce, so too did Kurt Erich Suckert assume the
name Curzio Malaparte- the Italianized bad seed version of Napoleon. It was whilst imprisoned
on Lipari that Curzio conceived of an architecture befitting of his new identity, thus the dream of
a house in seclusion on the wild and rocky topography like that of his exile was born. 100 feet
above the emerald shores of the Gulf of Salerno, the house and its builder remain veiled in
memories of myth and mystery. In Michael McDonoughs 1999 book Malaparte: House Like
Me, the interpretations and meditations on 1943 Casa Malaparte connect the house to influence
from the ancient world, Surrealist technique, Dadaist absurdity, and Futurist inventiveness.
While the depths of these influences are undoubtedly present, a void remains in the houses
attachment to the development of the individual and architecture in the early modern world of
Curzios own Italy.
In the founding of early Renaissance cities, physical evidence of cardo decumanus was
prized as connection to noble Roman origin. Modeling the governance of their cities after
coveted Roman ancestry, the practice of exile saw its first resurgence since antiquity in medieval

and Renaissance Italy. Reading the Greek classics while in fascist Terza Roman exile, Curzio
was essentially reliving the experience of the exiles of Petrarch, Dante, and Machiavelli who
read and found consolation in the words of Seneca and Ovid. Machiavelli expresses his refuge in
classical reading as a way to escape the turmoil of his own situation in a 1513 letter to Francesco
Vettori, When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off
my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear.
Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am
warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not
ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer
me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid
of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. With shifting relationships to
solitude, personal health, and the capacity of architecture to influence mind and body, the
influence of early modern Italy extends all the way to the cliffs of Curzios Punta Masullo. In
this paper, I will highlight four underlying influences of Renaissance culture embedded into Casa
Malaparte: Serlian vernacular, Palladian vista, Petrarchan consolatoria, and Cinquecento ars
memorativa.
Fashioning himself as the sculptor who would transform the new Italian man and beautiful
new Italy, the aestheticization of politics in Il Duces Italy regarded any public act as artistic and
therefore political. The reclamation of the Roman salute and Passo Romano in Italian military
procedure promoted fascist aesthetics of discipline and order. While the abolition of lei in
favor of a return to clear and direct Roman origins of tu and voi dictated even the
movements of the Italian tongue. Style became the formal, extrinsic presentation of fascisms
substance; the content was derived from the form. 1 It was then, a direct challenge to

to Mussolini- both in his abilities as a revolutionary leader and the questionable style of his poor
taste in neck ties- that landed the sharp-tongued journalist on the bad side of Il Duce. With
allegations that there were obvious transvestite elements and that Hitler was really a woman,
Suckerts 1933 expose Technique de la coups detats, German-Italian forces banished the
irreverent provocateur from publishing while imprisoned.
Much like the building of the 1489 Palazzo Strozzi in Florence became a testament to the
familys resiliency despite the imposition of scattered exile, the Casa Malaparte became for
Curzio an expression of himself, his experiences, and his ideals. Casa Como Me, ritratto di
pietra, as he called it- the building of this house truly became a portrait in stone, so much so
that when we speak about one we unavoidably speak about the other. The house on the
Tyrrhenian cliffs is above all, a mans deeply personal search for meaning in a time of
uncertainty, violence, and the beginnings of atomic warfare. By examining Renaissance culture
in a similar climate of Italian War unpredictability, the Casa Malaparte becomes embedded into a
Renaissance ethos of building- where architecture, as an extension of rhetoric, was a way to
create meaning.

Veneration of the Vernacular: Sebastiano Serlio and Modern Mediterraneit

For a thorough understanding of the Casa Malaparte, it is essential to consider Curzios
initial commission to the founder of the Italian Movement for Rational Architecture (M.I.A.R.)Adalberto Libera. While Liberas basic footprint and materiality of the house remain intact,
Curzios alleged boredom and distaste for his overall design led to a falling out in their
collaboration very early on. Until the 1980s, the house was misattributed to Libera and
understood as a rational work derived from mathematical reasoning, and representing rational

architecture rooted in modernized classicism. Whereas Libera developed an architecture of

rational construction divorced from poetry and aesthetics, Curzio strove to make the house
different from ideologies surrounding Italian Rationalism. Curzios formal modifications to
Liberas basic plot were the addition of the wide triangular staircase and large roof terrace.
With his penchant for metaphor and exhaustive talent for storytelling, one wonders
whether Curzio chose to work with Libera with the prefigured intention of cutting him loose.
Equipped with a modernist villa representative of the founder and secretary of the M.I.A.R.,
Curzio could cut into and chisel away at the design of the man responsible for Mussolini's public
building and modernization program. Despite symbolic-ideological modifications to Liberas
original design, in pursuit the houses connection with Renaissance influence it is crucial to
examine the lingering hand of Libera in the Casa Malapartes use of the vernacular.
After Curzios early involvement with the beginning stages of fascism 2, the Italian Futurist
idea of a transcendental-political art remained with him. Curzio was part of a movement that that
modern architecture should reflect utopian ideals, and viewed the architecture of his house as a
virtual text with all of the narrative power of literature. For this reason, he oversaw with
meticulous supervision the building of his design, with the local mason Adolfo Amitrano and his
son after the departure of Libera. This deliberate choice of a local builder and employment of
local materials of sea laden limestone, adobe, stone, wood, clay, and bamboo speak just as loudly
as his strategic selections of window frames, ornamental details, processional approaches, and
everything else.
While there was a belief in the transformative power of art as a political idea, there was
also, especially in the case of Casa Malaparte, a profound sense of disenchantment with the state
of things. The political context of intense revolutionary provocation replaced with enforced

fascist silence, the Casa Malaparte embodied the ambiguities and confusion of the time with its
perilous mood, inverted expectations, and presence as disturbing and confrontational. The choice
of vernacular tradition in combination with the site of Capri reflects Curzios point of departure
and fundamental conflict with Mussolinis regime.
While Curzio shared the fascist sentiment against the modern barbarian world, he
distinguished his support for historical fascism (the revolutionary spirit of the provinces)
against the political fascism that which was being normalized in Rome. In his condemnation of
the Roman legal country of inane bourgeois politics, he emphasized the importance of Italian
provinces as the real country and the essence of the true Italian soul. Malapartes political
position was reflected in several coeval artistic and intellectual movements that were attempting
to redefine Italian modernity by emphasizing local traditions. These cultural currents affirmed
the importance of defining national character in opposition to the pursuit of universal values.
They praised the paramount role of countryside in this context. He auspicated a return to the
land, sentiment, and nature, and the embrace of tradition, hierarchical order and discipline. 3
While the choice of siting Casa Malaparte on the island of Capri responded on the one hand to
Curzios attachment to his experience of exile, it was also a deeply political move harking back
to his support for the revolutionary spirit of the provinces.
Curzios reverence for the provincial echoes an earlier modernist architectural
appreciation for the primitive. As an embodiment of both a relic of the past and a catalyst for the
enduring spirit of architecture, Curzio shared in German architect Gottfried Sempers love for the
vernacular. As a fellow exile separated by almost 100 years, Semper found as the object of his
affection a Caribbean hut in the Great Exhibition of 1851 while exiled in London. In Kurt
Foresters The Extraordinary Role of Ordinary Things he explains Sempers fascination with

the simplicity of the hut, In Sempers mind, the Caribbean hut embodied a scheme that cannot
be reduced any further without losing coherence. It stands not only for a single building but its
very species. Its elements are both independent of one another and yet united by a single
purpose. 4 Curzios collaboration with the Amitrano family in building brick by brick the
vernacular foundations of the Casa Malaparte echoes Sempers own choice of rural Italian
architectural language in his Villa Garbald. In the villas allusions to Tuscan loft typologies and
Capriote pergolas and external stairs, Semper adheres to the trend of modernist fascination with
the simple buildings of Quattrocento and Cinquecento Italy. It is thus in Michelangelo Sabatinos
Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy that the
modernist return to the origins of building is explored, and the vernacular link between Casa
Malaparte and the Renaissance is unearthed.
Sabatino traces this veneration of the vernacular as far back as the treatises of Sebastiano
Serlio (1475-1554). Forester and Sabatino illuminate Serlios elevation of the primitive with that
of the evolved, demanding reconsideration of definitions of rural and urban. These redefinitions
of the rural and provincial resonate with the historical fascism ideologies of Curzio discussed
earlier. Whether or not he explicitly read Serlio or was versed the work of Semper, the
vernacularity of Casa Malaparte embed the building into a tradition of modernist foundations in
the Renaissance. Whereas Malaparte embraced the ultra-rationalist ideology of the right-wing
milieu of the journal Il Selvaggio, his architectural proclivities for bold volumes and sweeping
views of the surroundings were essentially modernist in opposition to the prescriptive attitudes
towards tradition and Italianita that prevailed under fascism. 5
The use of local material in the expression of modern form is reflected in Libera and
Malapartes application of indigenous stone in the construction of houses flat roof that

resembled contemporary construction aesthetics of reinforced concrete. In Sabatinos argument

that Liberas appropriations of the vernacular allowed his architecture to challenge notions of
classicism and Italian historicism, he considers for the first time why and how the vernacular
tradition influenced fascist art and architecture. The distinction that links Casa Malaparte to a
Renaissance tradition as opposed to the obvious relation to a classicist revival is rooted in
Sabatinos own definition, On the one hand, there was architecture realized for fascism which
symbolized the regime, on the other hand, there was architecture realized during fascism which
was critical of the regime and tried, unsuccessfully, to redirect its course. 6
The very fact that Libera had to defend Casa Malapartes vernacular origins attests to the
fact that Curzios house belonged to an architecture in critique of the regime. The majority of
Italian politicians and critics regarded the Mediterraneita movement, (a fusion of both vernacular
and classical tropes of which Casa Malaparte was a part of) as a betrayal against fascisms
nationalist agenda. Progressive fascist rationalists like Libera, found themselves at odds with
the regimes growing insistence on prescriptive attitudes that banalized classicism in statesponsored buildings...they felt betrayed by a regime that gradually abandoned both futurism and
rationalism. 7 Whether or not Liberas departure from the design was spurred by Curzios
distaste for his design or Liberas distancing himself from the controversial language of
vernacular, Curzios commitment to the controversy of the provincial aligned him with the
Serlian blurring of polite and primitive.
As testament to the authenticity of the houses vernacular were the challenges that faced
the 1980s preservation and reconstruction of the house. The construction techniques were so
localized, (to the extent of horses carrying brick) that it was virtually impossible to recreate the
houses building with advanced efficient technologies. It was only when a helicopter brave

enough for the task committed to carrying building materials to the houses rooftop. However,
the flight of the helicopter was delayed for several months, as the reconstruction had to wait for
permission from the governing Capriote winds.

Vistas, Temples, and Sweet Air: Designed Scenery and Healthy Villas
Just as the vernacular materiality and form of Casa Malaparte are linked to a Renaissance
tradition of Serlian praise for the provincial, the siting and commanding vistas of Capri are
linked to a Renaissance tradition of Palladian designed scenery. Serlios praise of primitive
materials and construction methods would have favored the Palladian simplicity of stuccoed
brickwork in evocation of the Roman villa. Palladios economic classicism in combination with
his talent for situating a villa in perfect harmony with its landscape gained him the favor of
powerful patrons throughout Vicenza. In the example of the Villa Rotonda specifically, the
importance of landscape as primary design motif resonates with Curzios siting of Casa
Malaparte on Punta Massullo. With four porticoes on all sides of the centralized plan, Palladio
essentially constructs the gaze of the viewer from any of the four commanding vistas of the
Vicenza countryside. While the Villa Rotonda offers the illusion of an effortless symmetry,
Palladios plan entails precise geometric measurements that strategically open each facade to
ideal views of the surrounding topography.
Reminiscent of this Palladian tradition of designed scenery, whether in the real
landscapes of Vicenza or the painted landscapes of Teatro Olimpico, a lyrical account of the
designed scenery of Casa Malaparte aligns Curzios design with this tradition. In an excerpt from
Curzios 1949 novel La Pelle, in an event that may or may not be fictional (as it is impossible to
differentiate between the two in the land of Malaparte) General Rommel stops by Casa

Malaparte on his way to the African front and asks whether Curzio had bought a built house or
made it himself. Curzio responds, The severe cliffs of Matromania, the three giant rocks of
Faraglioni, Penisola Sorrentina, the Isola del Sirene, the blue of the far Amalfi beach, the shore
of Paestum shining behind it- all the scenes are what I designed. 8 In this response we see the
Palladian ideology of inverting architecture to face its environment, with the enveloping horizon
as the object of the eyes desire. In Arata Isazakis Letter From Capri, he comments on the
miraculous access to all of Curzios above mentioned sights from the single location of the
rooftop terrace of Casa Malaparte, This is a terrace that stands amongst space as a stage. This is
nothing but a stage set for opera. Going up and down the steps, hanging around the terraceeverywhere are Capris sun, air, and ocean. Nothing else was necessary. Such is the design. If so,
there is nothing else to say. 9
In connecting Malaparte to this Palladian tradition of arresting vista, it is necessary to
also examine the cultural and political context that would have accompanied such an aesthetic.
The Pythagorean principles which guided the geometric harmonies of the Palladian villa as a
microcosm of the universe also prescribed to healthy virtues of living in accord with the four
elements. In Cavalo and Storeys Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, the practices of early
modern preventative health are explored in an examination of how individuals pursued a long
and healthy life in the context of uncertainties and difficulties of daily living. 10 In a chapter
titled, Worrying About the Air, there is a significant addition and emphasis in mid-16th
century health on the Hippocratean advice (pulled from his book Airs, Waters, Places) of long
term illness best cured through a change of location, and hence of air. 11 With a marked
emphasis on place and its effects on health, a regionalism and localism emerged that was
accompanied with the rise of a new interest in the healing powers of the right winds and waters.

10

With the anxiety of procuring the best winds for a healthy life, literature with advice on
where and how to situate and orient ones home took inspiration from the Renaissances revival
of a Vitruvian synthesis of architecture and medicine. With what was to be of paramount
influence on 16th century architecture, Vitruvius states that any decent architect, should know
the science of medicine, as this depends on those inclinations of the heavens which the Greeks
call climates, and know about airs, and about which places are healthful and which disease
ridden, and about the different applications of water, for without these studies no dwelling can
possibly be healthful. 12 In Albertis De re aedificatoria, this Virtuvian remedy of sweet wind
and pure water is expanded in the dedication of his first five chapters to the selection of healthy
sites for living. Even in the work of Serlio, whose writing we have seen echoes of in the design
of Casa Malaparte, in the introduction to book VI of his 1537 treatise he confesses that there is
no need for him to address how to site and orient a house because Vitruvius and Alberti have
discussed this at such length that there is nothing to add. 13
The pursuit of sweet air left the image of Rome a hopeless case for healthy living. In with
all the wrong sorts of winds- those damp southerly and westerly ones- Romes situation was
made even worse by the thick air rising from the Pontine Marshes. Between 1470-1600 over 30
villas were built around Rome and its nearby hills, with the years of 1540-1620 as the peak of
this villa revival. So important was the belief in the health benefits of the open air that frescoes
depicting rural landscapes were even painted onto palace walls as a way of channeling the effects
of gazing at the countryside. In the example of the Brescia Sala delle Dame in the Palazzo
Martinengo, listening to music while looking at the painted rural landscape was thought to
benefit all the spirits. Alas, nothing could compete with the authentic air of the country villa- a
typology mastered by Palladio and carried on by Scamozzi. In the accompanying text to

11

Scamozzis plan and elevation for his 1576 Villa Pisani, he emphasized that parallel windows
would purify the air and confer health on the body and mirth on the soul. 14 The floor to
ceiling windows and Curzios testament to designed scenery situate Casa Malaparte in this
Renaissance tradition of a healthy architecture in pursuit of the sweetest winds and purest waters.
In Colin Rowes essay Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, he interprets Palladios villas as
adaptations of the ancient house. In an analysis of Palladios Malcontenta he points out, the
ambiguity, profound in both idea and form, in the equivocal conjunction of temple front and
domestic block; these are charged with meaning, both for what they are and what they signify;
and their impression is poignant. By such apparatus the ancient house is not recreated, but
something far more significant is achieved: a creative nostalgia evokes a manifestation of
mythical power in which the Roman and the ideal and equated. 15 With exception to the temple
front, these words could be as readily applied to the Casa Malaparte as to the Malcontenta.
Just as Palladio intentionally designs the gaze of the Villa Rotonda, so too does he design
the approach to the villa. The northwest angle from which one is made to approach the Villa
Rotonda is designed with the desired of effect of feeling as though one is ascending from a less
noble place to an exalted ancient temple. With the rooftop of Casa Malaparte interpreted as a
reference to a Greek outdoor sacrificial altar, the house on Capri continues this notion of a
creative nostalgia rooted in ancient myth. However, his choice of monumental stair in place of a
temple front signals yet another design decision placing Casa Malaparte in conversation with the
nostalgic practices of the Renaissance.

Ars Memorativa: The Theatre of the Stairway, the Window, and the Fireplace
Can it be that the memory is not present to itself in its own right but only by means of an image of itself?
Augustine, Confessions, 10.15

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In the building of his portrait in stone, Curzio builds physical manifestations of memories
of exile into the defining feature of the monumental staircase, the chestnut mantle fireplace, and
the barred windows of the lower level. This architectural commemoration of his time in Lipari,
Ischia, and Ferte dei Marmi speak to the writers conflicted relationship with imprisonment and
exile. In a larger examination of the houses relationship to Renaissance precedence, Casa
Malapartes reenactment of exile relate to the art of memory developed from ancient Greece by
the Italian humanists. It is in the reification of Curzios memory that Casa Malaparte practices a
Renaissance revival of the Greek and Roman practice of the ars memorativa.
With origins debated between Simonides, Pythagoras and Metrodorus, the art of memory
was expounded in a seminal Roman text on rhetorical devices, known as Ad Herennium.
Capitalizing on sight as the strongest of all senses, the text offers methodologies for improving
what is known as artificial memory. In contrast with natural memory, born organically with
thought, artificial memory could be conditioned through training. Through the pairing of locus,
(a place easily grasped by the memory such as a house, a colonnade, an arch, etc.,) with the
image of the memory one wishes to record internally, the art of memory becomes an inner
writing. It was not until the Renaissance however, that we would witness the shift from internal
to external mnemonics. In Giulio Camillos 1550 LIdea del Theatro, the concept of a wooden
theatron translated the mental map of Ad Herennium into an actual architectural typology of a
theater. According to Erasmus "the architecture is of wood, marked with many images and full of
little boxes... he calls this theatre of his by many names saying that it is a built or constructed
mind and soul." 16 While Camillos theater was never built to full scale, what is significant is the
transformation of a mental practice of memory to a built enactment of the theater of memory- of
which Casa Malaparte can be seen as a theater of memory in and of itself.

13

One other connection that must be pointed out is the question of whether or not Curzio
was aware of this art of memory. His reference to himself as a bird who had swallowed its
cage, affirms his total embodiment of the experience of his imprisonment- the staircase and
barred windows testament to this connection. I find it interesting then, that one of the main
symbols of mnemonic systems in both ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy is that of the caged
bird, or the aviary. In Plato's Theatetus, an inquiry on the nature of knowledge, Socrates
compares memory to an aviary: "Let us make in each soul a sort of aviary of all kinds of birds. . .
When anyone takes possession of a piece of knowledge [a bird] and shuts it up in the pen, we
should say that he has learned or has found . . . knowledge; and knowing, we should say, is
this." 17 Thus in Curzios positioning of himself as the bird (the learned symbol of knowledge)
swallowing its own cage (the container of memory), the bird takes the form of its structure of
memory, and thus the Casa Malaparte takes the form of the stairs of Lipari.
In and out of prison and exile 7-8 times over a span of 10 years, the experience left a deep
impact on Curzio, but not in the way one would imagine. Forbidden to publish, Curzio turned
inward to his diaries where his verses of self-dramatization romanticized his experience of
prison,
Too much sea, too much sky, for such a small island, and for such a
restless soul. The horizon is too broad. I drown in it. I am a photograph, a painting too small for such a big frame. The fault lies in the
closeness of the island, the lack of a harmonious relationship between
the immense space that surrounds the island and the small machinery
of the human organism.

A simple glance at the pictures of Curzio while in exile offer an interpretation of exile that
doesnt seem all that bad; Well dressed in clean white clothes, hair sleeked to the side, walks
along the shore with his beloved dog never far behind, one can only guess why he wanted to

14

recreate this environment into a retreat for writing upon release. But while the exile may not
have seemed as physically taxing as one might imagine exile to be, a close look at the
development of his writing while in exile reflects an internal state that questions the state of the
humanity.
A common side effect of exile, Curzio was experiencing the sentiment shared by
Ulysses, Dante, and Machiavelli of the realization that the world continued on without his
presence. It was in exile that Malaparte felt for the first time the reality of the crushing power of
German-Italian regime. The former unabashed journalist with no fear as to what he published
was silenced, the man whose presence commanded attention simply by being in a room was
robbed of his audience. Malaparte, in exile, was performing on an empty stage. Deepening his
disenchantment, upon release from exile he was called to service to report as a war
correspondent for WWII. The horror of these observations, detailed in his books published while
living at Casa Malaparte, account for Curzios belief that man was to be free not in freedom but
within a perpetual prison. His war memoirs of Kaputt (1944), which present a point of view from
those doomed to lose the war, and also La Pelle (1949), an account of war-time Italy serve as
lyrical recantations of his previous involvement with fascism, his writing blending grotesque
hallucinogenic surrealism, ironic humility, and profound tragedy. In this context, we can revisit
his memories of his days on the island of Lipari; walks along the shore and visits to the local
church of the Annunziata hold a higher understanding and sympathy for nostalgia.
It would not be until the completion of the house and move to Capri that the memory of
exile becomes Curzios eternal Objet petit a. In his only short essay on the house called Portrait
in Stone, Curzio openly shares his folding of memory into the forms of the house:
Today more than ever I feel that cell no. 461, 4th wing of Regina Coeli,
has remained inside me, becoming the secret form of my soul.
15

Today I live on an island, in a harsh, melancholy and severe house which

I have built alone, lonesome on a cliff hanging over the sea: a house
which is the ghost, the secret image of the jail. The image of my nostalgia.
Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in
freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

The monumental and trapezoidal exterior stairway that dominates the mental image of the
house is a direct reference to the staircase of La Chiesa della Annunziata, the church on the
island where he was exiled in Lipari. When the Casa Malaparte is thought of as a theater for
memory and the monumental stair takes us back to the scene of exile, the performative action of
climbing the stairs should be considered. What are the implications for climbing this imposing
stairway, with no church for respite? One almost can imagine the effect by comparing it to the
ascent of the Scala Santa in Rome- only to discover after climbing the 28 white marble steps on
bended knee that the Holy of Holies is no longer there. The absence of Sancta Sanctoru.
The barred windows of the lower levels small cell-like spaces have alluded to elements
of a medieval prison, and I suspect they resemble the barred windows of Machiavellis own
country residence of SantAndrea in Percussina where he spent his exile. As a victim of the
regime change from Soderini to Medici, Machiavellis extensive connections in Florentine
politics landed him in exile in the Tuscan countryside. Whats curious about the case of
Machiavelli is that after finally being released from bouts of torture and imprisonment, he
himself chose to return to Sant Andrea and not back to Florence. As a native Tuscan of Prato,
Curzio would have been familiar with this small estate and perhaps the barred windows made an
impression on him only to be referenced after his voluntary exile needed precedence.
The third object of memory is that of the fireplace. Representing not an explicit memory,
but the sentiments of restlessness and wandering that accompany one rooted in exile. With its
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tiny glazed transparent opening, Curzio created an illusion of the waves of the ocean dancing in
the flames. In this miniature frame, the Casa Malaparte cuts out the very threshold of its hearth,
the defining symbol of the comforts of home. From this frame, the Casa Malaparte embodies
Miguel de Beisteguis concept of architecture that is at once hestial and hermetic.
Simultaneously symbolizing home and placelessness, private and public, both grounded and
wandering. This architectural detail situates Casa Malaparte in one of many sets of binaries and
contradictions that give the house its enigmatic and magnetic aura. With forms that are at once
strange and familiar, the house stands in a timeless landscape where memories of the past
collapse with consolatory voices of exile.

Classical Consolatia
In its tireless pull between infatuation and restlessness in the architectural image of exile,
Casa Malaparte is a tectonic expression of ancient consolatia developed further in the
Renaissance as consolatoria- a poetic literary response to the experience of exile.
In Randolph Starns, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and
Renaissance Italy, he conjures Matteo Bandellos image of an Atlantis of exiles: where an entire
city is filled with exiles of the past- especially those of Tuscany, where the figure of the outcast,
Starn remarks, was notoriously familiar. The earliest Latin definitions of exile deal with location,
defined positions in space, and origins. Translated as outside the soil, he who is outside his
own ground, or one who had exited outside, exile becomes inseparable from the image of
ones home, and the exile experience of the shifting and blurring of boundaries.
The landscape of exile then becomes a series of contrasts between the encircling gates of
ones hometown and the unknown beyond. As a fortress against external and internal enemies,

17

the city walls were closely patrolled, curfew enforced, and movement in and out heavily
scrutinized. City walls were in fact more than material boundary; they were effigies and altars
where spiritual powers of relics of the citys patron saint were left at gates to ward off intruders.
Starn describes then the movement from center to margin, in that, landscapes of the mind and
imagination become an important part in the ecology of exile.
The voices of exile that were passed down to the Renaissance arrived in two main
sources, that of Ovid and that of Seneca the Younger. While Ovids verse was one of the
disconsolate exile that insisted on elaborate miseries of his sorrow, the verse of Seneca was
consolatory and triumphant- seeing in exile as no more than a change of place, where reason is
able to overturn order. As all exiles had to face the experience of repudiation, homelessness, and
estrangement, the responses both internally and on paper, as evidenced here could be very
different. For centuries after the ancient world, the dialogue of exile was not clearly resumed.
Here and there images and metaphors of exile surfaced, but it was only in Medieval and
Renaissance Italy that the facts and rules of exile become real again.
It was in the shifting territories and geopolitics of Medieval Italy that Dante was
sentenced to 20 years of exile in 1302 from Florence to the dreaded hills of Pistoia for his
involvement with the Black Guelph allies and resistance to Pope Boniface VIII. When the rules
of exclusion of his sentence ran out in 1315, Dantes refusal of amnesty made the law question
itself and realize the limits of its power. Dantes judges fell silent, their original sentences lost,
but Dante still spoke- commanding voice in a chorus of exiles who would have filled some circle
of his Divine Comedy. This ability to speak after the silence of conflict is something inherent in
both Dantes literature and Curzios Casa Malaparte. Petrarch also revolutionizes the expression
of exile, as exile itself becomes a topic of study, and the art of consolatory letter writing is

18

begun. In Petrarchs consolatoria of exile, the disconsolate and consolate classical voices of Ovid
and Seneca are combined in the form of dialogue, another revolution in the expression of exile.
The voices of Ratio (triumphant and optimistic air of Seneca) conversed and bargained with
Dolor (the sulking voice of Ovid). Here Petrarch turns the exile in on himself, and for the first
time there is modern air of acceptance of resignation of the human condition of exile. This is also
seen in Filelfos 1430s continuation of the art of the consolation dialogue, De Exilio.
After the mid 14th century, the facts and rules of exile experienced profound changes
with an emerging order of Renaissance states. In Burckhardts inclusion of exiles in his
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, he states that the exiles found it increasingly difficult to
resort to forms of collective violence and corporate organization of Italian Middle Ages. This
combative view of overcoming exile through rebellion and violence ended at the Battle of
Anghiari in 1440. The Florentine and Papal army defeated the Milanese and anti-Mediciean
exiles leaving their cause hopeless. Resistance wore out easily in such a world, and exiles often
submitted to withdrawal and retreat. This was seen in Alamanno Rinuccinis character in his
1479 dialogue, De Libertate, where Eleutherus chooses voluntary exile from Florence to his
country house where he says, I turn myself into myself in solitude and speak freely with my
books.
The foreign invasions of 1494 magnified the need for language to act as a surrogate
country for the voices of exile. It is in the figures of the exiled Alberti family that we witness the
final evolution of Renaissance exile that is embedded within the Casa Malaparte. In Leon
Battista Albertis dialogues, On the Family, the members of the exiled Alberti clan voice their
opinions on exile. Giannozzo characters political life as a source of frustrations which the exile
ought to be glad to do without, and his remedy for Lorenzos exiled induced sadness is that of

19

virtue, scholarship, and self-expression, the wise man should rule himself with virtue, with
study, and with every art. This faith in art and virtue, while evident in the Casa Malaparte and
its ideals of architecture as a transformative vessel of personal metaphor, it still doesnt quite
capture the haunting quality of the houses melancholic side.
In Starns concluding remarks on exile in the Renaissance, he comments on the
underlying forms of all Renaissance responses to exile as ultimately and fundamentally, self
aware of their unresolved anxieties. Despite their practiced words of consolation, Petrarch and
his successors recognize as an unrelieved kind of exile the nagging sense of dissatisfaction that
individuals bear within themselves. For that affliction Ratio has no real remedies. 18 In both
Terza Roma and Renaissance Italy, the experience of exile becomes a transformation of the inner
self. While on the one hand the experience opened up the individual to the wider world outside
the gates of the city walls, it also exposed the individual to the wild space of the inner mind. The
Renaissance transformed exile from poetic classicist expression to the literary style of an inner
dialogue- a working out of what the experience meant. Combining both elements of classic
expressions of exile, ratio and dolor, the Renaissance exile shifted from reveries of the return
home, to preferring the experience outside of home. This appetite for exile, came also with
profound sense of irreconciliation and blurred relationships to boundaries of home and
placelessness, all of which is laden in the architecture and its details of Casa Malaparte.

Conclusion
In an examination of the Casa Malapartes relationship to local material, the surrounding
landscape, the practice of memory, and the consolation of exile, we have seen a distinct
connection to the early modern world of Renaissance Italy. Viewed in its entirety, the Casa

20

Malaparte occupies a unique tension between hope and disenchantment. In its Palladian and
Serlian qualities of natural splendor and provincial regality, the house exudes a mythic spirit of
unyielding invincibility. However, in Casa Malapartes welcomed hauntings of the memories of
exile, some quality of the house will forever be freely imprisoned. In John Hejduks Cable
From Milan, he speaks of the sorcery of the house and its mysteries set amongst the chill of the
Aegean. In his account of the inaccessibility horizon line, we see it, we yearn for it, but we
cannot touch it.. it awaits, the sentiment of unrequited histories fill the space of the house.
Hejduks interpretation of the house as a stationary ship stuck in a silent presence of waiting,
shares in the irresolute sentiment of most interpretations of the house.
However, in returning to the example of the Palazzo Strozzi, I would argue that the
simple act of building, completing, and living in the Casa Malaparte can be viewed as a
triumphant act and testament to the transformative powers of architecture. Subjected to an exile
that intentionally scattered the Strozzi in as disparate regions as possible by the hand of the
Medici in hopes that this would keep them from uniting and reclaiming power, the Strozzi
adapted to their conditions of exile in an impressive fashion. Rather than lose their identity as
disjointed Strozzi, the family viewed exile as an opportunity to repackage their image. The
scatter policy of exclusion allowed the Strozzi to establish positions in such influential courts as
Ferrara and Mantua, and the distance between family members only forged a sentimental tie to
home that didnt require a physical tie to place. In F.W. Kents examination of the building of the
Palazzo Strozzi and the various correspondences that surround its organization, he interprets this
act of building as a sign of the lasting sense of family unity and blood ties.
While Curzio was never married and never had a family of his own to secure his ties to,
his cause was that of art in the broadest sense. While he was a writer above all else, he was also

21

(as we have seen) an architect, a filmmaker, a photographer, a playwright, and frequent

collaborator with artists. We have seen his deep beliefs in the transformative qualities of art and
its expression in a time of uncertainty, and I would argue that the act alone of building this house
and everything that he achieved while living in it is testimony to its success. Curzio reclined to
his designed scenery first in 1943, the very year that Mussolini fell from power. It was here that
he wrote his most influential books of The Volga Rises in Europe, Kaputt, La Pelle, Du cote de
chez Proust, and Maledetti Toscani, and Benedetti. While the Palazzo Strozzi symbolized the
triumphant union of family collaboration, the Casa Malaparte hosted an artistic collaboration of
its own that would be the first of its kind in Malapartes publication of Prospettive. After
October 1939 the journal developed a different focus and Malaparte cast his eye exclusively on
progressive developments in the arts and culture. The format grew smaller and the graphic layout
became more stylish and more pointedly avant-garde. After Malaparte redefined the journal, he
lost state sponsorship and circulation fell from 100,000 to around 3,000. It was in the new
Prospettive that Malaparte explored themes like surrealism, existentialism, and architecture. 19 It
was thus in the spirit of the individualized Italian Renaissance that Curzio departed from politics
of legal country Terza Roma in favor of the open air of Casa Malaparte; An air that inspires
wonder, discussion, collaboration, reflection, and interpretations for the future.
1

McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New York, 46.
A new generation emerged post WWI, Curzio among them- primarily soldiers who had fought and
survived who were anxious to catalyze change in Italian society and military based on corruption and
mismanagement they witnessed first-hand. This reformist mentality, the urge to rid the world of all the
horrors they encountered in the First World War, was to be the early stages of Italian fascism. Il Duces
fascism of the 1920s had evolved into something much different than Curzio and his generation had been
fighting for.
3
Ibid., 44.
4
Sabatino, M., 1969- 2010, Pride in modesty : modernist architecture and the vernacular tradition in Italy,
University of Toronto Press, Toronto., preface xv.
5
Ibid., 13.
6
Ibid., 15.
7
Ibid., 97.
2

22

McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New
York, 126.
9
Ibid., 126.
10
Cavallo, S., author. & Storey, T., author. 2013, Healthy living in late Renaissance Italy, First edition.
edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 69.
11
Ibid., 79.
12
Ibid., 81.
13
Ibid., 82.
14
Ibid., 86.
15
Rowe, C. 1976, The mathematics of the ideal villa, and other essays, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 15.
16
Yates, F.A. 1999, The art of memory, Routledge, London ;New York, 256.
17
(Plato, Theatetus, 197d. Marsilio Ficino's translation of this work was included in his Commentary on
Plato's Convivium . . . de amore (I.V. #221).
18
Starn, R. 1982, Contrary commonwealth : the theme of exile in medieval and Renaissance Italy,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 67.
19

Mical, T., 1965- 2005, Surrealism and architecture, Routledge, London ;New York., 172.

Works Cited
Beistegui, M.d., 1966- 2003, Thinking with Heidegger : displacements, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington.
Cavallo, S., author. & Storey, T., author. 2013, Healthy living in late Renaissance Italy, First
edition. edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2013.
Chabod, F. 1958, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, Harper & Row, New York.
Ciappelli, G. & Rubin, P.L., 1951- 2000, Art, memory, and family in Renaissance Florence,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ;New York, NY, USA.
Connell, W.J. 2002, Society and individual in Renaissance Florence, University of California
Press, Berkeley.
Filelfo, F., 1398-1481., De Keyser, J., Blanchard, W.S., Filelfo, Francesco,13981481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.Latin.2013., Filelfo, Francesco,13981481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English.2013., Keyser, J.d., editor.,
Blanchard, W.S., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.,
Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English., Filelfo,
Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.Latin (Keyser), Filelfo,
Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English (Blanchard) &
Keyser, J.d. 2013, On exile, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Giamatti, A.B. 1984, Exile and change in Renaissance literature, Yale University Press, New
Haven.
Lagerfeld, K., Pfrunder, E. & Steidl, G. 1998, Casa Malaparte, Steidl, Gttingen.
23

Lejeune, J. & Sabatino, M. 2010, Modern architecture and the Mediterranean : vernacular
dialogues and contested identities, Routledge, London ;New York.
McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New York.
Mical, T., 1965- 2005, Surrealism and architecture, Routledge, London ;New York.
Murch, W. & Weschler, L. 2013, The bird that swallowed Its cage : selected works of Curzio
Malaparte, Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA.
Oppenheimer, P. 2011, Machiavelli : a life beyond ideology, Continuum, London.
Petrarca, F., 1304-1374. 1924, The life of solitude, Hyperion reprint edn, Hyperion Press,
Westport, Conn.
Ricciardelli, F. 2007, The politics of exclusion in early Renaissance Florence, Brepols ;,
Turnhout.
Rowe, C. 1976, The mathematics of the ideal villa, and other essays, MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass.
Sabatino, M., 1969- 2010, Pride in modesty : modernist architecture and the vernacular
tradition in Italy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Shaw, C.(.R.h. 2000, The politics of exile in Renaissance Italy, New York :Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge ;.
Starn, R. 1982, Contrary commonwealth : the theme of exile in medieval and Renaissance Italy,
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Talamona, M. 1992, Casa Malaparte, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
Yates, F.A. 1999, The art of memory, Routledge, London ;New York.

24

Punta Massullo, Capri

Monumental living M in honor of Mussolinis visit at Verres, May 1939

Angelo Burattini, The Inconsolable, 1938

Palazzo Strozzi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Florence, 1489

Original design of Adalberto Libera

Bedroom and Study of Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Villa La Rotonda, Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, 1592

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Punta Masullo of Casa Malaparte

View from the piano noble of Casa Malaparte

View from the basement of Casa Malaparte

View from the piano noble of Casa Malaparte

Sale delle Dame, Palazzo Brescia

Sale delle Dame, Palazzo Brescia

Vincenzo Scamozzi. LIdea della architettura universale di Vincenzo Scamozzi (Venice, 1615),
part 1, book 3, ch. XIII, p. 273
Copyright: RIBA Library Photographs Collection

Diagram of the human mind, from Robert Fludd (1574-1637) Based on the Greek practices of
classical memory. Utriusque cosmic maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica (Oppenhemii: re Johan-Theodori de Bry, typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617-21).
Source: Collection Centre Canadien dArchitecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

LIdea del Theatro, Giulio Camillo, 1530s

Malaparte en route to exile on Lipari

La Chiesa di Annunziata, Lipari

Malaparte in Lipari, 1934

Malaparte in exile on Lipari

Malaparte in exile on Lipari

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Barred windows on bottom floor of Casa Malaparte

Barred windows of Machiavellis countryside home in SantAndrea Percussina

Fireplace of Casa Malaparte

Malaparte in his study at Casa Malaparte

Reconstruction of Casa Malaparte. Major problem of landing hudreds of kilos of materials of

cement, plaster, etc. The first day saw some problems. The air, disturbed by the helicopters rotor
blades and high winds, bounced back off the rocky surfaces up behind the house with such force
that the flights were interrupted. The helicopter, buffeted by the winds, could not remain properly
aligned over the landing area. The helicopter pilot, his craft bouncing excessively, could not get his
assistant on board, and, after a brief initial trip, he disappeared on the horizon.

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Contributors to Prospettive

Malaparte on roof of Casa Malaparte