Ask a writer, any writer about where it is that we begin, and after some meandering into inspiration and imagination we will tell you about the blank page that is so promising, and equally so daunting. About the unblemished white field that both urges and dares us to make it our canvas for the telling of a tale. What a power this virgin territory possesses to both energise and terrify, such that even the great Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir once said nothing was so difficult and at the same time, so exciting as to paint white on white. This lightest ‘colour’ of all – achromatic, it barely claims the word – is the palette heavyweight, the most hardworking, the most adaptable. White dresses European brides and Muslim pilgrims and hides polar bears in plain sight. White is the herald of hygiene and cleanliness, and how we prefer toilets and sinks and hotel sheets. It is the colour associated with goodness and innocence but also of hatred under the white supremacists’ cloaks, and how we imagine the fearful shade of spooks. White is a mountain in France, and a Hawaiian volcano, and girls named for white flowers – Lily, Yasmine, Camilla. It is the name of a Russian revolution, the colour of the Indian Salt march, war’s flag of surrender, the dove of peace. It is the light generated by the sun and the moon, the surface that reflects all wavelengths. If white holds all the colours, does that mean it has all the answers? Far from being a fear-trigger, could whiteness be waiting patiently for us to draw them out of ourselves with the first line, the first letter?
Now imagine the wonder of an artist who could shape white.
All the images in this post come from one place, the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo’s Kalsa district. It is a space created by Giacomo Serpotta (1656-1732), a master of stucco working at the height of the Baroque period, and an artist with a remarkable vision. The oratorio itself is of moderate size, though the ceilings are especially high to accommodate tall windows. It might seat forty souls on benches along the walls, or perhaps thirty at a long dining table. The lower half of the room is swathed in a wine-red brocade, its serenity in contrast to the invisible breeze that blows relentlessly about upper half, teasing through a scenography of graceful and luminous women and a riot of rambunctious putti. The statues of the women represent Virtues, allegories so imaginatively wrought you can almost hear their susurrous robes of milky-moon white, while putti toss about on a joyous current. All this tableau that circles the room is aglow with allustratra, a magical veil of marble dust that showcased Serpotta at his finest, a secret formula he would take to his grave.
Giacomo Serpotta was born into a family of stuccatori, a community of artisans working with a shape-shifter medium called stucco. Made from quicklime that has been slaked, the soft and malleable paste required swiftness and unwavering certainty to carve movement and expression into a medium that dried and hardened very quickly, into a product with the qualities of sculpture. Technically Serpotta was not a sculptor, because sculptors subtract from the medium, and the stuccatori do the opposite, building layer upon layer of plaster on a frame big enough for a life-sized statue, or around a slender stalk of hay to fashion a tiny sword. But arguably he has come to be known as one, a permissible little white lie because his work was superlative, and because ‘sculptor’ seems a title more apt, prestigious, and worthy than ‘plasterer’.
For fifty years Serpotta employed his gifts in the realm of devotion and heavenly promises, and delivered them with heart-stopping beauty. Seventeenth-century Palermo pulsated with the vibrancy and rage of Baroque that demanded the stuccatori also cast flowers, lattices, festoons, garlands, roundels and geometric patterns, animals and birds, grinning and glaring masks, vases and fruit, biblical scenes and creatures grotesque and mythical. In these shapes stucco covered ceilings, trimmed windows, encircled columns, and adorned altars. Serpotta’s most important commissions came from the compagnie of Palermo, confraternities bound by profession, or inclination, but most often by origin. His work on the Oratorio di San Lorenzo was commissioned by a compagnia of Genoese merchants, the elite among them who used the space for private meetings, worship, celebration of baptisms and feast-days, and mourning. The oratorio’s decorative scheme reflected the ambitions of the compagnia who pledge to live a moral life in service of Christian piety, by cultivating the virtues that Serpotta conjured up in his dreamy worlds of white.
Did he ever despair of the whiteness?
What do we do when confronted with emptiness that must be filled?
It requires no small amount of boldness, this infiltration into the white with words and sentences giving life to our thoughts and ideas. The demand is considerable: ask why we write and the answers will be many and myriad. We write to capture, to illuminate, to impart, to counsel, to bear witness, to hold space, to remember, to give joy. I write to understand, and what holds me back the most is the fear that it will all be inconsequential.
And that is where the virtues come in. Humilitas calms the ego and quiets the narcissist. It is Hospitalitas instead who welcomes the writer, into a gentle space with the freedom to find his or her own voice. A virtue that is accommodating and attentive, and might gently foster our own awareness and empathy. Constantia’s role is to urge diligence and discipline, so that we make of our practice a commitment to return to the white, even if Fides is momentarily absent. A writer’s life is like any other. We are distracted, we stumble, we falter, we fall. Then Misericordia tells us to forgive ourselves, and in concord with the other the virtues, we will get back to work.
And there’s the one they call Caritas.
Of Serpotta’s ten Virtues in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, one of the most beautiful is undoubtedly Caritas. We have come to associate charity with money, but in traditional Christian theology caritas meant the giving of love. Be charitable to your white page and make it an ally. Embrace its virtues. For if we see that the white page can be constant and faithful, forgiving and welcoming, then the only other virtue that we might really need to write our stories is courage.
Dear Reader ~ Thank you as always for the privilege of your time. I welcome your questions, thoughts and comments. And if you know of someone who might enjoy my writing, please do share this publication.