Penumbra Book – Rome

Finding Home

My great-grandmother came to America in a heat of indignation and impatience. She had restlessly waited a year with no word or money from her husband who had traveled to America ahead of her. She was angry and adamant that she was not going to be stranded in Italy and abandoned with a child like so many other Italian wives whose husbands had traveled to America in search of gold. Her husband would not desert her for a new life and maybe even a new family in that place where the past is easy to forget. She would go to America herself and find him and end his silence from across the ocean. Against the advice from her family and deaf to their pleas to wait, she managed the cost of the passage. With her young son Carmen in tow, she set off to find her husband and reunite him with his obligations.

My great-grandfather Alessandro Aurelio left Italy for America seeking the gold in the streets like the stories he had heard from dubious sources and other dreamers. Whether the gold was there under his feet ready to pick up, or if it were all a fantasy, the dream of America offered more than the meanness that his life in Italy allowed. He longed to own land as only the wealthy could in his native country. For a peasant in service to the padrone, owning property and the esteem of status was an impossible path. Both of my great-grandparents were obligated by the circumstances of their birth to be agricultural laborers. They were subject to the authority of the padrone who owned the land which was passed on through hereditary aristocracies. Because of these cultural, social, political, and financial constraints, personal growth and advancement were limited. With the unification of Italy, there came an urgent cry for the new country to end this system of inheritocracy and enter the modern world of democracy and industry. But this cultural upheaval would not come soon enough to benefit my ancestors. With the severity of their generational poverty, access to the money needed to participate in the more democratic system developing in Italy would remain beyond their grasp.

When I was growing up, the life of Alessandro Aurelio existed only in the memory of his wife, my great-grandmother. He had died decades before my mother was born and remained a spectral figure from a past who only my great-grandmother knew. She related her memories of him with the unsettled bitterness of his loss to her granddaughter, my mother. It was my mother who passed the stories of him along to my siblings and myself. From this oral history passed between generations, I developed an understanding of the richness of my ancestry. There are no photographs or portraits to attach to these stories, or to give light to the shadow of my great-grandfather. He left behind no physical evidence—no watch, no ring, or scrap of clothing to corroborate his life. The only solid testament to his life, is a cruciform gravestone inscribed with his name that marks the place where he is buried. This small monument is the sole earthly attestation that the stories I grew up with have a basis in someone’s life.

While my great-grandfather will always remain an ephemeral figure in the history of my family, my great-grandmother, Giovanna Aurelio who lived until I was ten, was a presence who made our history real. She I knew as a spunky, independent elder occupying a wheelchair, who fed me lumpy oatmeal, and anisette-spiked coffee most mornings during the years after I learned to walk and before I was old enough for school.

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Despite his wife’s pleading, arguments, and threats, Alessando was unwavering in his resolution to move to America. He had tried unsuccessfully to assure his contentious and headstrong wife that he was not abandoning her to live a life of adventure and freedom. He was moving to a place where opportunity was offered freely, where a man could realize his ambitions despite his social standing. He firmly believed that low or high birth was all the same in America. Giovanna was not convinced. She knew her place, and her place was in Massanea among her family. They had a child and her husband needed to be thinking of the child’s needs and future. Alessandro argued back that by going to America, he would be providing little Carmen with a chance at something better than what tiny, isolated Massenea could offer. America promised his son and his future children unlimited opportunity. Why couldn’t his wife understand? He finally asserted his authority as the head of his household—he was going. He would send for Giovanna and Carmen when he had established himself. How long? Giovanna demanded to know. Alessandro could not predict. There were adversities that he could not foresee. He guessed. A year?

The year Alessandro had promised passed. Carmen had begun to walk and was in need of a father’s hand. Giovanna had made up her mind. She was going to find her husband. She would not be left behind and forgotten. My great-grandmother had no idea where her husband was in America. She had no idea how big this far away country across the ocean was. She was a 19-year-old woman with limited education and a toddler. She could not speak English and didn’t even realize that English was the spoken language in this place across the ocean. She was determined and, in the surety of her determination, would find her wayward husband in the new country. Her brother was there, and he could help her. After her brother, there was God, and God blessed all marriages so he would guide her in her search.

She was certain that making this journey was the correct thing to do. She had no fear about what she would encounter in that strange land, except her husband, and the uniting of her family lay at the end of the journey. The port in Naples marked the first time that Giovanna had left the small town of Massenea where she was born. She was not distracted or tempted by the sites or sounds of the large and confusing city. She was there to board the ship that would take her across the ocean to America and her husband. Her mind was set only on her goal. There was no time for frivolities like enjoying the sites or entertainments that a city like Naples could offer. She was convinced that she needed to travel to her husband quickly before he was seduced by the enticements of his new country. Her place was in steerage and all her earthly belongings were bundled into the large tablecloth she used for luggage. There was barely enough room to sit on the deck with Carmen and her large, make-shift sack. She could endure the discomfort if God was merciful and answered her prayers.

The voyage was uneventful, until they entered New York Harbor. When the passengers first saw the great Statue of Liberty welcoming them all into the new land of hope, all the passengers gathered on the deck of the ship. There was cheering from the hundreds of voices, as a great celebration spontaneously broke out among the steerage. It was a time to celebrate the success of the voyage, and a time to rejoice for the safe arrival to their new life. The men doffed their hats as the cheering rose to a frenzy. The past was behind them! Here in America, anything was possible! Hats sailed into the sky with the freedom of birds. Little Carmen was caught up in the festival of joy that was happening all around him. With no hat to fling with abandon into the air, he took off his only pair of shoes and threw them up into the sky, caught up in the gay flight of the moment. The shoes did not fly with the wind as the brimmed hats did, instead they fell like stones into the dark sea. When Giovanna realized what her son had done in his moment of ecstatic fun, she was furious. Now her son would come to America barefoot! They would think she was too poor to put shoes on her son’s feet. Her son would be entering the land of gold like a peasant. She could die of such shame! 

With the help of her brother who knew some English, by asking questions, tracking leads, relentless persistence, and luck Giovanna discovered that her husband had found work on the railroad. Then she found out that there were at least seven major rail lines in operation out of New York. This did not include some minor regional lines that had limited runs. Seeing that her work was far from over, she made the rounds to several before she found the company that had hired her husband. Unfortunately, he was not in New York. He had been sent upstate to work in a place called Schenectady. Giovanna determined to go to this Schenectady. It was where her husband was, there was no alternative.

Leaving Carmen in the care of her brother, Giovanna took the train to Schenectady. At the station, the Station Master tried to navigate the language barrier, but this strong-minded young woman kept talking swiftly in a language that sounded like gibberish to him. She became loud and emotional as she kept trying to will him to understand the significance of her mission across their speech and cultural barriers. Her drama had become a noisome nuisance. Her alien behavior put a distance between her and the Station Master that made connection impossible. She was not behaving with the decorum of an American woman. He found her crudeness offensive. These foreigners always had some epic problem that they expected the world to solve. No wonder most opera was Italian! As a respite from her passionate insistence, he asked one of the Italian workers to make sense of it.

The Italian worker understood what this diminutive, yet feisty woman was imploring. Through all the emotion and explanations, she was looking for her husband who she believed was working at this railroad. The New York office had told her he was there. She was demanding to see him. The Station Master didn’t really want to get involved with a domestic, and apparently extremely fervent dispute, but her pleading was so insistent, he figured that the best way to get rid of this pest was to see if her information was correct. He looked up the name on the job roster and there it was, Alessandro Aurelio. He was housed in the men’s barracks. Unfortunately, the men’s barracks was off-limits to women. He tried to communicate this to her.

Once Giovanna understood that she was in walking distance of her husband, nothing was going to stop her from seeing him and letting him know that she too was in America ready to claim what was rightfully hers. She became nearly uncontrollably insistent that she be taken to Alessandro. Her baby son needed his father she pleaded! The Station Master was unmoved by her cries of abandonment, nor by her forced tears about her needy child. Women were not allowed in the barracks! The interpreter however was more sympathetic and in Italian he explained to Giovanna how to find the barracks.

Alessandro heard the staccato banging at the windowpanes and the shriek of his name in the bunk-house yard. He along with all the other men leaned out of the windows to see what the commotion was about. To his shock, he saw his wife trying each window and door at every bunk house, shouting his name as she searched the yard for him. He was embarrassed and astounded that the women he believed he had left safe and waiting in Italy was here in this foreign place on a mission to seek him out. Why had she left the security of Masseana instead of patiently waiting for his message to come to America? He had not yet saved enough for a place for his family to live.  He was not happy to see her, especially in the rough surroundings of the barracks and among his co-laborers.  In answer to her bellowing cries, he leaned out the window and roared back, “Giovanna! What are you doing here! In America!” Giovanna ran to his window, irate with the complex emotions of relief and livid with indignation. She proceeded to berate her husband for not sending word or money during the year he had been away. Alessandro tried to explain, but Giovanna needed to vent her pent-up frustration and anger, and to express, however negatively, her relief at God’s good grace.

This is our great family story. It has been told, retold, and handed down to explain how my great-grandparents left their padrone in the countryside outside of Naples and became Americans. Growing up in my family, I heard many stories of my great-grandmother’s life in rural Italy and her early years in America adjusting to a new country with new customs, among people who distrusted immigrants and the change they symbolized. As a child, I took them for granted. It never occurred to me that these glimpses into the past were either extraordinary, or very different from any other family stories. Until I was ten, my neighborhood community was mostly Italian and mostly immigrants from the same area of Italy as my great-grandmother. Everyone knew each other, with food and gossip passing freely from house to house.

When I arrived in college and would try to share some of this family lore, I realized by the blank stares and quizzical looks of my fellow students, that my knowledge of my heritage was not that common. Most native-born Americans I met not only didn’t have family stories, but they also didn’t even know or care about their ethnic backgrounds. It seemed that most immigrants that came to America wanted to forget the past and concentrate on the future. There were a lot of bad memories that were better left behind. The New World was a place to begin fresh. This resulted in fourth generation descendants that had no connection to their heritage—they were American without a hyphen.

It was in my art history classes that I began to understand the cultural heritage of Italy. It was there that I first made the naïve assertion that my great-grandparents were fools to leave the splendors of Italy for the cultural desert of America. How could they leave all that art, beauty, and history? My ignorance was easy to express, as I didn’t fully know or understand the poverty, and lack of opportunity that my ancestors lived with. My great-grandmother’s stories of her youth never mentioned any part of Italy except her village. Until she left to sail to America, she had never left her little village. The glory of Rome, the art of the Renaissance, the architectural and cultural achievements of her country were unknown and inaccessible to my great-grandmother. The most beautiful thing she saw was the village church and the gold-crowned, polychromed statue of Maria di Gerusalemme, when it was paraded through the streets on her feast day, magnificently dressed and ornamented as the Queen of Heaven. Beauty belonged to the Church. My great-grandmother was illiterate and practical. Such things as art, history, and learning were of little interest or value to her unless they were a means of making money. The ability to make money and the status of owning property were to her, vital life resources. Property could be rented to provide a steady income, or it could even be sold at a profit.

I did not inherit my great-grandmother’s practicality. Once I had decided to be an artist and began to study the cultural achievements of Italy, I was determined to go there and see these wonders for myself. But, it would be decades before that dream came true. Eventually, my partner and I decided the time was right to take our first European vacation together. He decided that I should choose where we would go. I naturally chose Rome. My partner who had been to Europe before, had not been to Rome either, so it would be a first for both of us. We planned on the last week in October to avoid the summer tourists and enjoy the cooler weather of autumn. My excitement was so great that I researched where to go and what to see for months before the trip. I had a long list of what I wanted to see.

I was nervous about everything. How would we communicate? I spoke very little Italian but understood a great deal from listening to my great-grandmother who had stopped speaking English as she aged and grew bitter toward Americans. What about money? What about food? How would we get around? The entire experience of travel was foreign to me. It was not lost on me that my ancestors had completely left their culture and way of life behind for a questionable future in another country. I should be able to survive a week-long vacation.

Rome and Italy revealed itself gradually. Initially upon landing, there was no immediate submersion into a different culture. No overtly exotic architecture to indicate that we had arrived at some other place in the world. No unfamiliar ethnic costume that immediately signaled another culture. Except that October in Rome was much warmer than October in New York, there was little indication at the airport that I had arrived in another country. The airport was much like any modern airport: sprawling, confusing, overly bright with lights and advertising, and banal. In the confusion of finding and catching transportation into the city proper, we did not notice the differences in environment that would have contrasted Rome from New York. Once we were settled into the long train ride into the city of Rome, there was time to gradually enjoy the realization that I was living a long-held dream. We were able to relax and look out the windows to appreciate where we were. At first it was industrial sprawl, much like the way America wastes acres of land for dumping, storage, and industry around its transportation hubs. Then, there would be an old stone wall in the distance. A crumbling classical arch passed from view, and the sudden understanding that these were real Roman ruins! Houses began to come into view. Some modern high-rise apartments, but many four or five story, ocher-colored stucco buildings with tile roofs. Rows of them. Some with laundry drying on clotheslines strung across narrow alleys. Others with balconies of greenery and flowers. Could Rome really be this picturesque? This kind of casual loveliness I encountered everywhere in Rome. In the United States this kind of charm is suspect because it is often studied, contrived, and artificial.

We arrived at the garish neon of the modern train station in Rome proper. It was crowded with bustling people, and sadly familiar fast-food restaurants. We found our hotel in a questionable area near the train station, in a nondescript building, somewhat concealed up a flight of stairs. The entire area surrounding the Roma Termini was unkept, seedy and a gathering place for the indigent of the city. This was surprising, since most of Rome away from the station took pride in itself, in its history, and its renowned style. After checking in, we decided to walk around to acquaint ourselves with the immediate area. My fears of communication and interactions with the local Italians were unfounded. I found to my delight and surprise that I was recalling some distant and nebulous memory. Some ancestral inheritance had been activated by the transport across an ocean or the magic of a history that recedes thousands of years. Some ancient vein revived with new pulse—I was at home in a place I had never been. Rome felt like a returning to a place I belonged. I grew comfortable almost instantly with the atmosphere, with the people, and the surroundings. My great-grandmother left Italy in the waning years of the 19th century. The stories she told of her youth were the stories of rural peasantry with outmoded ideas that kept men and women in strict conventions enforced by religion and custom. Hers was an Italy that still held fierce and arrogant attitudes about regional pride. Her descriptions of the homeland of her youth were of an Italy over one hundred years in the past. These antique memories and practices should have been long gone. Italy had shed its backward past of strict gender roles and Church enforced guilt. It was now culturally modern and striding onto the world stage. But as I wandered the streets of Rome the first afternoon of my visit, the present dissipated and the past materialized. The cultural memory of my ancestors became true and active. I saw my relatives in the faces that passed by. Their way of moving had the retention of familiarity. The language had the same familiar cadence and emotion of my great-grandmother and our neighbors. It was all new and all old. I was back to the cultural memory I grew up with.

During that first stroll, we turned down a street which offered a partial view of the Coliseum at its terminus. The sun was setting behind the topmost arches. My heartbeat increased. This was my first glimpse of an ancient monument that I had only before seen in photographs. Here was the symbol of ancient Roman history appearing before me. As we headed toward this cliché of all Roman landmarks, it finally drove into me the realization that I indeed was no longer in the United States. I was absolutely in another country. I was about to see things I had only dreamed of seeing before this trip. A new journey had begun.

At first, Rome overwhelmed my visual sense. I had no idea how to approach what I was seeing with my camera. I wanted to photograph everything like a tourist, just to take back home the images that exemplified Rome. I wanted to simply document my experience, to capture what was filling my eyes with such joy. It took me awhile to sort out what was most compelling to me in a city where for that moment all things were compelling, exciting, and unfamiliar. I needed time to discern the things and moods that I was drawn to.

I distilled it down to a history that seemed to live in the shadows of the streets. The shadows of the past that engulfed all Italian society. A glory that had long passed, yet, was still celebrated as if it were continuing. The penumbra of what was, still remained in the stones, the soil, the dry bones, the religious ritual, and the gloom of the churches. The hand of Bernini that continues to carve out its magic. The wagging finger of the Catholic Church which still holds authority over the people. Every crumbling Roman wall seemed ripe for preserving and could be incorporated into a more contemporary building to hold onto the greatness of what once was. This was the atmosphere that I began to sense. This was what I hoped to capture.

For me, Rome was more than its past that incongruently clashes with its present. There was something ghostly lurking among the ancient ruins, and Renaissance monuments that continue to hold their space on every street. There was a palpable spirituality that envelopes the incense laden atmosphere of the churches. It is a city visibly shaped by the hand of artists. It has an intense presence that demands your attention and engages your curiosity. Each carving has a story to tell, and you want to hear it. Somehow, I wanted to depict this in my art, to convey the mystery and depth of what I was seeing. I wanted to capture the overwhelming vastness of God’s presence that is felt upon entering St. Peter’s, and the weight of time and history that pervades the Roman Forum. Perhaps the emotional experience I had could not be transferred to any medium. Still, I tried to find a way and it is my hope that something of the intensity and complexity of those emotions found its way through in these photographs.

Coliseum

Dome of the Church of St. Luke and St. Martina

St. Peter’s Veronica

© 2025 Arthur Bruso and Curious Matter

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