The Curators’ Quaderno - Lola Costa and Il Palmerino

the

curators’

quaderno

an exhibition in the making

A Painter’s Florentine Garden:

LOLA COSTA

AND IL PALMERINO

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the

curators’

quaderno

A Painter’s Florentine Garden:

Lola Costa and Il Palmerino

Created as part of the project

“A Florentine Garden: Early Women Ex-pats and Artists of Today”

Project organisers

Il Palmerino Cultural Association

Calliope Arts Foundation

in collaboration with The British Institute of Florence

Printed for the exhibition

“Return Home, Lola Costa at Il Palmerino”

curated by Federica Parretti

Florence, June – September 2024

colophon

This exhibition was created as part of “Estate Fiorentina 2024”

an initiative proposed within the City of Florence’s Operational Plan

Exhibition and publication sponsors

Calliope Arts Foundation

Publisher The Florentine Press

Media partner The Florentine

tcq series editor Linda Falcone

Book design Marco Badiani

Book layout

Leo Cardini

With texts by Giuliano Angeli, Lola Costa, Linda Falcone, Vernon Lee,

Margie MacKinnon, Federica Parretti, Luca Scarlini and Claudia Tobin

Printer Cartografica Toscana

ISBN 978-88-97696-31-5

2024 B’Gruppo Srl, Prato

First Edition: June 2024

Series: The Curators’ Quaderno

© Calliope Arts Foundation

All rights reserved

Printed in Florence, Italy

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“At all times and seasons

and in all weathers, it

pleases me to walk here;

disquietude could find no

finer antidote, believe me,

than the green confines

of this narrow pleasaunce

with its garden god,

dumbly eloquent of happy

patience and the spirit of

ancient peace.”

Vernon Lee

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“It seems strange to speak of my

mother at Il Palmerino, when, for so

many years she was Il Palmerino in

its very essence. For almost seventy

years, after convincing her father

Gimo to invest in it, covering most of

the property’s cost as his wedding

gift, she was the soul and guardian

numen of Il Palmerino, which she

managed to defend and maintain,

unfortunately much too prematurely

on her own, against all adversities.”

Giuliano Angeli

on Lola Costa

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“For late nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century women, through

times of personal and national

crises, gardens became places

of sanctuary and experiment,

where ideas about creativity

and domesticity, nature and

relationships could be uprooted

and redefined. Gardens fuelled

literary and artistic creativity for

women in Vernon Lee’s circle, from

Edith Wharton to Lady Ottoline

Morrell to Lee herself. The Italian

Garden became a significant point

of reference, and often romantic

versions of Italy were recreated in

an English setting. After visiting

Lee’s home at Villa Il Palmerino

in Florence and the surrounding

palazzo gardens, Ottoline Morrell

was inspired to buy Italian statues

to line the pool at her garden at

Garsington in Oxfordshire. Her

desire was ‘to make Garsington more

Italian’. In looking to these women’s

gardens, we learn much about their

social, creative, and political lives as

well as their horticultural interests.”

Claudia Tobin

Curator of ‘Gardening Bohemia’ at

London’s Garden Museum

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An on-going

connection

Return home

Calliope Arts Foundation is based in London

but carries out most of its activities in

Florence. We are interested in the historic ties

between these two centres of art and culture,

and the relationships – especially between

female protagonists – that have led to cultural

exchanges for close to two centuries.

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The British Institute of Florence is a natural

partner for us in this endeavour. One of

Calliope’s first projects was to support the BIF’s

development of ‘A Century of Women Artists’, a

course focussing on the local and ex-pat women

who forged a century of change in Florence

from the unification of Italy to the suffrage

movement and the foundations of feminism.

Many of the artists, writers and social activists

covered in that course have connections with,

or were visitors to, the villa at Il Palmerino.

Women such as Iris Origo, Janet Ross, Mary

Berenson and Vernon Lee, a former owner of

the villa whose archive can now be found in

the BIF’s Library. In the past, Villa Il Palmerino

has hosted exhibitions of the art of Elisabeth

Chaplin, Lea Colliva and others, including Lola

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Costa, whose memory is now honoured, on

the 20th anniversary of her death, with the

‘Return Home’ exhibition and grants for two

contemporary artists for residencies at the

villa. Another part of this project, the gifting

of Lola’s archive to the BIF as an ‘annex’ to

that of Vernon Lee, will preserve the legacy

of these two Anglo-Florentine women.

As this Curators’ Quaderno illustrates, the art

and poetry of Lola Costa are infused with the

spirit of Il Palmerino and its garden, which

continues to foster connections between

the past and the present, and between the

English and Italian communities of Florence.

Margie MacKinnon

Calliope Arts Foundation

co-founder and president

what is

tcq

The Curators’

Quaderno is a

collection of

notebook-style

publications,

conceived by Calliope

Arts, in collaboration

with The Florentine

Press, to raise

awareness of women’s

contributions to the

fields of art, science

and culture.

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notes

6

“It is not uncommon for women’s

achievements to be lost to history,

yet in Vernon Lee’s case, the veil

of forgetfulness was, more than

anything, a fall from grace. Lola

and Federigo came to inspect the

house and property the spring

Vernon Lee died, and though the

rooms lay stripped and empty, her

presence still lingered, they said

– an impression that remains true

at Il Palmerino today. The couple

found nothing in the way of the

author’s personal property – barring

a single white parasol, and this

delicate turn-of-the-century relic

speaks volumes, for a parasol is not

an umbrella.

While Lee may have needed to

shade herself from the sun during

the brilliant first half of her

Il Palmerino existence, a parasol

could not, and did not, save her

from the storms of a new century

– that rained down bullets. Vernon

Lee’s declared pacifism and the

controversial publication of the

anti-war satire The Ballet of the

Nations, caused her popularity to

plummet, from 1915 onwards, and

as the new century progressed,

what fame could a liberal woman of

“A word of warning

about Vernon Lee

because she is as

dangerous and

uncanny, as she is

intelligent, which is

saying a great deal.

Her vigor and sweep

are most rare and

her talk superior

altogether. She is

faraway the most able

mind in Florence.”

Henry James

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great eloquence and ‘questionable lifestyle’ have,

if not notoriety, as Mussolini forced his way into

Rome in 1922?

notes

Lola moved her family into Lee’s former kingdom

in 1935 – arriving just as Lee had, some forty years

before, when the weather was fine. The European

powers were busy, preparing for a second round

of global warfare, while the Angeli-Costa family

settled into their oasis of art production. Also an

English ex-pat and writer, Lola was fascinated by

Lee’s experience, and she began following leads.

Lola kept a box with memorabilia from Vernon

Lee’s life, with clippings, books and her own

musings on the author, but it was hidden among

her private things, and she kept her identification

with Lee to herself for decades, and would only

discuss it with scholars or the author’s old friends,

who sometimes returned to the house out of

nostalgia. In fascist Italy and the years of Catholic

conservatism that followed, Vernon Lee was not a

‘family-appropriate’ topic.

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Books with Lee’s characteristic notes in the

margins were diamond points in Il Palmerino’s

Vernon Lee collection, and, on a personal level,

Lola greatly admired Lee’s efforts. Lee’s garden

and salon were in vogue for decades – from Janet

Ross and Oscar Wilde, from Aldous Huxley to

Virginia Woolf, but not only the ‘intelligentsia’

were guests there. A playbill Lee printed for the

‘Teatro Rustico del Palmerino’ was another cause

for Lola’s admiration; Lee created a makeshift

theatre on the estate, adapting plays to expose the

area’s many illiterate peasant children to cultural

literacy. Lola also noted that Lee was a networker

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par excellence, she knew which friends should meet

against which backdrop, and the assistance Lee

provided to Edith Wharton on the writer’s pilgrimage

through Tuscan villa gardens is one famous case

which fuelled Lola’s own garden-love. And Lee’s

lemons – jealously nurtured by Lola and her family

for nearly a century, are alive and well today, in the

garden Lola so often painted en plein air.

Lee’s revived popularity in the last twenty years

and renewed attention among scholars across the

world cannot be studied without acknowledging

Lola’s own interest, as the First international

Conference on Vernon Lee, organised by

Il Palmerino with the British Institute of Florence

and the Gabinetto Vieusseux in 2005 – less than

one year before Lola’s death – represented the

fulfilment of a wish the painter and poet had

harboured for decades. Lola had lived in Lee’s

house for over seventy years, and she knew that

Lee’s legacy would someday bloom and grow far

beyond the estate’s enchanted gardens.”

Lola Costa, 1938

Primroses in

a blue vase

and ball of yarn

Oil on cardboard

40 x 33 cm

A young Lola

in front of her

birth home in

London, c. 1923

Angeli Archive

Linda Falcone, tcq editor

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Lola Costa, 1979

Little statue with orchids

Tempera on cardboard

46 x 34 cm

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Lola Costa, 1974

Artichoke flowers and eggs

Oil on cardboard

36 x 46 cm

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“She was a brilliant conversationalist and

sociable – more and more friends visited,

with each passing day. This environment

and home of hers, was a far cry from being

sumptuous, despite its considerable size.

It was decidedly country-style, complete

with artichoke plants out front. Yet, it was

here they came – the intellectual crème de

la crème, in Florence at that time.”

Lola Costa on Vernon Lee, 1985

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Lola Costa, 1972

Vase with quinces

Oil on cardboard

50 x 35 cm

Lola Costa, 1972

Still life with bird and peaches

Oil on cardboard

50 x 35 cm

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notes

“Lola very strongly believed

that nothing should be wasted.

Everything was to be used,

well-preserved and well-spent,

especially things she considered

Nature’s gifts. She had an

ecological mind-set, even as a

still-life painter. To her, fruit was

not just for eating. Painting was

her way of giving nature more

than one life. It was her way of

sublimating it. She’d pick fruit,

pile it high, and paint it, taking

it from the garden to new life on

canvas – giving it a new identity,

a new kind of beauty. Lola would

block its rotting, eternally, with

paint. And once the colours were

rinsed from her brushes, she

would make marmalade.”

Federica Parretti

14

Lola Costa, 1972

Quinces and rolling pin

Oil on cardboard

36 x 46 cm

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Lola in the process

of making one of her

famous marmalades

in Normandy in 1990

Archivio Angeli

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Lola Costa, 1942

The lemon keeper

Oil on canvas

60 x 49 cm

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Lola Costa, 1972

Basket of pomegranates

Oil on board

50 x 35 cm

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Lola Costa, 1972

Chiari’s farm house

Oil on cardboard

50 x 35 cm

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notes

“Twenty years have passed since Lola’s

death and it is important to reflect upon

the continuance of her legacy. As for me,

I wish to respect this place, and not betray

it. I wish to keep the presence of those

who came before us alive. Lola’s work,

both paintings and poetry, recount small

moments of everyday beauty. Her writing

is highly sensitive and sometimes spiritual,

but she also includes a note of irony in her

approach to the human condition and all

its contradictions.

Il Palmerino, today, has become a hub for

contemporary artists. In that sense, it is

under constant construction. Lola’s work

and that of Vernon Lee continues to speak

to them – to lend them creativity, because

time does not stand still here; if anything,

it becomes as circular as the seasons.”

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Federica Parretti

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Lola Costa, 1933

Threshing wheat

Tempera on canvas

48 x 59 cm

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notes

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Lola Costa, 1941

Dead leaves

Oil on panel

50 x 66 cm

Lola Costa, 1940

Fruit

Oil on canvas

35 x 42 cm

“The mid-1930s to the late 1940s was a very

productive period for Lola. The family’s

move to Il Palmerino was still relatively new,

and Lola’s work alongside husband-painter

Federigo Angeli gave rise to a stimulating

on-canvas conversation. They painted the

same sitters and captured the same still-life

scenes or the flowers that Lola picked, and

though her husband was the professional

painter, theirs was an equal exchange, for her

work had a dynamism that complemented

– and perhaps gave oxygen to – his more

exacting style. Unlike Federigo, Lola felt

no pressure for perfection, which gave her

hand a freedom he seldom experienced. Her

early paintings were not indifferent to the

art movements that ‘upset’ the status quo

in Italy and other parts of Europe, and even

her early still life works – when symbolic – are

grounded in the everyday, as in Dead leaves

and Fruit, where an open newspaper plays

backdrop and its news is almost legible.

She authored the first painting in 1941, at

the height of the Second World War. The

second, painted in the same period, gives

almost ‘cubist flair’ to a heraldic motif with

roots in the Renaissance that Federigo used

frequently in his own mural works.”

Federica Parretti

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notes

“I know this copper pot from my

childhood, and it’s still here at

Il Palmerino. Lola always used it to collect

cinders, swept up from the fireplace,

once the fire died. The pomegranates are

not really being cooked, of course. Lola is

constructing a scene here, she’s creating

her composition – with her old orange

varnished coffee pot placed against a

blue background just so. This painting

belongs to her second phase as an artist.

Lola did not paint for twenty years after

Federigo died, from 1952 to the early

seventies. During those two decades,

words became a source of comfort, and

she filled pages, not picture frames.

Her poems were largely musings on the

‘living art’ of her own brand of spirituality.

Then, at the age of 70, she was diagnosed

with cancer, and given three months to

live. And that was when Lola’s daughter

Beatrice handed her a paintbrush. ‘You

must paint again.’ So, Lola began. And

she beat the disease, palette in hand. As

it ended up, there were nearly 30 years of

life left in her, and many paintings to bear

witness to her days.”

24

Federica Parretti

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Lola Costa, 1978

Pomegranates

and orange pot

Oil on cardboard

34 x 47 cm

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Garden

grammar

notes

26

“One’s garden is a self-portrait,

as Vita Sackville West beautifully

explained in her poem “The Garden”,

and Il Palmerino’s giardino is one with

poetic echoes. It resonates with the

Mensola, which flows nearby, whose

water nymph triumphs in Giovanni

Boccaccio’s Nymphs of Fiesole, and

it keeps the modern world, with all

its aggressive construction and

industrialisation, at bay. Two women

inhabited the same places a few

decades apart: Vernon Lee, in her

famous letter to the Times in 1898,

expressed her fears of the city’s

transformation into a place devoid of

soul, devoid of poetry.

Lola Costa, in a 1960 poem,

denounced the transformation of

Novoli into a concrete jungle, urging

the Mensola and Affrico streams,

to leave places contaminated by

present-day grime behind.

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Villa Il Palmerino in the

1930s at the time of

Vernon Lee and today.

The ‘modern-day’ garden

was improved upon and

is maintained by Lola

Costa and Federigo

Angeli’s son Giuliano

Angeli, the house’s

current owner.

Il Palmerino Cultural

Association Archive

This perspective is not far from the

nostalgic and heart-breaking view held by

Micol in The Garden of the Finzi Continis

(1962), in which greenery is a form of

defence that, ultimately, proves inadequate

when it comes to countering the growing

horrors of the ruthless world. Strategies

to protect the memory of beauty often

involve nostalgia for earlier eras, when the

relationship between humans and nature

was not merely centred on exploitation

and predation, rather it was founded upon

respect for the slow cycles of nature,

throughout seasons, which were already

being undermined by ‘progress’ and losing

their absoluteness by the time Il Palmerino’s

its new owner arrived.

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Logistilla, one of the

three fairy-sisters

in Ariosto’s Orlando

Furioso, is known for

her wisdom and virtue.

notes

In the 1930s, in an article for the

journal Pegasus, Mario Praz, a disciple

of Madame Vernon – whom he called

‘Logistilla’ – polemicized the views

of Elio Vittorini, who boasted of the

beauty of the new neighbourhood next

to the Cascine, refusing to see – as

a matter of ideological prejudice –

the beauty of the city centre and its

surrounding hills.

The very same trees, seen in different

eras by different artists acquire

new meaning. Lola Costa paints

corners of the park or single flowers;

she writes poems about trees and

meadows, which similarly convey

imagery attesting to a relationship

with nature as the barycentre of one’s

existence and action, of one’s dreaming

and imaginings, while birdsong

accompanies the flow of thought.”

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Luca Scarlini

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Lola Costa, 1988

Maiano, before

the storm

Oil on canvas

16 x 20 cm

Just like a sunbeam

As brief as a ray of setting sun

After a cloudy day

Red on the branches and trunk of the pine

Red on the twisted branches of the acacia

Red no more, for it was brief

Lola Costa

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Like a bird

Like a bird is my mind

like a bird hopping

from branch to branch

now, in that tree

soon, in another.

Trees are refrains of thought

about this and that,

each tree its own.

The mind, a vital instrument

of the soul’s encasing

tunic-like, sometimes unworthy,

while the soul waits

its being known,

and adored.

Lola Costa

Lola Costa, 1940

View of Il Palmerino’s field

Oil on hardboard

43 x 69 cm

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“They are all beautiful, these Gardens of

Poetry! And through the midst of them

flows the broad stream of Memory

isled with fair lilied lawns, fringed with

willowy forests and whispering reeds.

And not less beautiful than these ideal

shades are the gardens which live

unchanged and unchanging in many a

painted picture within the heart. Real

and not less ideal, is the remembrance

of gardens we have seen: seen once, it

may be, and never since forgotten.”

Vernon Lee

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Front and back cover: Lola Costa, 1955,

The garden of Villa Il Palmerino, oil on canvas, 66 x 85 cm

Photographs of Lola Costa’s artworks:

Marco Berni and Viola Parretti

photo credits

p. 1: Il Palmerino’s garden today, Angeli Archive

pp. 2-3: Villa Il Palmerino and a view of Fiesole in the early 1900s,

Il Palmerino Cultural Association Archives

p. 5: Vernon Lee in front of her home at Il Palmerino 1910 circa,

Colby University, Maine

p. 5: Lola Costa in Via San Domenico 1932 circa, Archivio Costa Angeli

p. 7: Portrait of Vernon Lee by John Singer Sargent, 1889,

originally published in The Studio, 1900

p. 20: The installation of a stone plaque dedicated to Vernon Lee,

in the winter of 1936, Angeli Archive

We extend heartfelt thanks to

Calliope Arts Foundation, Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino,

The British Institute of Florence, Associazione Le Curandaie,

CentroDi edizioni, Colby University Vernon Lee Archive

Margie MacKinnon, Wayne McArdle, Giuliano Angeli,

Heidi Kruse Angeli, Isabella Angeli, Valeria Angeli Flaccomio,

Oliviero Angeli, Marco Badiani, Giacomo Badiani, Marco Berni,

Sara Bini, Giulia Bartolozzi, Marina Berlinger, Leo Cardini,

Alessandra Cavallini, Serena Cenni, Cristina Acidini,

Marilena Mosco, Mara Miniati, Ugo Bargagli, Giovanna Giusti,

Francesca Baldry, Giuseppe Delle Rose, Guillemette,

Denis Marzotto, Jinny Deppen, Madalyn Dolney,

Silvia Farolfi, Monica Maria Francini, Helen Farrell,

Simon Gammell, Giovanni Giusti, Maurizio Naldini,

Lorenzo Parretti, Pamela Quinto, Luca Scarlini, Ivy St Clair,

Gabrielle Von Shonau-Wehr Brini, Viola Parretti,

Stefano Vincieri and Federica Parretti

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Linda Falcone

tcq editor

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A continued

commitment

to Florence

“A Florentine Garden:

Early Women Ex-Pats

and Artists of Today”

is a 3-year project

(2024-2026), that will

explore gardens as

a fundamental part

of women’s cultural

endeavours in Italy and

England, from the turn

of the last century to

today. This issue of

The Curators’ Quaderno

series accompanies

the exhibition “Return

Home, Lola Costa

at Il Palmerino”, at Il

Palmerino Cultural

Association, the

project’s initial event.

Calliope Arts Foundation strives to further

public knowledge of female contributions

to the visual arts, literature, science, music

and social history in Florence, London and

the world. Co-founded in 2021 by Margie

MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle, it provides

support for restorations, exhibitions

and education, as well as curating and

underwriting broadcasts and publications

such as The Curators’ Quaderno and

Restoration Conversations magazine.

Il Palmerino Cultural Association was

established on July 25, 2008 to honour

and uphold the cultural heritage of this

historic estate, which dates back to the

15th century. From its early origins during

the rise of the Medici family to the present

day, this venerable place has been home to

artists and thinkers of all kinds, including

British writer and intellectual Vernon Lee

and painter Lola Costa. Lola’s grandchildren

continue to develop Il Palmerino as a vital

centre of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary

pursuits, by providing a showcase for

emerging artists, musicians and writers

through exhibitions and cultural events.

This project is created in conjunction with

the British Institute of Florence, which has

offered the city’s international residents

and visitors educational, cultural and social

opportunities for more than 100 years.

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“Those are our gardens

of past joy. Yet others

still exist, whose

memory in secret

cherished is shrouded

with a tender mystery.”

Vernon Lee

euro 2.00