From time to time a moment of artistic ferment burgeons in a place so remote and unlikely that the phenomenon can only be regarded as — well — surprising. Such a place was Taormina, Sicily at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries where an outburst of artistic enterprise resulted in the production of one of the most astonishing bodies of art photography ever created. It was the work of a singular, obsessed talent; the German baron, Wilhelm Von Gloeden (1856 - 1931).

The modern viewer might easily think of Von Gloeden as idiosyncratically apart from his contemporaries — separate — in a sense alone, laboring on Monte Tauro (in love with the youths and young men who were his models and helpers to be sure) yet somehow merely an eccentric, isolated fluke of photographic history. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Von Gloeden was responsible in a very fundamental way for the establishment of the social, psychological and artistic support which grew up around him. He did not operate in a vacuum of remote isolation, but imbibed the very real presence of a variegated, “art prone” society which he had been instrumental in attracting to the wild Coast of Messina.

In Risorgimento Italy Taormina was a virtually unknown (except to historians of Ancient Greece) backwater in a Sicily that was still largely inaccessible but for the necklace of railroad put down by Garibaldi and Cavour along the island's coast. From the 1880's, when another German resident, Otto Geleng, and Wilhelm Von Gloeden began to beckon many wealthy and aristocratic Europeans, until the 1930's — when an older era came to its final, unhappy end — there was a steady evolution which turned that theretofore unknown little town into one of the truly grand tourist resorts of the world.

Coupled with this evolution and substantially contributing to it was a fact never openly acknowledged, although everyone in Taormina knew all about it. The fact was that many, indeed the majority of the well-to-do foreigners who established permanent residences there, with the construction of beautiful villas or the conversion of wonderful medieval buildings, were homosexual men and not a few of them were artists; mostly gifted dilettantes or serious amateurs of the arts.

Very often their first awareness of Taormina was the sight of a Von Gloeden photograph. At the “fin de siecle” Taormina had already become a place where homosexual men of the late Victorian era found, and would continue to find, a hospitable and privileged atmosphere into and through the Edwardian era and “The Jazz Age.”

Situated on one of the most beautiful sites in the world and filled with the monumental remains of nearly 3000 years of Western civilation, the place satisfied every aesthetic and romantic notion of the period. Siculs, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans — all had lived there and left their mark, — and their bloodlines. It was in great measure because of that happy Mediterranean mix — with its (to the Northerners) exotically realistic and pragmatic sexual attitudes — that more northerly peoples were so rapturously divested by their first encounters with the youth and young men of the region. Unlike the Catholicism of the north, Sicilians and southern Italians still retained, however unconsciously, a great sum of pure Paganism in their traditions and attitudes. To men from north of the Alps the Sicilians seemed blessedly free of the sexual Puritanism, both Catholic and Protestant, so assiduously promoted in the 19th century. The frequent homosexual liaisons — however driven by the usually combustible combination of sexuality and money (the foreigners were generally rich — the Sicilians generally poor) at their inception — regularly involved long term emotional imperatives.

A discernible pattern for such relationships developed early on. Many-a-young-man who consorted intimately with a foreign gentleman retained a special relationship with that man until his dying day. And yet, other aspects of life went on as usual. With very few notable exceptions the most common scenario was of a young Sicilian developing an intimate attachment to a foreign “gentleman,” eventually marrying and raising a family (always with significant assistance from the older friend) but never abandoning a special relationship with that friend. If it finally ended in sexual and monetary terms it rarely broke ties that bound them in what can only be called a familial sense. And yet, the relationship always retained something “special,” clearly “different,” and surprisingly widely known. It was just not talked about by the Sicilians. Indeed that rule of silence on the subject still obtains in Sicily at the end of the 20th century!

The most vivid example we have of such a liaison, and one of the earliest, is that of Von Gloeden and a Sicilian youth. Soon after he arrived in Taormina Von Gloeden took an adolescent house-boy into his home and into his bed. He called him “Il Moro.” It was the beginning of a relationship of passionate commitment that far outlasted any direct sexual involvement and was indeed to last as long as both of them lived. This reality was in no way lessened by Von Gloeden's frequent sexual adventures, nor by Il Moro's eventual marriage, — a marriage which lasted for life and was locally reckoned to be a decent and happy one. When Il Moro died in the 1950's he was a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather, and yet, still quietly regarded by many as Wilhelm Von Gloeden's “lover.”

The beginning of their relationship was indeed the harbinger of a way of life which was to transform Taormina. From the late 19th century onward there developed not only an international enthusiasm for Gloeden's work, but also a “local” foreign colony congenial to and supportive of his amazing visual effort. The fact that his work was fraught with a barely hidden element of “scandal” — signified and magnified by the mere thought of male nudity in the Victorian work — added a special “frission” to the acquisition of his prints. It is safe to say that virtually no person of any importance or celebrity who visited Taormina from the last years of the 19th century until 1931 ever failed to spend time with the baron in his studio sales room or in his private quarters. The attentions of this rich, mobile and sophisticated public not only sustained him materially but also sustained his “amour propre” as a photographic artist. Of equal importance to his international recognition was the permanently resident community of foreigners for whose presence on the island he was, in effect, initially responsible. It was Von Gloeden's visual Arcadia which had originally attracted them.

Of essential importance in this mosaic of personalities was the fact that many of them were artists in their own right who functioned in a milieu which took for granted that, along with “love” (of whatever kind) “art” was the real work of life.

There was also, to be sure, a small, worldly colony of foreign heterosexuals — (a community which was to become enormous after the Second World War) — whose lives were intertwined with those of the “gay” residents and also, through love affairs and marriages, with the local Tarominese. Both parts of the foreign community had much in common in that they were, for the most part, of the same silken fabric of privilege, education and, in many instances, artistic accomplishment or patronage. Some were writers. Their presence lent glamour, prestige and a vast sum of passionate devotion to a small town in Sicily which they all deemed to be an earthly paradise.

A brief glimpse of just three of the many extraordinary foreigners who were Von Gloeden's friends and neighbors is both instructive and fascinating.

The first important arrival who came to stay — and certainly the best painter of the many artists who followed - was a young Englishman; Robert Hawthorn Kitson. Born in Leeds in 1873, he was far and away the most elegant, cultivated and intellectual personality to settle in Taormina after Von Gloeden.

Kitson was the Scion of a distinguished English family which became immensely wealthy as a result of establishing the first commercial railway in the world (London to Birmingham) thereby becoming the parent company of all railway systems for some years to come. He first visited Taormina in 1898 at the age of 26 when his family “adventured” around Sicily by the coastal railroad. When they stopped off in Taormina he secretly visited Von Gloeden's studio every chance he had to steal away from his relatives. Like Gloeden before him, he knew at once that he had found his place of destiny. He went back to England only to make arrangements to transfer his life to Sicily forever and before the end of 1898 he was steeled into a rented house. By 1905 he had embarked on the construction of Casa Cuseni, a large Italianate villa of exceptional beauty and situation.

Robert Kitson knew he was homosexual very early on and determined not to let that fact damage his life. He was in the fortunate position of being able to — much as Von Gloeden — create his own world. As a painter of genuine ability he was very much fulfilled as a creative artist and was known to be absolutely serious about his work and greatly disciplined. But Kitson's paintings were not his only legacy to Taormina.

As a young art student in Leeds he had a brief, romantic liaison with an artist named Frank Brangwyn, — later to become Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867 - 1956) The affair, though short-lived, resulted in a life-long friendship. Brangwyn was to become a highly successful painter and designer not only in Britain, but on the continent and in America as well. (His last major commission was the painting of some of the murals in the RCA building in Rockefeller center in New York in 1933.) It was, then, a happy collaboration which brought Brangwyn to Taormina in 1906 at Kitson's urgent invitation.

Robert Kitson, although a man of enormous classical appreciations, was also keenly interested in the best that modern design and decoration had to offer. At just about the time Kitson was creating the beauties of Casa Cuseni and its large gardens Brangwyn was totally engaged with the movement that proposed that professional artists were the right people to design furniture, fabrics, carpet, woodwork, metalwork, glass, mosaic, and so on. Kitson brought his old friend to Taormina to execute his dining room as a “complete work of art” and gave him carte blanche. Because of this undertaking and many others elsewhere in Europe, by 1914 Brangwyn was regarded as highly for his design and decoration as he was for his painting. And so, to this day, not withstanding the effects of time and loss, Taormina's Casa Cuseni houses — albeit fragmentary — a complex of furniture, paintings, and object de vertu by one of the foremost designers of the early 20th century.

During this same period Von Gloeden was romantically recording the youthful beauty of Kitson's handsome Tarominese lover in portraits and nudes and Brangwyn is known to have painted him during his visit in 1906. Indeed, at least one rare print of Carlo, in the nude, with his arm draped over what is almost certainly a Brangwyn painting of him still exists. Nearly all others were lost when Mussolini's fascists, in intimate cooperation with agents of the Vatican, destroyed countless hundreds of prints and over 80% of Gloeden's precious glass plates thus obliterating the images forever.

Carlos's special friendship with Kitson lasted for as long as both men lived and Kitson became an additional “grandfather” to his children. Carlos's descendants live in Taormina to this day, prosperous and respected hoteliers.

Kitson is also remembered in Taromina for more mundane but decidedly pleasant innovations. For example, he built the first private swimming pool and brought in one of the first motor cars Taromina had ever seen.

Although Brangwyn made it clear that he had great respect for Kitson's painting, Kitson insisted throughout his life that he was simply a dedicated amateur. Frank Brangwyn acceded to and probably agreed with Kitson's own estimate. Brangwyn referred to him as “my friend, patron, and gifted pupil.”

In the summer of 1981 The Commune of Taormina organized an impressive exhibition of Robert Kitson's paintings.

The story of the elderly Kitson's return to Taormina after his forced exile to England during World War II is pure melodrama.

In the first months after the war conditions of civilian travel were almost impossible in Europe. But Kitson, who felt that the end of his life was near, was determined to return to his beloved home. Against all advice, he set out.

A younger man — whom Kitson had known since he was a young boy and who was now a hotelier sent to Rome to oversee the reopening of a big hotel there — arranged to meet Kitson and, after a rest, accompany him to Taromina.

The man was Francesco Rigano, the charming and witty son of an upper class Sicilian family, who had bonded with Kitson and his circle as a youth and maintained warm friendships with them through the years. He once said, “They saved my life. As a young 'gay' person growing up in a little Sicilian town I could have been lost, ruined my life. Because of my family I was not nearly so free as fisher boys and other working class boys who could do what they wanted to do. They [Kitson and his friends] taught me everything...how to make my life wonderful.”

When “Cicio,” as Francesco was affectionately called by friends, saw Kitson he was so alarmed he tried to dissuade him from continuing the journey...Kitson would have none of it.

The frail old Englishman and the handsome, impeccably dressed little Italian (Rigano was only about 5 feet 6 inches) began the arduous journey through war ravaged southern Italy in half ruined railway cars with little food available and almost no potable water anywhere.

Using the last of his strength Kitson was able to make it to Taormina. Riogano said that when he entered the house he seemed to go into a kind of “trance of memory.”

He was able to spend one night in his own bed in his beautiful Casa Cuseni. He never woke up.

Among many others, a second personality to arrive and become a permanent part of Gloeden's world was the Baron Karl Von Stempel. Stempel was one of the few arrivals who made no claim whatsoever to artistic talent or special aesthetic insights. He nonetheless became an avid patron of Von Gloeden's work. Stempel was 42 years old before he acknowledged his homosexuality to himself and separated from his wife and grown children. A resident of Courland (a province of the Russian Empire with an ethnically German aristocracy) he and his mother fled long before the Bolshevik Revolution, arriving in Taormina (at Gloeden's urging) with a fortune in money and jewels in their traveling cases.

He set about to buy a large villa on the site of the present day casino and built a second house with attached stables for their servants and animals. He embellished his home with beautiful things of his mother's choosing and his private library albums with what was probably a complete collection of Von Gloeden prints. Both being German, Stempel and Gloeden spent hours together in enthusiastic conversation and Gloeden helped Stempel learn the local Sicilian dialect.

Stempel — who was the exception that proves the rule - met a boy with whom he became obsessed. Over the years and well beyond the death of the old baroness the young man, — whose name was Castorina, — systemically stripped Stemple of his wealth. In spite of the warnings of his friends and the urgent pleas of Von Gloeden (who acknowledged that Castorina was dangerously attractive) Stemple's addiction only increased.

Finally, when Stempel had literally lost everything and was rather advanced in years, Castorina simply left Sicily without even saying goodbye. It was learned that he left for Argentina where he apparently started a family. Apart from those bare facts nothing was ever heard from him again.

Now impoverished and incapable of fending for himself (he was also going blind) Stempel was saved by a younger Tarominese to whom he had been kind and helpful in the past. The younger man and his wife brought Stempel into their home to live with them and the foreign colony did what it could. He out-lived Gloeden by 20 years, always welcomed in the rarified social life of Taormina and remembered as one of Von Gloeden's most important early collectors. But, of course, his large collection of Gloeden prints was lost with everything else. He died in 1951 at the age of ninety.

A third figure whom Von Gloeden knew well during the latter part of his life was the American painter, Charles King Wood. The son of nouveau riches Americans was drawn to Taormina by underground legends of Von Gloeden's Arcadia and prints of his classical nudes. He arrived shortly after the First World War and promptly took a small villa in which he lived and worked until he was able to acquire the medieval convent of the White Nuns which he converted into a remarkable home and studio.

King Wood, as he was known, had a cook-housekeeper who was remembered as being a big, pleasantly vulgar country woman. The nuns had left a long refectory table behind at which there would be 10 or 12 late adolescents and young men on week-end evenings. The cook served huge platters of pasta, bread, cheese, wine, and fresh garden greens. Then, the host and guests would retire to a large interior room and cavort in the nude. A sort of (what King Wood thought to be) Pan dancing was part of the frolic and traditional Sicilian flutes could often be heard playing Tarantellas late into the night.

King Wood had always acknowledged Gloeden as his reason for coming to Taormina and was very shaken by his death in 1931.

Unlike most of the foreign community he did not flee Italy at the outbreak of the Abysinnian War. He even stayed on after the outbreak of the Second World War, and more amazingly, after America's entry into it. Although an enemy alien, he was never molested in any way. He had the good lick to die of natural causes not long before the German occupation of Taormina and before his much loved convent home was bombed to rubble by the allies...He had declined to leave Taormina because most of his young companions had been drafted into the Italian army and King Wood announced to friends that he would — “wait for them.” Most of his art work perished with his house and his Sicilian heir was killed in battle not long after his own death. The ruins of his convent home can still be seen from Taormina's Corso.

Apart from these three there are scores of colorful individuals, both foreign and Sicilian, whose names are known to us and who were part of Von Gloeden's daily life and friendships. But none of them - regardless of their artistic aspirations — came even close to Gloeden's highly particularized and impassioned achievement.

In commenting on that achievement Roland Bathes is correct when he remarks upon the towering “naiveté” which allowed the baron to couple “the most 'cultivated' culture and the most luminous eroticism. Thus, the force of his vision still astounds us...”

Astounds us indeed!

— Charles Leslie, 1985

I wish to acknowledge two people who provided me with personal information concerning the figures discussed. They are Mr. John English, who died in 1970 and Signor Francesco Rigano who is now — in his own words — “an ancient gentleman living in Cataina, Sicily.”

Also, documents at Leeds University were important sources for information concerning Robert Hawthorn Kitson and Sir Frank Brangwyn.

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AN AFTERWORD

Concerning Von Gloeden, Pluchow and Galdi...

In the 33 years that have passed since I first began my quest for Von Gloeden a multitude of heretofore unknown facts have emerged.

I remain proud of the fact that my book was the first foray in his slow but sure rediscovery and that it spawned a plethora of research and reassessments of his oeuvre which go on to this day.

When I began my hunt in 1967 I was confronted by a wall of Sicilian “omerta” concerning subjects considered taboo and had to rely on oddly abundant but maddenly fragmentary evidence until I had the good fortune to find The Honorable Jonathan English, an elegant and wonderfully articulate old British gentleman who had been a close (much younger) friend of Von Gloeden's during the last 10 years of the baron's life. Material from the New York Public library and documents at The University of Leeds in England were also crucial.

All in all my account remains quite accurate with one recently discovered exception; i.e., — my assessment of Von Gloeden's cousin Gulgielmo Pluchow. The brilliant young director of Munich's photo museum, Ulrich Pohlman, has assiduously studied Gloeden and his contemporaries and has added an important corrective to my somewhat dismissive view of — (what I knew of) — Pluchow's work.

Although Pluchow began his career as a purely commercial photographer, it is now understood that he was an early master of scenic photography. The current exhibition at the Rupertinum in Salzburg, Austria, Et In Arkadia Ego, attests to Pluchow's true stature as well as to the highly accomplished work of the Italian, Vincenzo Galdi.

At some point Pluchow — whether independently or as the result of observing his cousin's extraordinary success with his Arcadian photographs of nude adolescents and young men — began an independent “Arcadian” production of his own. His work was centered around Rome (The Appian Way) Naples, and Pompeii.

For the greater part of the 20th century, when both men had faded into obscurity, confusion prevailed as to who the authors of these photographs were. Often, among those who remembered anything at all about them it was simply assumed they were all Von Gloeden's.

To add to the confusion, a third contemporary — the Sicilian, Vincenzo Galdi — was working in imitation of Von Gloeden but revealed a strong tendency to nearly pornographic images. These too, over time, became mixed up and confused with work by Von Gloeden.

The baron would have been shocked. His life-style notwithstanding, he was rather strait-laced about certain things.

Examining collections of these photos we can now see that Von Gloeden sometimes traveled with one or more of his Taorminese models and at times shared them with his cousin on trips to Rome or Naples. Other youths, never seen in Taorminese settings are clearly Pluchow's models.

There are also important stylistic differences. Pluchow did not have the gift of posing his models as gracefully as did Von Gloeden. There is always something curiously blunt and slightly rigid in Pluchow's body work. In the case of Galdi, although a photographer of genuine accomplishment, he was so preoccupied with the size of the male member that the classical setting and pose often became a mere backdrop for the exposition of the model's penis.

Von Gloden's work on the other hand is suffused with a richly romantic eroticism and visual grace. What he was seeking to record was the 29ty century notion of ancient Beauty.

By and large, he succeeded.

— Charles Leslie, August 2000