Rosachiara's girls

There was not only the Michelangelo coffee bar in Florence, the headquarters of the Macchiaioli, where Renato Fucini recited his sonnets amid the general hilarity, together with his friend Edmondo de Amicis, there were also the Livorno cafes, meeting places for artists and writers, where cultural ferments and avant-garde boiled.

In the Livorno of the Belle Epoque, while the beautiful world was striding along the seafront and taking baths at the Pancaldi, the Bardi café, on the corner of via Cairoli and piazza Cavour, hosted painters, sculptors, writers, musicians and theater authors, conveying artistic currents ranging from symbolism to post impressionism.

Founded in 1908 by Ugo Bardi, who took over the business of the old Carlo Ragazzi café, it was frequented by artists of all kinds but also by collectors and art lovers and became the favorite haunt of the Labronic pictorial group.

The owner was an art lover, a patron, he created a place of aggregation and entertainment; the painters who haunted it amused themselves by tracing caricatures of the patrons on the marble of the tables, decorating the pillars and lunettes. The young artists occupied the corner on the left, which they themselves had embellished, in particular Romiti and Natali left frescoes there.

Modigliani frequented it, during his rare repatriations, he left a roll of drawings on squared paper at the cafe. It was here, it seems, that he was advised to “throw his sculptures into the ditch”, giving rise, many years later, to the famous mockery of Modì’s heads.

Painters like Gino Romiti, Oscar Ghiglia, Giovanni Bartolena, Giovanni March but also writers like Gastone Razzaguta, who, in “Virtue of the Labron artists”, left a vivid memory of them, and Giosuè Borsi and even Dino Campana and Gabriele D‘Annunzio when they stopped in Livorno.

Nobody knows, however, that a little further on, in via Cairoli, in a building that now houses the offices of professionals, doctors and insurers, there was the atelier of Rosachiara, a fashion house frequented by the ladies of the beautiful world. Rosachiara is famous because her man challenged Mussolini to a duel, when he was not yet the Duce.

At the orders of the mistress, with quick and brisk hands, the dressmakers created pleats, covered tiny buttons with fabric, opened buttonholes to please demanding and spoiled ladies.

Among all of them Ida stood out, tall, with blue eyes, blond hair. She was so beautiful that the mistress called her to put on the clothes to show them to the buyers. Then Ida would get up, put down her work, hide her fingers pierced by the needle, the poor disheveled linen, undressed in the icy rooms with high ceilings, marched off with her proud step, pierced by the envious glances of ladies on whom never the dress would have fallen so well. She passed them, haughty, aloof.

And then, laughing, the dressmakers ran into the street for a break, slipped into the Bardi café, under the admiring gaze of artists, painters, students and bankers, who were not yet used to such daring and modern girls.

And who knows if Modigliani, tired, disillusioned, drunk, will have stopped to admire Ida’s long immaculate neck, bright eyes full of hope in a life that would have been long, yes, but would not have kept its promises.

The café closed in 1921, on the eve of the founding of the Communist Party and the rise of Mussolini.