The Bardi Caffè

There was not only the Michelangelo café in Florence, headquarters of the Macchiaioli, in which Renato Fucini recited his sonnets amid general hilarity, together with his friend Edmondo de Amicis, there were also the Livorno cafés, meeting places for artists and writers, where cultural ferment and avant-gardes were boiling.

In the Livorno of the Belle Epoque, while the beautiful world strutted along the seafront and swam at the Pancaldi, the Bardi café, on the corner of via Cairoli and piazza Cavour, hosted painters, sculptors, men of letters, musicians and theater authors, channeling artistic currents ranging from symbolism to post-impressionism.

Founded in 1908 by Ugo Bardi, who took over the activity 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 meeting place of the Labronico pictorial group.

The owner was an art lover, a patron, he created a place of aggregation and recreation; the painters who hung out there 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, Romiti and Natali in particular left frescoes there.

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

Painters such as Gino Romiti, Oscar Ghiglia, Giovanni Bartolena, Giovanni March were habitués of the cafe, but also writers such as Gastone Razzaguta, who, in virtue of the artists from Livorno, left a vivid memory, and again Giosuè Borsi and even Dino Campana and Gabriele d’Annunzio when they stopped in Livorno.

No one knows, however, that a little further on, in via Cairoli, in a building that now houses the offices of professionals, doctors and insurers, was Rosachiara’s atelier, a fashion house frequented by ladies of the beau monde. 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 hands, the seamstresses created plissè, 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 asked her to wear the clothes to show them to the buyers. So Ida got up, put down her work, hid her fingers pierced by the needle, her poor shabby linen, undressed in the icy rooms with high ceilings, walked by with her proud step, pierced by the envious glances of ladies on whom the dress never would have fallen so well. She walked past them, haughty, detached.

And then, laughing, the seamstresses ran off into the street for a break, slipped into the Bardi cafe, under the admiring gazes of artists, painters, students and bankers, who weren’t used to such audacious and modern girls.

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

The cafe closed in 1921, on the eve of the founding of the communist party and the rise of Mussolini.

To know more about Ida’s story read “Una casa di vento” by Patrizia Poli