Teodelapio, Duke of Spoleto

Tourists are hard-pressed to name it or identify what it is—the monster-creature that takes up the entire parking lot in front of the train station. Taxis, even buses, are said to drive under it, through its legs, for they are surely legs—at least that part of the anatomy is clear. “It’s a Calder,” one might offer off-handedly to the uninitiated and, depending on the newcomer’s orientation to art, delight, bewilderment, indifference might arise. Here? Calder? What’s Calder doing in Spoleto?

“Teodelapio,” as the sculpture is called, was commissioned by Alexander Calder for the annual Festival dei due Mondi in 1962—the largest of his “stabile” or land creatures, which he began constructing after working for 30 years on “air” sculpture or mobiles. This particular work is made entirely of iron, all 59 feet of him, all 30 tons; cranes had to be brought in from Genoa’s shipyards to erect him, at first at a strategic intersection in the town centro. Now Teodelapio is to Spoleto what the Griffin is to Perugia—is its emblem and trademark, the stamp on all sugar packets.

What a strange totem for a city to adopt! A “docile dinosaur” it is often called, because of the size and certainly the prehistoric name, Teo-having something to do with god and the --delapio something perhaps to do with legs, all forged together into something that, like the name, seems dinosauric. Here the pre-historic meets the ultra-modern in the angular, abstract way that senza dubbio suggests the eternal sixties, the Dolce Vita decade and Spoleto’s special place in it, when Menotti’s Festival, four years up and running, was in its world-inspiring hay-day, attracting everybody who was anybody, Pavorotti, promenades of suave Marcello Mastroianni look-alikes, glamour divas in their bouffants and bug-eyed sunglasses. One steps off a train from anywhere, walks through the station into the light of day and finds Teodelapio waiting. Forget the Romans, the Lombards and the Borgias; Spoleto is not as medieval as it seems, brandishing its cross and fortified Rocca way up on yonder hill. It’s a trend-setting modern town, in gamba. It’s home of the festival. Calder came here. Calder left his mark.

In the Museo di Arte Moderne on Piazza Collico there is an entire room devoted to Calder, several of the images framed on walls lampooning the train station sculpture, which—if one blinks twice, looks closely (and one should!) is actually an erect penis: what seems the animal haunches is indeed the testes; the giraffe-like head’s the proud phallus with its distinctive, albeit pointy, functional head. The caricatures always depict it spouting…a kind of central fountain, bacchanalian, the jouissance of a creativity gone wild, perfect muse for a town dedicated to the arts, even if in recent years things seem a little “petered out.” Teodelapio reminds us there’s always hope of a comeback.