Malocchio

The Museo Mario Praz in Rome is the home of the great art historian and critic named, you guessed it, Mario Praz (1896-1982). Though Praz took degrees from Bologna and Florence, he was born in Rome, died there, and in between was a constant figure in the city’s social world. In graduate school I read his 1930 book The Romantic Agony and was quite taken with it, though I realized, with regret, that I couldn’t actually use it — the day of its idiom had passed. (I would have been quite surprised to know that he was still alive at the time.) Praz was very much a Romantic himself, a figure marked by a powerful artistic sensibility, which much of his criticism was intended to document.

(Update: Here’s a post by Adam Roberts on Praz and collecting.)

The most interesting fact about Praz is this: his fellow Romans believed him to have the Evil Eye. Most of them did not think that he used it intentionally — though some have said that he would sometimes, as a kind of party trick, shatter light bulbs by looking at them. Generally, it seems, mild calamities would accompany him, like small dogs.

Muriel Spark, who lived in Rome for a time in the late Sixties, wrote soon after his death,

On one special evening when Montserrat Caballe was singing in a Bellini opera, the rain started coming through the roof. Now, a well-known Roman of that time was the late Mario Praz, a critic and scholar of English literature (he wrote The Romantic Agony). He was said to have the Evil Eye and was known as the Malocchio. This nickname wasn’t attributed with any repugnance, but rather as an affectionately recorded and realistic fact (for such people are regarded as carriers rather than operators of the Evil Eye). Naturally, everyone noticed when Mario Praz was present at a party, and waited for the disaster. There was usually a stolen car at the end of the evening, or someone called away because his uncle had died. Well, when I saw the rain coming in the roof at the Opera, and heard the commotion behind me, I looked round instinctively for Mario Praz. Sure enough, there was our dear Malocchio sitting under the afflicted spot. He died recently and was mourned on a national scale. (The Italians put their artists and people of letters on a higher level than anywhere else I have known.) Before his house could be unsealed for his heirs, robbers got in and looted his lifetime collection of museum pieces and memorabilia.

It seems that the thieves managed to steal around 200 pieces — a disturbing number, but over a thousand remained. The official tourism site for Rome says of the Museo Mario Praz that

every single piece [in the museum] had been bought by the collector in the European antiquarian market for more than sixty years and carefully set in the buildings where he lived in Rome, at the beginning in the great apartment of Palazzo Ricci in Via Giulia and then in 1969 at Palazzo Primoli, where he remained before passing.

Praz is perhaps best known today for his writings on interior design — this has been so since late in his life — and Guy Davenport once speculated that Praz became so attentive to interiors because his possession of the Evil Eye made him reluctant to go out in public. This is certainly a romantic idea, and therefore one tempting to associate with Praz, but Spark’s narrative suggests that he was a frequent presence at parties and concerts.

I want to visit the Museo Mario Praz one day, but I wonder if in doing so I’ll lose my wallet or sprain my ankle on the steps.