The Homesick Eye

In 1688, Basel medical student Johannes Hofer identified a syndrome he dubbed nostalgia, merging the Homeric Greek for “homecoming” with the word for sorrow or pain. Nostalgia has always been instinctive and powerful. Rousseau noted the prohibition against singing the homely song of the alpine cowherd (the ranz des vaches or Kühreihen) within earshot of Swiss troops stationed in foreign lands. That traditional yodel, cried out over mountain slopes at sunset, devastated military morale. In English, the word nostalgia generally refers to an irretrievable past, but in many languages it points primarily to homesickness. The kind suffered by Ulysses, Dante, Dorothy as she clicks her ruby-clad heels, or Spielberg’s forlorn little extraterrestrial. What better subject then for an exhibition to be seen when traveling abroad? At Genoa’s Palazzo Ducale, works dating back to the Renaissance illustrate the countless forms that yearning, longing, and pining can take.