Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi da - Street fight in Naples: a book of art and insurrection

STREET FIGHT IN NAPLES

STREET FIGHT IN NAPLES

PETER ROBB

A BOOK OF ART AND INSURRECTION

ALSO BY PETER ROBB

Midnight in Sicily
M
Pigs Blood and Other Fluids
A Death in Brazil

First published in 2010

Copyright Peter Robb 2010

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This project has been assisted by the Australian
Government through the Australia Council,
its arts funding and advisory body.

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ISBN 978 1 74175 412 4

Set in 12.35/17.5 pt Bembo Std by Bookhouse, Sydney
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

IM
FRANCO BELGIORNO-NETTIS
PUER APULIAE

MENDICUS EXUL IN DEVERSORIO GRAECAE URBIS
IACEREM DESERTUS

Vvuie che facite
Mmiezz a la via?

Contents

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes: Giuditta e Oloferne, circa 1612. 159cm 126cm. Naples, Capodimonte. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Detail from red-figured Athenian stamnos from Vulci, Odysseus and the Sirens, circa 475 BC. 36cm high. London, British Museum. Image British Museum.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Seven Works of Mercy:Sette opere di misericordia, 1607. 390cm 260cm. Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Jusepe de Ribera, Democritus: Democrito, 1630. 125cm 81cm. Madrid, Prado. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Jusepe de Ribera, Clubfoot Boy: Lo storpio, 1642. 164cm 92cm. Paris, Louvre. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Detail from Jusepe de Ribera, Gennaro Leaves the FurnaceUnharmed: San Gennaro esce illeso dalla fornace, 1647. 320cm 200cm. Naples, Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro. Image Luciano Pedicini. Reproduced by kind permission of the Deputazione della Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro.

Domenico Gargiulo: Micco Spadaro, Killing of Peppe Carafa: Uccisione di don Peppe Carafa, circa 1647. 29cm 38cm. Naples, San Martino. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Aniello Falcone, Portrait of Masaniello: Ritratto di Masaniello, circa 1647. 22.5cm 17cm. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library. Image Graham Haber 2010.

Giovan Battista Caracciolo: Battistello, Peter Escapes: San Pietroliberato, 1615. Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia. 310cm 207cm. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Giovan Battista Caracciolo: Battistello, Earthly Trinity: Trinitterrestre, 1617. Naples, Piet dei Turchini. 340cm 250cm. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Giovan Battista Caracciolo: Battistello, Lot and His Daughters: Lot e le figlie, 1625. 125cm 184cm. Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. Image Electa.

Giovan Battista Caracciolo: Battistello, Cosmas and Damian: I santi Cosma e Damiano, circa 1620. 97.7cm 127cm. Berlin, Gemldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen. Image Scala.

Bartolomeo Passante, Prodigal Sons Return: Ritorno del figluolprodigo, circa 1645. 100cm 126cm. Naples, Capodimonte. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Bartolomeo Passante, Announcement to the Shepherds: Annuncioai pastori, circa 1645. 180cm 261.5cm. Naples, Capodimonte. Image Luciano Pedicini.

Bartolomeo Passante, Announcement to the Shepherds: Annuncio aipastori, circa 1645. 181cm 126cm. Birmingham, Art Gallery. Image Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.

Bartolomeo Passante, The Painters Studio: Lo studio del pittore, circa 1640. Dimensions unknown. Whereabouts unknown, private collection. Image Electa.

I owe too many people in Naples too many things, and over too long a time, to feel easy about making formal acknowledgements. Sometimes the names themselves have receded from mind over more than thirty years, unlike faces, voices, ways of being. The book itself is the residue of a passion. It took a long time to writean even longer time to startand nearly didnt get written at all, from out of an accumulated mass of thoughts and memories. The journey from desire to a very partial fulfilment changed direction more than once.

Anyone lookinghowever casuallyinto the long, long past of Naples owes incommensurably much to the historians, archivists and chroniclers who over the years and the millennia have set it down. Nearly all of them are Neapolitans themselves and their work is informed by a shared love of place. From the happily livingIm thinking of Francesco Barbagallo, Carlo De Frede, Romeo De Maio, Antonio Ghirelli and Aurelio Musi among manyconstellated around the great opposed figures of Giuseppe Galasso and Rosario Villariand Ferdinando Bologna if we add a third from art historythe names go back in time over the last hundred years or so from Coniglio and Doria to Schipa, Spampanato, Capasso and the overbearing and lovable Benedetto Croce, who was never more happily himself than when laying out new findings from the archives of Naples.

Beyond these the list goes back forever, past the great writers of the Neapolitan enlightenment, past the chroniclers of the seventeenth centurys upheavals, past Camillo Porzio and the unknown author of the Chronicle of Parthenope, back to Tacitus and Suetonius and Strabo and ultimately to Homer. Many years ago I was honoured to translate a paper for Giuseppe Galasso to be delivered at the Castel dellOvo: it was a miniature history of Naples ab ovo for the use of outsiders and maybe it planted the seed for the present production.

The ancillary figures to this reading are the booksellers of Naples, new, used and antiquarian, too vastly numerous and variously helpful over the decades to be summoned in parade now. They are booksellers who would share their coffee with an unknown client buying nothing, or hand the unknown client a rare edition on trust, with directions to a bookseller friend several streets away who knew how to handle payment by credit card. Two names stand here for the innumerable, Tullio Pironti and Rosario Wrzburger, whom I also thank for gifts. Tullios was his own memoirs of life as a champion boxer and publisher, Rosarios a rare pamphlet on Tommaso Campanellas revolution in Calabria.

Some way through work on this book I found in amazement and delight that all the extant entries in the Dizionario