Naples: Life, Death & Miracles vol. 3

Naples: Life, Death & Miracles

a personal encyclopedia

2nd edition

volume 3

N—S.M. della Libera al Vomero

by Jeff Matthews

Copyright 2012 Jeff Matthews

Smashwords Edition

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Introduction

Please see main introduction at the beginning of volume 1.

—N—

Names, unusual

Naples in the 1600s

Naples, survivor culture

Napoletani a Milano

Napolimania

Napoli nobilissima

Natale in Casa Cupiello

National Museum

Natural Sciences

Naval Museum

NBLKFOPSJON

Neapolitan Bagpipes

Neapolitan Crypt

Neapolitan Diaspora

Neapolitan goats

Neapolitan Mandolin

Neapolitan Song

Neo-Realism

Next Stop, Neapolis

Nile in Naples

Non-Neapolitan Song

No Noir is Good Noir

Noodle-Head, Mr.

Noodles & T. Jefferson

Normans

Noschese, Alighiero

Nunziatella

—O—

obscure composers

Odessa, the Forgotten Ship

Old City-New City

Old Communities, Posillipo

Old-Time professions

Old time professions (2)

Oplontis

Orientale University

Organ restoration

Our Lady of Mercy

Outlaw Music

—P—

Paestum

Pacini, G.

Paisiello, G.

Palazzo Penne

Paleo-Christianity

Palm Tree Pest

Parish bands

Partenio National Park

Pazzariello

Peace & Quiet at Camaldoli

Petrosino, Joe

Piazza Dante

Piazza dei Martiri

Piazza Grande

Piazza Mercato & Carmine Church

Piazza Plebiscito

Piazza Vittoria

Picchiati, F.A.

Piccinni, Niccolò

Piedigrotta

Pietrarsa Railway Museum

Pioppi (& Ancel Keys)

Pisacane, C.

Pithecusa

Place in the Sun, A

Pliny

Pompeii

PompeiLand!

Pontano, G. & Oldest Belfry

Ponza

Popes from Naples

Portici

Port of Ancient Neapolis

Port of Naples

Portosalvo, church

Porzio & Enlightenment Medicine

Posillipo

Posillipo art school

post-office, construction

Pozzuoli

Presepe

Privatization

Procida (4 items)

Proud to be a Troglodyte!

Provenzale, F.

Pseudo-Sibyl

Pulcinella

Punks on Bikes

Punta Licosa

Purgatorio ad Arco

Pz.D—Doctor of Pizza

—Q-R—

Queen of Naples, Last

Quisisana Palace

Raiders of the Lost Shroud

Ranieri, Massimo

Raspberry & Pernacchio

Rea, D.

Recovering the High Ground

Regi Lagni

Remembrance of Things past

Renoir (Bay of Naples)

Rescuing Croce

Richard, Jean-Claude

ring of fire (geology)

Risanamento

Rock of Hercules

Roman amphitheater in Naples

Rossini

Rossini & Barbaia

Royal Palace

Royal Poorhouse

Royal Porcelain Factory

Russian Horses

Russians are Coming, the

Ruffo, F., cardinal

Russo, F.

Russo, V.

—S—

Sails of Scampia

Saints John and Theresa

Samnites

sampietrino

San Bartolomeo

San Carlino

San Carlo

San Carlo all' Arena

San Domenico Soriano

Sanfelice, F.

San Ferdinando

San Francesco delle Monache

San Gennaro

San Gennaro Museum

San Gennaro, Porta

San Giacomo degli Italiani

San Giorgio dei Genovesi

San Giovanni a Carbonara

San Giovanni dei Fiorentini

San Giovanni Battista delle Monache

San Giovanni di Pappacoda

San Giovanni Maggiore

San Giuseppe dei Nudi

San Giuseppe dei Ruffi

Sangro di Casacalenda (Palazzo)

Sanità

San Lorenzo

Sanmartino, G.

Sannazzaro Theater

San Pasquale

San Pietro Martire

San Severo al Pendino

Sant' Andrea delle Dame

Sant' Anna dei Lombardi

Sant' Antonio abate

Sant' Antonio a Posillipo

Santa Caterina a Chiaia

Santa Caterina a Formiello

Santa Chiara

Santa Lucia

Santa Lucia al Monte

S.M. a Cappella Nuova

S.M. alla Carità

S.M. Apparente

S.M. Assunta di Bellavista

S.M. degli Angeli

S.M. degli Angeli delle Croci

S.M. dei Sette Dolori

S.M. dell’Aiuto

S.M. della Catena

S.M. della Concordia

S.M. della Libera al Vomero

S.M. della Pazienza

S.M. della Redenzione dei Captivi

S.M. della Sanità

* * * —N— * * *

Names, unusual

My wife's friend goes to a cardiologist in Naples whose name is Adolfo Tedesco. That surname is not uncommon in Italy. It means German. Geographic surnames indicating family origin back in the middle ages are common. The most striking one I know of in Naples is Ostrogoto— Ostrogoth—a name presumably traceable to the Germanic invasions of Italy at the fall of the Roman Empire. In similar fashion in the area of Baia on the Gulf of Naples, there are a number of compound surnames on the order of Scotto di (second element); that is: Scotto di Carlo, Scotto di Cerrottolo, Scotto di Tella, etc. While the surname Scotto (Scot) is not uncommon in Italy, the compounds derive, so they say (and I have this story from a gentleman by the name of Amerigo Scotto di Tella), from a shipwreck in the area centuries ago, when a band of Scottish seaman apparently liked the area so much, they decided to stay and marry into local families.

Back to Adolfo Tedesco. Adolf German. This was a very good name to have in Italy between 1933 and 1943. You can be certain that the doctor was born during those years. No doubt he has had to put up with good-natured—or maybe not so good-natured—ribbing since then, however.

A cursory stroll through the Naples telephone book reveals surnames from the slightly unorthodox Fava (Lima bean), Bavoso (slobbering) and Mezzatesta (half head) to sublime if unoriginal combinations of first and surname, such as Pasquale Pasquale (Easter Easter) and Domenico di Domenico (Sunday of Sunday). In between are surnames such as Moccio (Snot), Malavita (Organized Crime), Quattrocchi (Four Eyes), Violino (Violin), Malato (Sick), and Mangiaterra (Earth-eater). That last one is interesting; originally the name was Magnaterra (great land or property) and obviously meant landholder. The gn was properly pronounced with the palatalized Spanish ñ sound (or the ny as in canyon); however, since the local dialect inserts the same sound into the Italian mangiare for eat, people assumed that the name must have meant earth eater and not land holder, so they corrected(!) the spelling. For no particular reason, I like the first and last name combinations of Armando Uomo (Man), Antonio Sesso (Sex), Fortunato Capodanno (Fortunate New Year) Sergio del Bufalo, Baldasare Della Confusione, Bianca Barba (White Beard), Felice Popolo (Happy People), Nello Albero (In The Tree) and one that must be challenging to live up to—Salvatore Delle Donne (Saviour of Women). Also, the building next to mine was built by an engineer with the unusual though not unique surname Della Morte (Of Death). Then his clever parents christened him Angelo. His name was Angel of Death. (Uh, dear, what's your young gentleman's name? That's nice. Well, run along, but be back before the moon rises, won't you?)

The worst handle to have attached to your person in Italy is the surname Bocchino. Besides being the proper word for 'cigarette holder' or 'mouthpiece of a musical instrument', it is the vulgar slang term for 'fellatio'. There are seventeen of them in the Naples phone book, and an entire segment of a recent TV program was dedicated to the problems of a gentleman with that surname whose parents had seen fit to give him the first name of Generoso. There are also a number of entries in the local phone book for Zoccola. It means, precisely, 'slut', and a newspaper article on this subject speculated that even if a man were perfect in all else, he might have difficulty in getting a woman to marry him, because no woman wants to be introduced in society as Mrs. Slut. Almost as bad is the surname Mastronzo, since it contains the word stronzo, a vulgar word for a piece of excrement as well as the most common vulgar insult in Italian, equivalent to calling someone asshole in English. The phonebook contains a number of variations such as Mastranzo; the vowel change is almost certainly the result of a legal name change (which really does little else but get people to remark, Gee, you must have changed your name, huh?).

A victim of a slightly different sort is Paolo Porcellini, whose surname means 'little pigs' and who has two brothers. It so happens that the Italian version of the famous Disney jingle 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf' starts 'Siam tre piccoli porcellini…' ('We are three little pigs'), rousing choruses of which, sung by mean-spirited classmates, inevitably awaited the Piglet Brothers on many a school day. Finally, other disconcerting Italian surnames are Piscione and Cacace, which evoke the acts of excretion; Schifone, which means 'most disgusting'; Cazzato, Cazzola, or Cazzoli, all of which recall the most common slang term for 'penis'; and Finocchio, the vegetable 'fennel', but also the common disparaging term for 'homosexual'.

Why not, then, simply change your name? In Italy, there is an awesome battle of documents to be fought. In large Italian cities, about 6 or 7 people a year apply to modify their surname, 50 a year to change their surname completely, and 100 a year their first name. Even after the change, creating a new identity for yourself is so overwhelming that most simply forget about it. There are new driving licenses to get, insurance, bankbooks, tax forms, a new phone listing—in short, every shred of official paper with your name on it has to be amended. Worse, you have to deal with the infamous Hall of Records 'Bureausaurus' (as they are so aptly nicknamed in Italy), someone who explains to you patiently that you can't get a document attesting to your new name unless you first present a document attesting to your new name.

* * * * * * *

Naples in the 1600s

—It was the best of times; It was worse than the worst of times.

The decline of the Spanish Empire from the loss of the Armada (1588) through the entire 1600s to its ultimate demise in 1700 with the death of Charles II is complex. Some of the factors (besides the original loss of the Armada and subsequent loss of naval dominance) were Spain's continuing wars with the French, English and the Dutch in the early 1600s, her involvement in the Thirty Years War (resulting in a disastrous defeat in 1643 at the battle of Rocroy), and, most of all, her terrible mismanagement of wealth from the New World.

As a Spanish vice-realm, Naples might have been expected to follow a parallel decline. For various reasons (one of which was the simple geographical distance from the battlefields of the Thirty Years War) that was not the case. The year 1600 marks the beginning of what is often called a Golden Age in the history of Naples. The city had been transformed in the mid-1500s into a modern city, the best defended and largest port city in the Spanish Empire, the second largest city in Europe (after Paris)—essentially being primed for just such a period of greatness. By 1600 a number of Spanish villas had begun to spring up along the Chiaia, opening the western part of the city to an incredible building boom of luxurious estates; in 1600 the cornerstone of Domenico Fontana's great Royal Palace was laid; churches and public buildings went up; and the first public theaters and opera houses were built. The list of those living and working in Naples for much of the century reads like a Who's Who of Baroque genius in various endeavors from architecture to art, music and philosophy: Domenico Fontana, Caravaggio, Luca Giordano, Carlo Gesualdo, Giambattista Vico, etc.

The most important social/political event of the century—and, indeed, a reflection of the profound problems affecting Spain, herself, was The Revolt of Masaniello, but, by and large, the destiny of Naples in what might have been a Golden Age was shaped not by corruption, upper-class sloth or mismanagement of money, but by staggering natural calamities and pestilence.

In 1631, Mt. Vesuvius gave vent to a powerful eruption. By all accounts, it was a highly explosive event that rivalled in intensity the famous eruption that doomed Pompeii and Herculaneum in the first century AD. Sources say that the eruption destroyed most of the towns in the area of Vesuvius. The event was so terrifying that it stoked the creative imaginations of the great painters of the day, primarily Micco Spadaro (name in art of Domenico Gargiulo, 1610-75). His Eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 shows the procession of the populace, viceroy, church prelates and aristocracy. They carry the bust of the Patron Saint, Gennaro, in a show of penitence, invoking divine mercy.

Two major earthquakes struck the kingdom of Naples in the 1600s. The quake of 1660 destroyed many towns and villages in Calabria. Closer in to the city—right in the city, to be exact—the earthquake on June 5, 1688, was frightful. People camped out for many days near the Chiaia beach and in the open market squares and near the Maschio Angioino. Due to the risk of buildings collapsing, streets were blocked off, and the city could be crossed only by small carts.

The worst disaster to strike the kingdom and city of Naples in the 1600s was the plague of 1656. The Black Death, of course already had a long and inglorious history in Europe, going back to the original European outbreak in 1347 (presumably traced to China in the 1330s). The population of Europe dropped from 75 million before that outbreak to 50 million afterwards —truly apocalyptic in the minds of many chroniclers of the day.

Subsequent outbreaks have not been that devastating, but even lesser outbreaks can have severe repercussions on the life of a nation. The outbreak of the disease in Naples occurred in January of 1656 when a Spanish soldier who had arrived from Sardinia, was admitted to the Annunziata hospital. The alarm was sounded by Dr. Giuseppe Bozzutto, who first diagnosed the symptoms. His promptness was not appreciated by the viceroy's government, which decided to imprison the doctor for having spread the news. The plague, however, can quickly spread its own brand of news. When bodies started piling up, when provisions ran low, when people started fleeing the city, the government was forced to admit the outbreak. That was in May. By August, the plague had run its course. It had killed about half the city's 300,000 inhabitants and at least that many again in the rest of the kingdom.

The economic and social effects are obvious: even the people who survived fled the city. No one worked. Even in the countryside, people fled elsewhere; farms went unattended. Law enforcement, in general, was ineffective, and lawlessness spread. Again, Spadaro was on the scene to survive and paint an utterly soul-chilling scene of the Mercatello (the square that is now Piazza Dante) (image at top). It is truly a scene from Hell. The city of Naples would take almost two centuries to climb back to its pre-plague population.

* * * * * * *

Naples, survivor culture

I’m reading a fascinating book entitled The View from Nebo. How Archaeology is rewriting the Bible and reshaping the Middle East, by Amy Dockser Marcus (Little, Brown and Company. 2000. Boston.) Strangely enough, I am reminded of Naples. The section that draws my attention is a chapter on the relationship of modern Jordan to the ancient Ammonites, a people contemporary of the Israelites at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in the sixth century b.c. The salient point for the author is that modern Jordanians, for various reasons, fail to realize how connected they are historically to a people—the Ammonites—who were true survivors, true builders of what archaeologist Oystein LaBianca has termed indigenous survivor structures.

Far from disappearing from history, the Ammonites used such survivor structures as developing a strong sense of family and tribalism, decentralizing the administration of food and water supplies, keeping a very low profile in the face of overwhelming force (so low, in fact, that they apparently had a network of cave villages beneath the very ground that Nebuchadnezzar’s armies were occupying. Interestingly, also, is that one of the strategies was the development of a culture of hospitality that created a network of sharing favors and information… The key phrase in the chapter is:

…the Ammonites had survived for so long because they had been open to outside cultural influences and trade with their neighbors, always finding a way to adapt these things to their own circumstances.

Much of that applies to Naples; it is quite clearly a survivor culture. I think that is a positive term. Resilient and adaptive would be others. Sponge culture—which I have heard—has negative overtones I don’t like, implying a parasite culture, one that takes but never gives. I have heard chameleon culture, as well. I don’t like that one, either, perhaps because of the implication of deceit and lack of originality. None of that is true of Naples. What is true is that Naples is the oldest continuously inhabited center of large population in Europe. You can trace the steps these people have taken from the Greeks to the Romans; then through the independent duchies to the Normans, French, Spanish and on into modern-day Italy. At each step of the way, they have reinvented themselves through strategies very similar to those mentioned above: adapting outside influences to their own circumstances; bending but not breaking in the face of power; reliance on friends and family; and hospitality.

This makes me wonder if there is less of a clash—or, at least, if there are more flexible boundaries—between insider and outsider in Naples. We all know that there are things that mark us as outsiders in another culture. Language is certainly one of them. Again in the Bible, the Gileadites distinguished their own soldiers from the Ephraimites on the basis of the pronunciation of the word shibboleth. Those who could not pronounce the sh correctly were the enemy and paid the price. If you don’t speak the language—one huge shibboleth—you will not fit in. It comes as a surprise to many, however, that even when they do speak the language, and even if they say all the other general cultural shibboleths properly, they still don’t fit in. They can never unmark themselves. Naples is not one of those cultures. Perhaps it has cultural markers that are less rigid—or, at least, more forgiving. It’s almost as if Neapolitans change their own pronunciation of shibboleth to fit yours. Thus, any perception that I may have of not fitting in may be just that—my own perception, the result of the quirk-ridden cultural and personal baggage that I carry around with me. (Admittedly, I am embarrassed to walk into my morning coffee-bar and ask, Say, fellows, do I fit in?")

It certainly seems less incongruous to me now than once upon a time to walk out of a 17th-century Spanish monastery and a concert of Neapolitan Baroque music and directly into the MacDonald’s across the street where American jazz or home–grown Neapolitan rap music is coming through the in–house speakers. There are two possibilities: none of it fits, or it all fits. Maybe I do, too—more than I think.

* * * * * * *

Napoletani a Milano (film)

Neapolitans in Milan is a comedy in the classic sense that it has a happy ending and, indeed, a number of scenes that make you laugh. Other than that, it is a film about the plight of southern workers in the north of Italy, juxtaposing the stereotypes of the shiftless, scheming Neapolitans and the heartless, greedy Milanese industrial bosses. It is an unusual film for Eduardo de Filippo to have made and, indeed, the very first film he wrote specifically for the screen (as opposed to adapting one of his own plays). He wrote the screen with Age & Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli), the most famous screenwriting pair in the history of Italian cinema. I saw the film for the first time the other night; I had not heard of it before.

The film is from 1953 and Eduardo stars in it, himself, as the mayor (never elected, but popularly acknowledged to be the leader) of a community of shanty-dwellers in Naples in the grim years following World War II, before there was any glimmer at all of the economic miracle that later transformed much of Italy. These people live amidst rubble and are about to be dispossessed of what little they have by the Milanese owners of the property who have decided to build a factory with no thought for those who will be displaced. That would be stereotype number one (S1), the heartless industrialists. Stereotype number two (S2), the conniving Neapolitans, presents itself in the scheme to get the property declared a national monument because Garibaldi once lived there (he didn’t); S2b is the plan to kidnap the Milanese engineer (played by American actor, Frank Latimore) in charge of operations by luring him into an elevator in an abandoned building and hand-cranking him (nothing in the building works—it is four walls) to the top and leaving him there like a canary.

Things get serious when a building at the construction site collapses, killing five persons who have refused to be evicted. Eduardo leads 50 Neapolitans to the frozen, fog-bound north (Milan) for a redress of grievances. S2c is the scene where Eduardo presents the group to the coven of greedy capitalists as the relatives of the victims (they aren’t), who appropriately and on cue start wailing and keening as if they were at a funeral in Naples. S1b is the bosses wondering—their only concern—about the bad press they are going to get from all this. Then, they accuse: These aren’t even the real relatives. You’re just a bunch of scheming Neapolitans trying to get something for nothing.

Eduardo answers, Five people still died and you offered to do nothing. Would it make any difference to you if these really were the relatives?

Stand-off of the stereotypes. The Milanese offer no money but offer jobs to all those in the group that had come from Naples, knowing that the lazy southerners won’t want to hang around up north actually working when they could be at home in the sunny south waiting for the living that the world owes them. Touché and three-shay, the lazy southerners take the jobs in the factory, do very well and make common cause with their northern co-workers during an industrial dispute, which was the point of the film all along—common cause, we are all Italians.

In a medium-is-the-message way, the film borrows from neo-Realism in employing a large number of non-actors right off the street even for prominent roles, as if to say We are all equals—actors, non-actors, southerners, northerners. In a plea for unity, Eduardo says, What a shame we have to call these things ‘trains' and travel from city to city—Naples to Milan. If we called them ‘trams’ and just wrote ‘Via Posillipo—Piazza del Duomo’ on the side, everything would seem closer; it would be like living in one big city. Indeed, that is the way film ends—fading out on a tram just leaving via Posillipo in Naples for its short trip to the other side of town, Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

* * * * * * *

NapoliMania

About ten years ago, Enrico Durazzo opened a shop called NapoliMania. By now, the enterprise has grown into a chain of eight shops throughout the city, more than 30 in the entire Campania region, one in Rome and one in Milan. They are what we might call novelty shops—t-shirts, beverage mugs, coasters, pictures, and assorted gizmos and—as Italians now say in imported English—gadgets. (Friends are always asking me for a precise distinction between gizmo, gadget, thingamajig, and whatchamacallit. Who am I, Thomas Aquinas?)

Everything in the shop has to do with Naples: the t-shirts are emblazoned with slogans or proverbs written in Neapolitan dialect; there are pictures of Vesuvius and models of Pulcinella, etc. There is even an Emergency Kit for Neapolitans when they travel; the kit includes a sealed can of Neapolitan air and a small Neapolitan coffee machine replete with instructions from the great playwright, Eduardo De Filippo, on how to prepare the only cup of coffee worth drinking. This is important, because when you get as far north as, say, Rome, Lord knows you sure can't drink that swill they make up there.

NapoliMania capitalizes on the abundance of well-known Neapolitans in show business. There is a painting that reproduces the main facade of the Royal Palace. In the 1880s the facade was adorned with eight statues depicting the first monarch of each dynasty that has ruled Naples since the 12th century, from Roger the Norman to the first king of united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II. The NapoliMania rendition has superimposed the heads of Totò, Eduardo De Filippo, Massimo Troisi, and others on the statues. The row includes Diego Maradona, an Argentine, but, for all practical purposes, as Neapolitan as they come, since it was he who led the powerhouse Naples soccer team of the 1980s.

Along that line is, perhaps, their most popular item: Leonardo's The Last Supper with Neapolitan celebrities at the table. At the center, in place of Christ, is Sophia Loren. (I have not inquired of the artist—Durazzo, himself—why he made that particular choice, nor have I asked Sophia how she feels about the honor.) It is more intriguing to see who is cast in the role of Judas. Traditionally, Judas is thought to be fourth from the left in Leonardo's painting. In the NapoliMania version, that person is standing in back of the table, facing to his left. It is actor Carlo Giuffrè. (Again, I haven't asked.) The others are comic Totò, three members of the theatrical family of De Filippo (brothers Eduardo and Peppino, as well as Eduardo's son Luca), Vittorio De Sica, comic Massimo Troisi, contemporary singer-songwriter Pino Daniele, actor Nino Taranto and singer Massimo Ranieri. Two of the twelve disciples are the Neapolitan mask figure, Pulcinella, and the traditional figure of the Neapolitan street-crier, the Pazzariello, the character dressed in mock military garb who—until well into the 20th century—used to parade around the streets shouting out advertising for shops and services. Sophia Loren is the only woman in the painting.

* * * * * * *

Napoli nobilissima

Napoli nobilissima is a Neapolitan scholarly journal featuring material on the history, archaeology, topography and visual arts of Naples. It has had various editorial phases: (1) from its founding in 1892 to 1907; (2) from 1920 to 1922; (3) from 1961 to the present, with brief interruptions. The pauses in the last 50 years account for the fact that the current (2009) incarnation refers to itself on the cover as the fifth series.

The journal was founded in 1892 by a group of literati and historians, most well-known of whom are Benedetto Croce and Salvatore di Giacomo. It appeared as a monthly and was published by a local publisher, Pierro. It bore the sub-title rivista d'arte e topografia napoletana [Review of Neapolitan Art and Topography]. The first issue included, among many other items, an article on the churches that were being demolished in order to go through with the great urban renewal of Naples, the risanamento. The journal ceased publication in 1907 when Croce withdrew his support in a discussion over the editorial direction the journal should take. It was refounded in 1920 but lasted only two years.

Napoli nobilissima was revived in 1961 under the direction of Roberto Pane, an architect and university professor. It was published once every two months and bore the subtitle rivista bimestrale di arti figurative, archeologia e urbanistica [bi-monthly review of figurative art, archaeology and urban studies]. Editorially, it spoke out against urban decay and abuse, a particular sore spot with the editor, Pane. He died in 1987 and the journal passed into the hands of Raffaele Mormone, who more or less continued the same editorial line. The journal had another crisis in 1997 but renewed publication in 2000 and is currently a quarterly bearing the sub-title rivista di arti, filologia e storia [Review of Art, Philology and History]. Recent issues include a survey of museums in the Campania region of Italy and an article on the tavola Strozzi; from 1473, it is the oldest known map of the medieval city of Naples.

In 2003 there appeared an interesting book about the beginnings of the journal: Rileggere Napoli nobilissima. Le strade, le piazze, i quartieri [Rereading Napoli nobilissima, the streets, squares and quarters] by R. De Fusco (pub. Liguori, Napoli). Here you can read some of the original articles from the turn of that century plus modern editorial updates on the items discussed. Also, the Digitized Italian Journals section of BiASA (Biblioteca di Arte, Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte) [Library of Art, Archaeology e Art History) in Rome has digitized the years 1892 through 1922.

* * * * * * *

Natale in Casa Cupiello

In the select group of artists whom Italians refer to by first name only (Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo) belongs the great Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo de Filippo (1900-1984). Eduardo wrote in Neapolitan dialect, which makes his works less accessible than they merit, but also gave him the advantage of a rich, authentic voice to portray his favorite subjects, the real Neapolitans of the quartieri ever engaged in a mundane war of attrition to survive, all the more ferocious for its regularity.

In 1931 Eduardo turned his talents to describing a few days in the life of the Cupiello family, set against the most venerable Neapolitan symbol of Christmas, the Presepe, the home-made table-top rendering of the Holy Family in the Manger. The three-act play Natale in Casa Cupiello (Christmas at the Cupiello's) is the story of the determination of one man, Luca Cupiello, the father of the family, to build his Presepe. In the relatively short time since it was first staged, Casa Cupiello has become the traditional Christmas favorite among Neapolitans.

First, there is the fact—crucial to understanding the inhabitants of Naples—that there is no let-up in the daily grind, even at Christmas. The family Cupiello is beleaguered by squabbles, petty theft within the family, a married daughter running off with her lover, a mooching brother-in-law and a layabout bum of a son, none of whom can understand how an adult would still want to fool with something as childish as a Presepe, and all of whom conspire to sidetrack Luca from this symbolic reenactment of the Nativity. Yet while the Cupiello family threatens to unravel right before our eyes, Luca builds his Presepe with the single-mindedness and faith implicit in Christ's admonition to be as simple children…to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Eduardo's specialty is blending the tragic and comic. Donna Concetta, Luca's long-suffering wife, is seated alone at the living room table, desperate and alone in her knowledge that their daughter is about to leave her husband; at that moment the door from the kitchen opens and in come her husband, son and brother-in-law bearing their Christmas gifts to her. A few moments earlier they had been bickering and yammering like the Three Stooges over who was going to give her what gift; now they are The Three Wise Men, appearing suddenly and sublimely, surrounding Concetta and leaving her surrealistically suspended between tears and laughter and refocusing our attention on the things that really matter.

And just as Merry Christmas/ Bah-Humbug runs through Dickens' A Christmas Carol until Scrooge is finally redeemed into wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, in Casa Cupiello there is a similar call and response between the father and his son, Nennillo:

Father: Do you like the Presepe.

Son: No!

At one point, Luca is frisking Nennillo's pockets for five missing lire. (Early on, it has been established that Nennillo, a spoiled brat, is light-fingered even to the point of filching and selling his uncle's shoes.) Luca finds the money but tries to blackmail his son into saying he likes the Presepe, after all. No! insists Nennillo, at which point Luca holds up the money for the entire family to see. As it turns out, Nennillo had, indeed, pilfered the money from his uncle—who had stolen it from Luca in the first place!

It is the son's no that has to be changed, redeemed by play's end. Luca has finally built his Presepe, but has suffered a stroke and is obviously dying. His last question to his son is the same: Do you like the Presepe? His son, moved by his father's passion and by his own compassion, the most Christian of all qualities, says yes to his father and to the Presepe at the same time.

Eduardo's stage directions have Luca hearing the whispered Yes and then looking slowly off into the distance where he imagines a Presepe as great as the world itself, with real people rushing to the side of the real Christ Child. Lost in his vision, he utters the final words of the play:

What a beautiful Presepe. How beautiful!

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National Museum

The National Archaeological Museum is located at the corner of via Foria and via Costantinopoli. That point was also the northwest corner of the original Greek wall of the city of Neapolis, remains of which can be seen further down via Costantinopoli at Piazza Bellini. It is a fitting site for one of the most complete collections of Greek and Roman antiquities in the world, and one of the few places where they can be viewed side by side just a few yards from precisely that outside world where they, indeed, existed side by side for centuries.

Charles III of Bourbon founded the museum in the 1750s. He used a building erected in 1585, one that had served as a cavalry barracks and later, from 1616 to 1777, as the seat of the University of Naples. Expansion of the premises continued in the latter half of the eighteenth century under the supervision of Ferdinando Fuga and Pompeo Schiantarelli. A final project drawn up in 1790 to complete the structure was never completed.

The museum houses impressive collections from Pompei and Herculaneum; there are exhibits from other archaeological sites throughout southern Italy, including some from early non-Roman Italic peoples of the area, such as the Samnites. More recent additions include the Farnese collection and the Borgia collection of Egyptian antiquities, this latter giving the visitor the bonus of studying the very real commercial and social ties that the ancient Greek city had with its own forerunner, Egypt. Other collections contain items that in many other museums would be considered much more than 'miscellaneous', such as the Tazza Farnese, one of the largest cameos in the world, crafted in Alexandria in 150 BC and that came into the possession of Lorenzo the Magnificent 15 centuries later.

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Early Natural Sciences

—in the Kingdom of Naples (1735-1845)

Introduction

The natural sciences are such things as biology, chemistry, physics, geology, etc., those disciplines that lend themselves to observation, measurement, and experiment. Natural sciences are generally distinguished from Social Sciences (such as anthropology), Humanities (such as literature and music), and formal systems (such as mathematics). (There is obviously a great deal of overlap; that is, I don't know if Eratosthenes of Cyrene was doing math, astronomy, or geology when, more than two centuries before Christ, he figured out the circumference of the earth. I don't think he knew, either.)

So-called learned societies started to crop up in the 17th century in Europe: the Italian Accamdemia dei Lincei (1603), Académie Française (1635), the German Leopoldina Academy of Sciences (1652) and the Royal Society of London (1660) and, in Naples, Giambattista della Porta's Academia Secretorum Naturae (1580). They all existed to study nature, although at the time that included things we might exclude today, such as astrology and transmutation of metals. There is a long string of great names that follow in the 1600s, including Galileo (1564-1642), Spinoza (1632-1677), Locke (1632-1704), and Newton (1643-1727), that primed our culture for the French Enlightenment in the mid-1700s, a period that brought to bear the powers of human reason on the world around us. There arose a whole class of professional scientists—geologists, physicists,