See Naples and Live – 16: Wonder Wall

 

©Nigel Summerley

As well as matters of life and death, Naples is rather good at mystery.

And if you're interested in close-to-unsolvable mysteries, you should go and stand beneath the facade of the great Church of Gesu Nuovo, where you will find yourself staring upwards and wondering what on earth it's all about.

For a start, the front of the church is covered with what is known technically as "diamond point rustication", or in simpler terms a lot of pyramids (as you will see from these pictures).

Why? It was a look that became fashionable in the Renaissance and Naples tended to outdo other Italian cities in this respect. It was seen as a way of "ennobling" a building, or tarting it up. Similar rustication had previously been used on castles, presumably to make them look as strong and powerful as possible, and this use of pyramids to project power spilled over into the design of large civilian buildings.

But the mystery of Gesu Nuovo is something else: because each of its pyramids bears its own peculiar engraved symbol (as you will see if you study them from below) and no one has ever been able definitively to explain why. 

One theory is that they are letters from an esoteric language casting a spell that would protect the building. 

The other is that they are from the Aramaic alphabet and represent notation for a piece of music which can be played by reading the notes from right to left and from bottom to top. I overheard an Italian guide explaining this theory to a party of tourists. "And why not?" he concluded. "Naples is a city built on the edge of rationality."

And I wouldn't argue with that.

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 15: The Divine Maradona

 

©Nigel Summerley

A new biography of soccer legend Diego Maradona makes the point that his life might have taken a different turn if he had signed for Sheffield United (who actually did make him an offer) rather than go on to play so spectacularly for Napoli.

Sheffield or Naples? Difficult choice, eh?

But according to Guillem Balagué's book, Maradona – The Boy, The Rebel, The God – it was in Naples that the great man was introduced to cocaine. And that was the start of a slippery slope towards disgrace.

Despite his all too human failings, Maradona is still worshipped in Naples. So much so that there is a shrine to him, right in the heart of the old city.

You can find the shrine at the entrance to the Bar Nilo in Via San Biagio dei Librai. It includes all kinds of memorabilia, but at its centre is its most impressive component: a strand of hair from the head of the man himself. It is encased in a glass block, which you can see pictured here, just below the central portrait of Maradona.

In this city of holy relics, bones, skulls and superstition, there seems nothing unusual about what amounts to a place of religious devotion focused on a remarkable soccer player. This is how mere mortals have become saints...

See Naples and Live – 14: Sirens, Sirens Everywhere...

 

Ever since I set out on An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog March-October 2020), I seem to have been beset by Sirens.

Maybe it's just something that goes with following in the wake of Odysseus...

But Naples has a huge connection with the Sirens, and it's difficult to spend some time there without being aware of the fact.

In the National Archaeological Museum you can even interact with a digital Siren, a tiny but seductive virtual fish/woman who sings requests (see below).

©Nigel Summerley

Nearby, the museum also has this large-as-life Siren (below) complete with fishy tail but lacking any other appendages

©Nigel Summerley

According to legend, the Siren called Parthenope (see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Parthenope – 13 February 2021) cast herself into the sea after failing to seduce Odysseus, and her dying body washed up on the beach in front of what was to become Naples.

The caryatid (below) comes complete with arms, fishy tail and everything else a Siren should have. She stands by the sea on Via Partenope and is part of the 17th-century Fontana dell'Immacolatella.

©Nigel Summerley

This Siren from the Palazzo Sanfelice (below) seems to make up in the fishy legs department for what she lacks in arms.

©Nigel Summerley

Breasts, of course, are a prominent feature in depictions of Sirens... and nowhere more so than at the Fontana di Spinacorona (below) which depicts Parthenope (in the more classically authentic half-bird, half-woman form) squeezing jets of liquid from her breasts to put out the fires of Vesuvius.

©Nigel Summerley

And last – and most contemporary – is this transport of delight spotted just across the bay from Vesuvius (which is seen reflected in the bus window). Only in Naples...

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 13: Bloody Weird

 

Scene from an Orgies Mysteries Theatre event

Just when you think that Naples can't get any weirder... it gets weirder.

When my good friend Z from Latina (whom I'd last seen during An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – see this blog March to October 2020) joined me for some of my time in Naples, I suggested a visit to the Hermann Nitsch Museum (knowing that she was keen to see some modern art).

However, I had absolutely no idea what I was letting us both in for. 

It didn't start well. The doors were locked and the place seemed closed (even though I'd had it confirmed by email that it would be open). Fortunately, I went for a walk around the back of the building, spied someone in a kitchen, and – after a bit of hand signalling – he made it clear that he would come and let us in. There was no one else in the large three-storey gallery – just this young curator and us.

It almost felt like the beginning of a low-budget horror movie... and that's pretty much the direction in which things were about to go...

I was busy examining what appeared to be huge blood-stained pieces of wood and canvas (which is what they turned out to be) when Z nudged me into looking at the video screen above us. I watched a succession of naked young men and women led ritually before a crowd of onlookers to take up crucifixion-type poses and then have jugs of blood force-fed into their dribbling lips or poured over their genitals. 

This was all part of performance artist Nitsch's extraordinary decades-long oeuvre of what he calls his Orgies Mysteries Theatre – an explosive mixture of stripped human bodies, pseudo-religious ceremonies and copious quantities of animal blood and guts (literally) – or sometimes fruit such as strawberries and tomatoes (any colour as long as it's red).

The large bloody stains at my feet were the leftovers from one of these "orgies", themselves now artworks.

At this point I felt slightly sickened and if I had been there on my own I might have left. But Z has a more open mind than I do, and we both persevered. And I'm glad that I did. Because I came to realise that this is genuine art...

Nitsch knows exactly what he is doing in shaking up the spectator or visitor and making them face the question: 'What exactly do I think about this?'

Other pieces feature unnervingly neat layouts of little piles of tissues... and medical instruments that made one think of torture and suffering rather than surgery and healing. It is the stuff of nightmares... maybe Nitsch's, maybe our own.

Finally, we walked down an ominous and inexplicably awful subterranean corridor lined with large black and white abstract images and carefully arranged benches that looked as if they were waiting for bodies to be laid on them. It all induced a feeling that I had not experienced in quite the same way anywhere – apart from when I once visited the prison huts of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

If you want to get some idea of what Nitsch is all about – and have a strong mind and stomach – visit https://www.museonitsch.org/en/.

See Naples and Live – 12: Half Man, Half Fish

 

Strange figures abound on the streets of Naples – some so odd that there is not always agreement as to who they even are...

Just up the road from the apartment in which I stayed in the Universita district was the bas-relief of this intriguing character, adorning a wall.

Some refer to him as "the hairy man", as if he were a kind of urban Bigfoot. But the large dagger he carries has led to him being given more specific identities.

Some claim that this is a depiction of Orion – the giant huntsman who ended up placed among the stars by Zeus.

But most people – including me – prefer to see this as the much more fascinating Cola Pesce (or Nick the Fish), a legendary character bound up strongly with Naples and with Sicily, and also with the ubiquitous Sirens who once held terrifying sway along the Odyssean coasts of south-western Italy (of which more soon in this blog).

Cola (short for Niccolo) was a boy who spent so much time swimming that his mother said he might as well be a fish. And that's what he more or less became, spending most of his time in the sea. When he wanted to travel long distances, he allowed himself to be swallowed by a large fish – and then, when he reached his destination, he used his knife to cut the fish open from the inside and escape.

The king heard of Cola's prowess and used him to locate treasure in the Bay of Naples, and also to report back on how the island of Sicily was supported by vast pillars rising from the seabed.

To find out how deep Cola could go, the king asked him to follow a cannonball fired into the sea. Cola did as he was ordered and caught the cannonball way down in the depths... but then the sea mysteriously closed over him and trapped him there forever.

The image of "the hairy man" or perhaps "the wavy man" is said to have been found in the 13th century but it's been argued that it is much, much older.

It certainly looks like Cola, the boy who grew up to live – and die – in the sea.

But there are other depictions of the marine hero... See below for a more contemporary one, also from the streets of Naples.

See Naples and Live – 11: A Home from Home

 

Naples is certainly a place of dramatic juxtapositions... rich and poor, sacred and profane, the living and the dead... but surely none more bizarre than the house of US civil rights heroine Rosa Parks sitting in the courtyard of the Palazzo Reale?

It's such a weird transplantation that it somehow seems utterly normal. You have to do a double take or two before you can assimilate the fact that, yes, this is what you are actually looking at...

This white clapboard house used to stand in Detroit, where Parks went to live after her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a bus made Alabama too hot for her.

In 2008 the house was due for demolition but Parks's niece bought it and gave it to artist Ryan Mendoza. After failing to get support to save the building, Mendoza took it to pieces and moved it to his studio in Berlin.

A plan to take it back to the States to be part of a civil rights exhibition fell through... and that's when Naples stepped in and offered space for it to be displayed, under the title Almost Home.

Perhaps it is the incredible nature of the journey of the Rosa Parks house that somehow resonates with the lives of all of us.

How on earth did we end up where we are? Is "almost home" as good as being home? Or is "almost home" the nearest we're ever going to get to a neat ending?

See Naples and Live – 10: Market Forces

Sometimes it's impossible to see a place that you really want to see... because it just isn't there any more.

Many things drew me back to Naples... but one in particular was the chance to visit the Piazza Mercato, the historic Market Square that I previously wrote about and featured paintings of in this blog (An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Street Fight in Naples – 19 January 2021).

I was prepared for disappointment (I knew that it was now all but abandoned) but not on the level that I was to experience it.

The piazza had once been the almost-theatrical centre stage of life – and death – in Naples.

The 17th-century Masaniello revolt had taken place here, going through every possible stage from euphoric celebration to the darkest violence.

It was a place of public torture and execution... and it was also a place of commerce and the joys of life... all played out beneath the backdrop of Vesuvius, the volcano that could erupt and wreak havoc at any moment.

Domenico Gargiulo made the most remarkable depiction of its heyday (see below). But when I finally walked out across that desolate space, I couldn't even manage to get a decent photograph to convey the terrible emptiness of it.

My picture at the top of this post is a mess... a picture of the hodge-podge at just one corner of the square. That obelisk fountain was one of two built in the 18th century – which added little to the place. The only common feature in my picture and Gargiulo's is the tower of the Carmine church.

The past is definitely another piazza...

Piazza Mercato by Domenico Gargiulo