See Naples and Live – 7: Prints Charming

 

©Nigel Summerley

This is the phone in the workshop of Carmine Cervone in Naples... and it works.

But it's not the most interesting of his machines – at least not to a journalist who was a reporter, sub-editor and production editor going back to the days of typewriters, copy paper and hot metal.

Carmine has linotype machines. And although they look like museum pieces, they are actually there to be used for printing... posters, papers, books, whatever comes along.

"The problem with new technology," observed Carmine, "is that it can produce idiots."

I almost cried as he spoke lovingly of the joys of beautifully designed typefaces, slugs of metal, and the skill of reading type upside down and back to front – just as I had to do on my first newspaper in the Midlands and later in the final days of Fleet Street. 

Carmine is not just a tipografo but he is also a filosofo. He says that to him it is important to work no more than four hours a day: "Then I can have time just to think."

Carmine Cervone's workshop and small museum is at Strada dell'Anticaglia 10-12, Napoli; the number of that phone is 00 39 081 29 54 83.

The wonderful Carmine Cervone ©Nigel Summerley

Still in use... a linotype machine                 ©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 6: Oh Mercy

There are many strange images in Naples depicting everything from the sacred to the profane – and pretty much every possible mixture of the two.

But the picture of a young woman letting an old man suck her naked breast must be among the most remarkable. All the more so because it helps form the centrepiece of a church.

It's part of Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio and was commissioned to go above the altar of the Pio Monte della Misericordia. 

I'd seen pictures of the painting and, to be honest, wondered what all the fuss was about. It seemed to be a dark, disjointed and downright odd piece of work.

But when I walked in and saw the real thing, I got it straight away. It's big, bold and utterly overpowering. 

That breastfeeding covers two works of mercy (visiting the imprisoned and feeding the hungry) and comes from the classical Roman story of Pero, a woman who breastfed – and ultimately saved – her father when he was locked up and sentenced to starve to death.

The other manifestations of mercy shown are: clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick, and burying the dead. And Caravaggio brings it all back home to Napoli; as Peter Robb says in his excellent book Street Fight in Naples: "... the angels looked as if they'd parked their Vespa round the corner... Mary seemed about to lower a basket for a loaf of bread or a packet of Marlboro..."

There are other paintings in Misericordia, but they only serve to show how far Caravaggio was ahead of – and then an influence on – his contemporaries.

He basically dared to go where other artists hadn't dreamed of going.

See Naples and Live – 5: Beauty and the Mask

©Nigel Summerley

Readers of An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog, March to October 2020) may remember this masked woman whom I photographed in the window of a Naples pharmacy last year. Like everyone around at that time, she was properly covered up.

A year on, she seems to be following the UK government's guidance (ie you don't have to do anything if you don't feel like it) rather than the rules in Italy, where carrying a vaccination certificate and wearing a mask is a fact of daily life. At Napoli Centrale railway station the other day I saw an armed cop remind the only person in the place who wasn't wearing a mask to put one on straight away...

Anyway, below is how Our Lady of the Pharmacy appears this week: maskless and fancy free.

It's might just be me, but I think she looks much more alluring with her mask on... doesn't she?

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 4: Beyond Words, Beyond Pictures

©Nigel Summerley

The other day I talked about being lost for words – in the subterranean world hidden away beneath the centre of Naples.

But not long after that, I was somewhere where I was not only lost for words, but sickened by sights that I could not allow myself to even hold up a camera to. (The picture above is of one of the more wholesome exhibits.)

That's not to say that I wish I had not visited Napoli's Museo di Anatomia Umana; everyone should see what can be seen there – if they can stomach it.

This is definitely not light entertainment. As well as showing assorted bodies and bits to illustrate the workings of the human being, the Museo also has a collection of what can go terribly wrong with it – in the form of deformed foetuses that never made it into life, but have an eternal life here preserved in large jars in formaldehyde or alcohol.

There are more than 50 of these on show, and to see them is like being present at some mass atrocity – although the atrocity here has been committed by nature (or, rather, its failings).

I will not go into details any more than I am able to provide photographs.

But I do say: go and face these awful things – and realise how blessed you are to be alive.

See Naples and Live – 3: See Naples and Dry

 

©Nigel Summerley

One of the great delights of Naples – and there are many – is to be able to hang your washing out over the street, go out for the day, and return in the evening to find every bit of your laundry perfectly dry.

It also makes you part of the local community, since not only are all their clothes on display to you and every other passer-by (from mundane socks and knickers to sometimes exotic garments of uncertain roles), but yours are on show to them.

My favourite piece of laundry so far – spotted hanging from a balcony in the quintessential old Neapolitan area of Sanita – was a gigantic technicolour bedspread featuring the face of Marilyn Monroe. My humble effort, pictured above, could hardly compete...

See Naples and Live – 2: Going Underground

 

©Nigel Summerley

I am seldom lost for words, I'm told... But I was stunned into silence by the subterranean galleries of Pietrasanta, far beneath the very centre of Naples. Partly because of my Italian guide's limited English and my own limited Italian... but mainly because I have seldom been anywhere so awe-inspiring.

Here we were, going the equivalent of four or five storeys below ground, through a maze of tunnels and channels, where the local tuff stone had once been extensively mined and where in the Second World War Neapolitans had sheltered from the bombs raining down on them.

The galleries take you back to the times of the Romans and the Greeks and the ancient inhabitants of Naples... and really do stun you into silence.

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live

Some Neapolitan philosophy

I fell in love with Naples last year – on my Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog from March to October 2020). But I was only passing through, so it may have been just a temporary infatuation.

I had to return to see if it was the real thing. Was it truly as alive and and as crazy and as exciting as I thought? No, it isn't – I find that now I'm back, it's even more so, in all departments.

I'm only here for a few days, but Marco – in whose place I'm staying in the old city – has given me a list of personally recommended restaurants and bars that could occupy every hour of the days and nights of my visit.

And I already have my own impossible list of amazing things that I want to see.

Another mini odyssey starts here...