Shelley Time in Naples

We're back in Canada now. The last three weeks of our time away were heavy on sightseeing, and we moved around a fair bit – too much probably. I’m picking up the story on Wednesday, March 7, Shelley’s first full day with us at the apartment in Naples.

Nobody slept well the night before. The downstairs bedroom was ridiculously bright with the street light right outside the window; the bed in the upstairs bedroom, as Karen and I discovered later after Shelley left, was uncomfortably hard, and there was noise from neighbours. Plus it was miles from the bathroom downstairs. We were pretty slow moving in the morning and didn’t get away until late.

The plan was to do the National Archaeological Museum, home to most of the good stuff pulled out of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and then see what else we had time and energy for. The day was mostly overcast with a few spits of rain.

We took the funicular up to the centre of Vomero, the well-to-do suburb at the top of our hill, walked a couple of blocks to the Vanvitelli Metro stop and took the No. 1 line to the Dante station. The train was packed; we were jammed shoulder to shoulder. I have no idea why. We never saw it that crowded again. We walked a few blocks to a Tourist Information Office at Piazza Gesú Nuovo and inquired about the Napoli Artecard, a tourist card we’d read about that offers unlimited transit travel for three days, free entry to any three participating tourist attractions, and reduced entrance fees for others. For €21. (It probably paid for itself in the end, but just barely. We didn’t save as much as we’d hoped.) The TIC directed us to a travel agent up the street where we could buy the cards.

Piazza Gesú Nuovo

From there, we walked several blocks to the museum. It’s a massive place, with an amazing collection. The star attractions are the many wall frescoes and mosaics, mostly taken from Pompeii, and the collection of statuary acquired by the state from, or donated by – not sure which – the House of Farnese. The Farneses were  an important family in Italy from Rennaissance times, numbering multiple dukedoms and a couple of popes among its illustrious members.

Karen and I started with the frescoes. (Shelley went off to see something else, mosaics, I think.) Given that they were cut from walls that had been covered by ash and volcanic debris for hundreds of years, the level of preservation and restoration is astonishing. The colour in many is still vivid. The quality of artistry isn’t quite so impressive in a lot of it. Once you’ve seen the draftsmanship and design in Rennaissance painting, some of this looks almost amateurish. Yet at the same time, some of it looks very modern – something about the loose brush strokes, perhaps. There are supposedly multiple period styles in Pompeiian art, but I couldn’t get straight what the differences were.

The content, mostly mythological subjects, is interesting, to a point. The labels explaining it are (mostly) in English as well as Italian. Some of the subjects are slightly risque. (There is more that is out-and-out pornographic in another section.) Karen and I spent almost an hour with the frescoes, shadowed by a fellow collector of museum images weilding a very serious-looking camera. We got in each other’s way at times. He was much more thorough.

I found the mosaics more impressive artistically. They’re better designed, I would say. And it’s just as or more impressive how well preserved or restored many are. Pompeii, at least in the sections where the well-to-do lived, must have been a visually rich place. (You get some impression of that at the site itself as we would be reminded a few days later when we made a return visit after 33 years.)

  

The dimly lit Naughty Room, with mosaics, frescoes, statuary and bronzes on sexual themes, is adjacent to the mosaics section. Do they keep all this stuff together so school group leaders can steer impressionable youngsters away, or so prudish ladies in times past could avoid it? The Romans obviously had a very liberal attitude towards sex. Depictions of it must have been omnipresent. There were hanging giant-phallus decorations, bacchanalian scenes and images of couples in the throes. One was a particularly graphic sculptural depiction of a satyr and a goat going at it!

Karen and I spent our last 45 minutes or so before meeting Shelley looking at the Farnese collection of statuary. The Rennaissance, of course, was partly about a new regard for classical models of artistic expression. So rich folk in the 16th century liked to collect and display ancient busts and statues to show off their good taste. The Farneses apparently had unlimited funds with which to indulge this passion.

Apollo (but how do they know what he looks like)

Shelley is a huge fan; she told us that when she came to the museum the last time she was in the city, she never got out of the Farnese collection. I also like classical statuary. The sculptors, surely, were the most accomplished artists in ancient Rome. The portrait busts in particular are very realistic. These men – and they are almost exclusively of men – are still alive. Indeed, you can see their faces, or ones very like them, in the streets of Italian cities.

Bacchanalian scene on sarcophagus with satyr and centaur

Donatello horse

The pièces de resistance are a pair of large-scale full-figure sculptural scenes, one of Hercules leaning on a tree limb, muscles bulging, the other of a bull wrestling scene. They are quite astonishing.

Farnese Bull

Hercules

It was drizzling when we came out. The next order of business was lunch, but I made the ladies stop under their umbrellas first while I photographed some wall art at what looked as if it was the headquarters of the local Occupied group.

Naples Occupied headquarters?

Having eaten cheap and cheerful the day before, we looked for something a little more civilized, and found it not too far away: a trattoria as opposed to pizzeria, the next step up in the restaurant quality hierarchy in Italy. For primi, I had a perfectly done pasta with fresh cherry tomato sauce, and tender and tasty lemon veal for secondi. The bread, as it is most places here, was to die for. Can’t remember what the others had. The wine was rough and ready again, a house product.

We dawdled going back through the old city to the subway. There are three east-west streets in central Naples that are in the same place as important streets in the Greco-Roman city of Neapolis. They’re narrow, chaotic, not very clean and lined with fabulous churches and palazzos. Between the churches and mansions are shops selling tourist tat, pizzerias and friggatori, Neapolitan eateries specializing in fried snacks.

We ducked into Chiesa Gesú Nuovo (New Jesus Church), one of the city’s many baroque churches, this one opened in 1750. Very plain front, seriously opulent interior.

Chiesa Gesú Nuovo

By this time it was after four and we were all tired, so we headed home the way we’d come – subway to Vomero, funicular down to our street. The evening was a repeat of the night before, with much vino and chatter. Cheese, chorizo (brought from Gran Canaria), bread and fruit for supper.

Petraio funicular station

On the funicular

The next day, we went back to the old city, with the idea of wandering up and down the three main streets and dipping into whichever church or other attraction struck our fancy. We took the funicular to the Augusteo station and walked from there. The route took us through the beautiful Galleria, an almost exact replica of the more famous cathedral of commerce in Milan. The architecture is lovely, but as a shopping mall it’s pedestrian, mostly given over to familiar international chains.

Naples Galleria

We headed first for the Cappella Sansevero, one of Naples’ most famous attractions. It was originally built in 1590 in the garden of the nearby Sansevero family palazzo. Most of the stupendous decoration on display today was created under the supervision of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, in the 18th century. Raimondo was a regular renaissance man, even if he did live in the baroque era, a major know-it-all. Also a Mason.

Capella Sansevero: Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino 

The sculptures were executed by a few different artists, often based on designs or ideas of Raimondo’s. The major works are by Giuseppe Sanmartino – whose Veiled Christ, a depiction of a dead Jesus under a gauzy covering, is the chapel’s centrepiece and an amazing piece of sculpture – and Francesco Queirolo. I’d never heard of either, but Neapolitan artists for whatever reason seem to get short shrift from art historians. On the evidence of the Capella Sansevero, these two are seriously underated.

Capella Sansevero

This was one of our free entries on the Artecard, but we paid extra for the audioguide. It was a good investment because the English labeling in the chapel is cursory, and there is a lot of symbolism in the art – including masonic – that I would certainly have missed otherwise. The audioguide also included lots of background on Raimondo, who sounds very like Caitlin’s third Earl of Bute: interested in everything, seriously accomplised in several fields, including science.

Capella Sansevero: ceiling

The Capella Sansevero was a highlight of our time in Naples. My only regret about it was the complete ban on photography. I’ve borrowed images from the Sansevero website to give an idea of its gorgeousness.  

The central of the three main east-west streets in the historic centre changes names a couple of times, but is known in its entirety as Spaccanapoli, meaning “Naples splitter.” We spent most of our time there. It starts at Piazza Gesú Nuovo, where we’d been the day before. Kitty-corner to Gesú Nuovo church is Santa Chiara, a convent and church complex. Shelley had visited it the last time she was here, but said she was happy to go again, so in we went.

Santa Chiara cloisters

The main attraction is the distinctive and beautiful convent cloister, re-designed by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro – whoever he was – in the mid-18th century. It’s furnished with unique majolica tile columns and benches in rococco style. The arcades on all four sides are decorated with now mouldering frescoes. It’s a lovely space, marred only by the other tourists clogging it. The convent was home to an order known as the Poor Clares. On the evidence, they weren’t so poor.

Santa Chiara cloisters

There’s a museum, with artefacts such as a worm-eaten wooden bust of Christ that once adorned the church, and an archaeological site, with the remains of baths used by the poor nuns. Only moderately interesting.

Santa Chiara church

The church itself, which we visited last, is not one of Naples’ finest, but there is some very nice modern stained glass The modern glass exists because the church was mostly destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in August 1943. It was restored in the 1950s.

Santa Chiara church

We ate lunch at some point – can’t remember where, or what we had – and wandered up and down all three of the historic east-west streets. The others are Tribunali and Sapienza. And down some vicos or alleyways. 

Spaccanapoli: Pulcinella

Spaccanapoli: courtyard

Spaccanapoli: fashion shoot

Spaccanapoli: no, Shelley, it's not a trash can

Spaccanapoli street scene

At some point, late in the day, we ducked into San Domenico Maggiore church. It’s a gloomy place, but does have some interesting medieval frescoes and a lovely vaulted ceiling with gilt trim.

San Domenico Maggiore

I can’t remember how we got home – subway to Vomero and funicular to Petraio, I think. The evening was pretty much a repeat of the first two with Shelley. Sleeping remained a problem for all.

The next day was Shelley’s last. She had a flight out to Barcelona in the evening. She was spending a week there before jetting off to Tel Aviv for one of several marijuana-related conferences she’s attending this winter/spring.

Our plan was to do the Museo di Capodimonte, one of the largest art museums in Italy. Capodimonte means top of the hill, which is where it is. It’s some way out from the centre, housed in a palace in a park, with only bus service to it. We decided to take a cab. We knew there were fixed price cabs available from the main train station at Piazza Garibaldi. It meant taking the funicular up to Vomero, then the subway to Garibaldi. When we got to Vomero, though, we thought to ask a cabbie at a rank how much it would cost to go from there. It was only a few Euros more than the fixed price from Garibaldi and would save us a long train ride. So we hopped in.

Palazzo Capodimonte

The day was mild and partly sunny. The extensive palazzo grounds looked inviting. Apparently there are nice views over the city. It seemed a shame to be indoors, but according to everything we’d read, this was a museum not to be missed. It displays mostly, but not exclusively, art by Neapolitans, heavy on rennaissance artists. We found an el Greco portrait, a lovely Mother and Child by Raphael, a stunning Caravaggio. This is where Artemesia Gentileschi’s famous Judith and Holofernes painting lives, a dark, dark picture that Karen and I studied in a continuing ed art class years ago.

Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes (1614-1620)

Caravaggio, The Flagellation of Christ (1607)

El Greco, Portrait of Giulio Clovio (1571-1572)

Raphael, Mother and Child (1520-1530)

The real finds, though, were the lesser-known – or lesser known to me – Italian rennaissance artists, including Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (aka Parmigianino), Michelangelo Anselmi, Francesco Salviati and Girolamo Mirola. The massive Mirola of the Rape of the Sabines was a highlight.

Mirola, Intervention of the Sabine Women in the battle between Romans and Sabines (1563)

Michelangelo Anselmi, Portrait of a Gentleman (1530-1540)

Parmigianino, portrait of Gian Galeazzo Sanvitale (1529)

Parmigianino, Antea (1535)

Salviati, Self portrait

There were also some nice Dutch-Flemish paintings, including a room full of large canvasses by Joachim Beuckelaer depicting country market scenes. He’s another artist I don’t remember ever seeing before.

Hugo van der Goes, Pieta (1479)

Joachim Beuckelaer, Fish Market (1570)

Part of the palazzo has been restored to show off the decorations of the period when it was lived in by Bourbon monarchs of Sicily. Some of the rooms are eye-poppingly opulent.

We spent three hours in the museum, about an hour longer than we can usually manage. The last half hour or so we weren’t really taking much in. I’m sure we missed some prime stuff by hurrying through the section devoted to Neapolitan artists.

We grabbed a cab, went back to Vomero and found a restaurant for lunch near Piazza Vanvitelli – Ristorante Pizzeria Gorizia 1916. It was up the street from a place recommended in one of our guide books that turned out to be closed. We had no idea if it was any good. Luckily, it was. Very traditional, full of locals.

They first tried to seat us practically in the doorway to the toilet. We said no thanks, and waited briefly until a good table in a corner opened up. It was good, except that it was next to a large party of men, probably from the same office, celebrating one of their birthdays. They were loud and boisterous. Much alcohol and food was consumed. Friday lunch.

I had pasta to start and veal of some kind – with a wine and mushroom sauce, I think. The house wine came out of a bottle with a proper label on it.

Not long after we sat down, a chap in his late 50s or early 60s came in and took the table next to ours, and ordered a pizza and a beer. I looked at him, and thought, he’s not Italian. He didn’t say anything while we ate, just made notes in a notebook. When he was leaving, he came over and spoke to us. He was British, but lived in Naples, worked at universities in some freelance capacity all over Italy, he said. We talked a bit about Italian politics and Naples and our travels. Then he left. Might have been an interesting chap to talk to longer.

The odd thing was, he was the second English-speaking expat to speak to us that day, both within a two block radius. I’d exchanged a few words with a young American fellow sitting on a park bench in Piazza Vanvitelli earlier when we were looking for a cab. He gave me his name card and said to feel free to call him if we had any questions or problems. I don’t think I’ve ever been approached on the street by so many people offering assistance as I have in Naples. Interesting.

We walked over to Castel Sant'Elmo to check it out, and discovered great views of the port, the city and Vesuvius. While Karen and I walked down to a place where we could see the views more or less unobstructed, Shelley wandered into a bar with similar views from its terrace, and we joined her there. It was expensive, I know that. Shelley wouldn't let us pay, wouldn't even tell us how much it was.

We took the funicular back to the flat. Shelley was mostly packed, and our landlady had already ordered a taxi to pick her up on Via Palizzi where the cab had dropped us the first night. She had a little over an hour before we had to move her bags up through the funicular station and down the other side to the street. Humping the bags was a struggle, a foretaste of what it would be like for us to go the same route with our bags in a few days. We had left plenty of time, but only waited a few minutes as the cab came early. Shelley was gone before 7:30.

‘Bye Shelley. Ciao!