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| In the Spanish Quarter, narrow alleys and delicious seafood in a little restaurant named Taverna di Buongiusto |
The original Greek city walls (says Julianne), "precepe" Christmas scenes which Naples is famous for, narrow streets with a mix of gothic and romanesque architecture. Strong reminders that Naples was under the French influence for centuries until Italian unification. Naples looks different from other Italian places we have traveled so far.
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| Precepe-a nativity scene in Naples old town. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are under the arch on the left. |
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| Dante gestures |
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| Girl caution |
Oh, the day was wet, dark, not totally delightful. But though the sun didn't show, images did, small helps to my mood.
And some finely decorative bits. Chiesa Santa Chiara is supposed to be a great, nay, grand church, and significant in the history of Naples. Very old, it had been remodeled in the baroque style in the 17th century and was full of curly decorative stucco and happy statues of baby angels. But in WWII, as the Allies forced their way into Naples against the Nazis, this church was bombed to a shell. Maybe not even a shell, maybe just a pile of rubble.
When it was rebuilt, the intent was to go back to the Gothic original. Frankly, it's a barn. Huge, grey, desperately plain - probably there was no money. The windows are simple and good, the rest you can't stand.
But then, out back, behind the church and basically untouched by the bombing, this cloister garden of majolica tile. Our guidebook dismisses this garden, but I think in summer it would be very calm and restful. In this weather that we had, it felt pretty chilly in spite of the lemon trees bearing yellow fruit.
I found a wonderful and unexpected delight in the dreary weather - Chiesa Santa Anna di Lombardi is off the beaten path, has a policy against photography (good luck with that), and basically seems torn between wanting to keep its privacy and wanting people to realize its great treasure, a painted ceiling by Giorgio Vasari.
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| I felt I could snatch only a single photo of this very pleasing ceiling. Vasari did the large paintings, others the spritely miniatures. |
Vasari wrote "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects," the first art historical writing about the visual arts. I quote Wikipedia:
"Often called 'the first art historian', Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies .... He was the first to use the term 'Renaissance' (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing 'rebirth' in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti, and he was responsible for our use of the term Gothic Art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the 'barbaric' German style. The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts."
This book is his great contribution, though it has many flaws, such as favoring his fellow Florentines, ignoring especially Venetian artists such as Titian, and quoting improbable gossip and stories. It's the reason we remember him.
As you can see from my photo, he wasn't a bad painter. I like the light in his images, and his color palette. This was a bright spot for me in the drab day.
Sunday, it still rained. We went to the Archaeological Museum, which was fine enough - part was closed for lack of staff, naturally the part we wanted to see the most, but oh well. We looked at art in the subways, and went up to the top of Vomero hill for lunch at a pizzeria that wasn't really - it was a white-tablecloth restaurant with wonderful seafood.
I (Julianne) was the only one of us three who managed to see much of the frescoes from Pompeii before that gallery closed. Strong color contrast of red-orange and blue-green in the frescoes. They used copper for the blue and showed a little pot of copper and painting tools which were found in Pompeii during excavations.
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| Boats on the Pompeii waterfront-fresco detail |
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| Satyr with one-eyed creature, fresco detail from Pompeii |
The mosaics are superb--birds among other things. Much to see and absorb. Although open on Sunday, budget woes do not allow enough staff to keep most galleries open.
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| Detail of mosaic showing sacred ibis and Egyptian geese |
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| Pompeii mosaic with cat and birds |
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| Fishes and ducks |
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| Octopus, eel, squid, and various fishes |
Vomero is our neighborhood--steeper than San Francisco. Renaissance defensive castles on lower levels, palaces next up, Arte Moderne reminiscent to us of Barcelona at the next upper turn of the road, up to the top with early 20 C. All architectural styles I love.
To get home from the Museum, we rode Metro Linea 1, an engineering feat of the late 20 C. I am impressed that a subway can climb such a steep hill, which it does by circling around inside the mountain. Wow. I wonder if there is anywhere else in the world that has built a subway under such conditions? The stations are beautifully designed and decorated--we wanted to hop on and off at each one but we were hungry. Art? Food? We got both at the Vanvitelli stop on the top. Bus 128 down the hill to home--sunny now with gorgeous views.
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| Entrance to our metro station with elegant lights. |
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| 'Folk decoration' of the subway cars photo by Donna Hecht Ellefson |
| Image in Museo station |
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| Image in Vanvitelli station |
Sunday, home again, and the highlight of the week - you thought it was Vesuvius perhaps? - dinner with our landlady and her family.
Gabriella Rinaldi and Max Carola. They are musicians, an old Neapolitan family, living just upstairs from us in a beautiful big flat, wonderful people. Their other guest a Dutch oboist moving to Umbria to start a b&b/arts colony. Onno Verschoor, very civil guy. We ate and ate, talked and talked far into the night.
A pleasure to meet the extended family, eat Neapolitan winter food, be among kindly generous people who take music seriously. We have now been introduced to the music of Pino Daniele, who mixes Neapolitan music with R&B. He died recently at too young of an age. To see a video of him playing with Eric Clapton, click on this link: Pino Daniele with Eric Clapton
Our hosts, Max Carola and Gabriella Rinaldi, produced a concert by Richard Galliano at the Vesuvius Crater last summer, which you can hear by clicking this link: Richard Galliano at Vesuvius
Jazz accordion--seems like a contradiction, but it sure does work.
Max primarily does production and post-production, mainly these days in Berlin (the European center for contemporary music; he says it's the big youth scene these days). Here is a link to a youtube video he and Gabriella did together: Max and Gabriella.
Gabriella has a web presence, such as her business Voce e Canto (here's the link: voceecanto.it) and her own music in many youtube videos.
Monday morning, Donna and I went for a long walk, and then Julianne and I came back to Rome. It was a perfectly nice train, easy trip, hamburgers for supper, and realized the next morning the coffee is out, there's no bread, yogurt went bad, and so forth. Oh well, the week was worth the re-entry.
As we are back in our much-loved Roman apartment, I find that Naples has latched on to my heart. It is hard to capture the essence, it was only one week. But I find myself unwilling to delete the Giranapoli bus app from my phone.
by Julianne and Nancy
My parents married in 1971 at Santa Chiara!
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