Abstracts of the article “Baroque adventure in ” Written by Waldemar Januszczak On The Times, March 14th 2010

“The artist ’s spiritual home his celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death”

“In most cities, the chief reason to pop into a bank is to get out some money. But not in Naples.In Naples — that unusually shadowy city, which has spent its entire history waiting for Vesuvius to blow, and where nothing is as it is in other places — the best reason to pop into a bank is to look at art. More specifically, to find a Caravaggio”.

“The one they have on show at the Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, on Via Roma, is supposed to be Caravaggio’s final painting. The Banca Intesa was once the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, an ornate baroque confection filled with painted cherubs and impressive sweeps of staircase, designed by Cosimo Fanzago in 1637 and entirely unsuited to banking. That was in the days when Naples was a Spanish colony, ruled from Madrid by those crazy, harelipped Hapsburgs, that genetic mess of a dynasty, who married among themselves so fiercely that they successfully warped into a new biological sub- species: the mutant ruler”. (…)

“Caravaggio came to Naples in 1606. He was on the run from Rome, where he had murdered a man, supposedly because of an argument about a tennis match. He didn’t stay long; by 1607, he was gone. But just before his death, in 1610, he turned up again for a second dose of Neapolitan darkness. Naples clearly suited him, and he suited Naples: a devil had found his way home. All in all, he was only here for a year and a bit, but it was time enough for Caravaggio to change the course of western art and paint some of his greatest pictures”. (...)

“Somehow, Caravaggio managed to show all seven taking place, simultaneously, in one painting. It’s as if a crowd of Neapolitan losers has been thrown into a very dark washing machine with their saviours, then tumble-dried. Everywhere you look, there’s a face, a flash, an act of mercy. Look closely at the details, though, and I’m afraid you may be shocked. Feeding the poor and visiting them in prison is represented by a topless daughter breast-feeding her own dad through the bars of his cage”. (…)

“The fact that Caravaggio has set all the action on a busy street corner in Naples gives the scene a scary immediacy. Before him, religious art took place over there and far away. Caravaggio yanked it under our noses and into our intimacy zone. It’s like a stranger coming up to you on the Naples Metro, leaning so close you can smell their breath, and insisting you listen to what they have to tell you about God. Which, by the way, is perfectly likely to happen to you on the Naples Metro”. (...)

“Back on the itinerary, some superb can also be found in the city’s famous art gallery, the Museo di Capodimonte, a long climb up the bulkiest of Naples’s many hills. If you are a porky like me, you will find the baroque goose chase offers an excellent way of achieving lots of exercise. Frankly, the bus services here are so chaotic, and the taxi drivers so devious, that walking is unquestionably the best way to get around. Except, that is, to reach the other great baroque highlight of Naples, the ”. (…)