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following, many attempts were made to placate this Equally bleak is Micco Spadaro’s Piazza del Mercato dur-
divine anger. It was common to appease the heavens, ing the Revolt of Masaniello (Naples, Museo di San Martino.
both during and after catastrophes such as plague, revolt Fig. 6), probably dating from the late 1640s or early 1650s.
and volcanic eruption, with festive rituals such as proces- The painting shows a scene of wild anarchy and social
sions, and communal prayer. The Condé de Castrillo chaos, with, at its very centre, a naked corpse hung, like
had tried to curb some of Naples’ very many festivals, an emblem, upside down from a pole. Close by is the
but it was feared that this had angered God, and they were Epitaffio, a monument commissioned to celebrate the suc-
re-instated with ever growing fervour.16 Now many cess of the revolution, but now ruined and encircled by
forms of thanksgiving for the salvation of the city were skulls. Ten years later Spadaro painted the other great
offered. From 1650 a celebration was held in the Chiesa Neapolitan cataclysms, the Eruption ofVesuvius (Capua, priv.
del Carmine to mark the end of Masaniello’s uprising, Coll.) and the Plague, (Naples, Museo di San Martino). In
while at the end of the epidemic a great feast took place the former San Gennaro, air born and surrounded by
in Sta Maria di Costantinpoli. In 1660 the guglia bearing clouds and putti, holds out both arms to halt the flow of
the statue of S. Gennaro, designed by Cosimo Fanzago, ash and lava which threaten the city. Some of the crowd
was erected, and many sacred dramas, with special effects kneel in penitence, whilst others have clambered onto the
of lights, machines and music, were staged.17 Money roof tops for a better view of the long procession which
poured into the coffers of the confraternities, and the accompanies the relics of San Gennaro.The saint is a tiny
numbers of churches and convents, always high, grew figure, but the painting sets the spiritual world, and the
inexorably, causing unease within Naples. For many years power of communal prayer, against the violence of the
the church and the religious houses were to be the major elements, and celebrates the miraculous end of the eruption.
patrons of art in Naples, and a dominant theme, from the In the Plague the Virgin pleads with her son to turn his
late 1650s through the 1660s, was that of divine inter- anger from the city, but in the desolate world below the
cession and salvation. dying and the dead, piled high in the foreground, threaten
to overwhelm the living.The plague was often seen as pun-
A particularly vivid sense of the recent cataclysms is ishment for Masaniello’s overthrow of the established order.
evident in a highly original group of small Neapolitan Carlo Francesco Riaco, in his Il Giudicio di Napoli; Discorso
scenes, of both the eruption of Vesuvius and the plague, del passato contaggio riassomigliato al Giudicio Universale (1658)
which fall somewhere between genre and history painting. describes ‘Naples target of divine anger, theatre of miseries,
Scipione Compagno (d.1658?) painted himself drawing foyer of disease, field of death, sea of confusion, sepulchre of
the eruption of Vesuvius and the procession which carried corpses,Naples judged by the strong arm of the most high’.19 Early
the relics of San Giacomo della Marca from the church of collectors seem to have grouped variants of these closely
Sta Maria Nuova to the Ponte della Maddalena.Alone, and
on a larger scale, he sits to the left of the picture, and 16. G. Guarino, Representing the King’s Splendour; communication and
looks down, from a bird’s eye view, at the panic stricken reception of symbolic mforms of power inViceregal Naples, Manchester
and ant like humanity before him, scurrying in the darkness, 2011, p. 77.
their relics and ceremonies so frail before the immense
plume of smoke and torrent of lava, and the lowering sky 17. D. Fabris, Music in 17th Century Naples, Aldershot 2007, p. 9.
riven by blood red flashes of light (Naples, Museo di San 18. Illustrated in Micco Spadaro; Napoli ai Tempi di Masaniello, catalogue
Martino). Terror dominates, and there is no promise of
salvation.18 of exhibition, Naples 2002, C8 p.184.
19. As given in Clifton, op. cit., 2005 p. 111.
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