Word: neapolitan
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...proper studio with assistants in Naples; he took no pupils, held no salon and had little talent as a courtier. Yet by word of mouth, force of reputation and the example of four or five paintings he executed there, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio completely changed the face of Neapolitan painting at the start of the 17th century. A few months after his second arrival in the city, this paranoid, violent homosexual genius was dead at 37, leaving two generations of painters from Naples to Brussels with a legacy to pick over...
...lower end, of course, some Neapolitan art can be as wearisome as any other self-conscious piece of "life enhancement." Like routine mezzogiorno cooking, all tomato paste and burnt garlic, it was not meant for an educated palate. But the remarkable thing about this show is how, time and again, it surprises one with some unexpected dramatic subtlety. The expression on Salome's face in Preti's The Feast of Herod, for instance, is worthy of Rembrandt in its shadowed play of emotion...
...connoisseurs of enigma, there is A Dead Soldier by an unknown Neapolitan hand (all attributions having failed so far), which inspired Manet's Dead Toreador. The painting is a link between Caravaggio's shadow-theater and, through Salvator Rosa, the world of 19th century romanticism. It shows a young man in half-armor lying stiff and composed on the floor of a cave (some mountain charnel-house, perhaps) surrounded by rainy twilight and the glimmer of bones, with a curl of smoke still issuing from an extinguished votive lamp. A vanitas? A more personal lamentation? Impossible...
...skeletal frame and hawklike features over his magnificent violin, crafted by Giuseppe Guarneri in 1742. "Perpetually conserved" in Italy by the city of Genoa, according to Paganini's will, the prized Guarneri, insured for $800,000, crossed the Atlantic last week, and in the skilled hands of Neapolitan Virtuoso Salvatore Accardo, 40, made its U.S. debut at New York City's Carnegie Hall. "I have played it several times," says Accardo, "and every time I do, it is like coming home...
Back in 1974, the gelding Neapolitan Way finished a heroic second in the Preakness despite a cut leg. However much this endeared him to his owner and trainer at the time, his next proprietors were not as moved, and the ones after that probably never thought of it. The old campaigner tumbled down the ladder until, by Preakness day two years ago, he was reduced to cheap $14,000 claimers. With time out for bowed tendons, Neapolitan Way is still running up mileage...