Photographic exhibition by Giancarlo De Luca on the Fontanelle Cemetery

Thursday June 16 2022 there will be one photographic exhibition very interesting in the Sanità, in Naples, which will allow us to admire the shots by photographer Giancarlo De Luca, thanks to the commitment of the “Youth for the Neighborhood - Committee Reopen the Fontanelle Cemetery” which promoted the initiative.

The exhibition is titled "By grace received in the Fontanelle”And obtained the patronage of the Municipality of Naples and the Third Municipality. The aim is to insert itself among the fundamental events for the restart and rebirth of the artistic sector after the crisis due to the two years of pandemic and the goal is to do it in one of the most beautiful places in Naples, also enhancing the Rione Sanità and one of its symbolic places, the Fontanelle Cemetery.

The exhibition on the suggestive terrace

The photographic exhibition takes place on the evocative terrace of the Extramoenia literary bar, within the Rione Sanità.

- shots are more than 20 and were selected by a rich archive created in the last 5 years and highlight the inner aspects of the photographer who wanted to deal with a mysterious and compassionate past. He always did it on tiptoe, as he himself declared, in an obsequious way in the presence of those souls often forgotten by the centuries.

The Councilor Alessandra Clemente, a member of the Unesco observatory and of the Culture Commission of the Municipality of Naples, also promoted her exhibition, who declared:

In Naples there is one thin line that unites and unites the Health District with the Historic Center, the central Corso Umberto with the Secondigliano of the past. The thin line is represented by the cult, which has survived since the past centuries, of the care of the Souls in Purgatory. From the Fontanelle Cemetery to the Basilica of San Pietro ad Aram, passing through the Catacombs of San Gaudioso, from the Hypogeum of Santa Maria del Purgatorio in Arco, to the small church of Santa Luciella ai Librai, reuniting the story of characters such as Donna Cuncetta, the skull that sweats delle Fontanelle or Lucia, the wife who died young and perhaps damned and buried in the hypogeum of the Purgatory in Arco in Via dei Tribunali. IS It is therefore necessary to enhance these sites, open them up and multiply job opportunities for the young people of these neighborhoods, through their involvement.

The Association and the promotion of the Fontanelle Cemetery

For several years the Association "Youth for the Neighborhood - Committee We reopen the Fontanelle Cemetery”Is responsible for promoting this unique site in the world, the Fontanelle Cemetery, through many initiatives. The photographic exhibition is only the latest in a journey that has also seen the involvement of the inhabitants of the neighborhood, especially of women former students of the Caracciolo Institute.

Who is the photographer Giancarlo De Luca

The photographer author of the shots of the exhibition “By grace received in the Fontanelle” is Giancarlo De Luca, who stood out for his always very deep and representative photographs of our city.

In 2018 he presented at the PAN in Naples, that is the Palazzo delle Arti, the exhibition “Ncòpp''o Pallonetto” in Santa Lucia. It was a photographic journey that told the Borgo di Santa Lucia, the oldest in the city, which is located at the foot of Mount Echia, on which the Cumans (Greeks) founded the first nucleus of Parthenope.

With this new exhibition, however, he wanted pay tribute to health, which is also the his neighborhood, and to the so-called so-called souls in Purgatory of the Fontanelle Cemetery pezzentelle souls, capuzzelle. He himself wanted to explain this new project in this way:

A journey beyond the world, a journey that began several years before the recent closure to the public of the Hypogeum and which longs to represent, through the images on display, the shadows of a past-present and the atavistic reflexes of culture and of the pagan and religious Neapolitan tradition of past times.

The Fontanelle Cemetery and the cult of pezzentelle souls

The place, known by the Neapolitans as 'and Funtanelle, It is one of the oldest cemeteries in Naples and is located right in via Fontanelle in the Rione Sanità.
In the city, before the XNUMXth century, it was customary to bury the bodies of the dead in churches, but at a certain point there was no space and it was necessary to dig up the oldest dead, by the so-called "psalters”And place them in large quarries, such as that of Fontanelle.

In 1654 this quarry became the Camposanto since in Naples there was an epidemic of plague that decimated the citizens. For this reason, the quarry was reopened and around 250 thousand corpses, more than half of the inhabitants of the time (about 400 thousand).

Subsequently there were other pandemics and famines, as well as earthquakes, popular revolts and five eruptions of Vesuvius, which caused many other deaths and the Fontanelle Cemetery was always used to house the bodies.

As almost everyone knows today, over the centuries the Cemetery has also become a place where the particular took place cult of "pezzentelle souls": the citizens "they adopted”A skull, called capuzzella, to which corresponded an abandoned soul (for this pezzentella) and they took care of it through prayer.

Information on the exhibition

When

vernissage June 16, 2022, single date

Where

at Extramoenia, via Arena alla Sanità 11 / D - Naples

Clockwise

by 19.00

Price

free, open to all

Contact us

giancarlo.del@libero.it | 3473892451 | Giancarlo De Luca Passion for Photo