entry June 2007
The Return of Parthenope
For many years, the most prominent statue of
the mythological siren, Parthenope, the icon of the city of
Naples, was Partenope fra i Geni della
Commedia e della Tragedia (Parthenope between the
Spirits of Comedy and Tragedy). The sculpture was set
atop the façade of the San Carlo
Theater in long-ago 1816 when the opera house was
rebuilt after a disastrous fire. The original design of
the sculpture was by Antonio Niccolini (1772-1850), a
Florentine architect and designer who spent most of his
life in Naples working for the Bourbon
dynasty that ruled the kingdom. Not only was he
responsible for the entire remake of San Carlo (and a
subsequent interior remake in the 1840s), he also
designed the completion of the grand palace at Capodimonte and rebuilt the
large villa known as the Floridiana, now a
public park. He was also the director of the Academy of Fine Arts and a
school for stage design.*
Niccolini’s Parthenope lasted for many decades and
even survived WWII
air-raids that damaged the theater, itself; yet,
in 1969 a calamitous lightning strike virtually
destroyed the original work. A two-year restoration is
now complete and in a few days, Parthenope
will be returned to her place. As of this writing,
finishing touches are being put on the sculpture in the
parking lot outside the theater before it is hoisted
into place.
The restoration is the result of collaboration
between the Mario Brancaccio Cultural Association and
Vodafone Italia, the cell-phone company. The funding
came largely through an ingenious fund-raising project;
you sent an SMS message to Vodaphone to donate one euro
to the project and purchase, at the same time, a fine
ring-tone for your cell phone recorded by the San Carlo
opera orchestra. A similar project a few years ago
helped restore the famous lion
sculptures at Piazza dei Martiri. (Now that I
think of it, I have indeed noticed fewer
pin-ball-machine-like rings going off in the buses these
days. I remember saying to myself: “Hmmmm. Not bad. I
wonder where he got that.”
* Details
on the
life of Niccolini are from Isabella di Resta: "Niccolini,
Antonio" Grove Art Online.
Oxford University Press, [date accessed: June 7,
2007].
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