Elsien's Traveblogue

Naples 6th June 2010
Santa Anna, San Gennario, San Paolo, Sant' Angelo, Santa Chiara and Gesu himself ... just a few of the churches I've seen in Naples. I said there were more churches in Naples than in Rome, didn't I? I started early, because it looked like it was going to be a hot day (it was, too!) and I wanted to get to the church with my next Caravaggio in before the groups got there. It wasn't in one of the Saints' churches and I did get beaten to it by a Freench group with tourguide, but they left after a few minutes and left me the church all to myself. This painting was bigger than yesterday's, not as well cleaned and displayed, butb still with pride of place in the little chapel. It's the Seven Acts of Mercy and I haven't found out what they are yet, except for the best-known one, Charity, represented by a young woman who breastfeeds her old father through the bars of a prison .... \Well, yes .... It's a fantastic painting though, with a beautiful flowing composition, luminous flesh tones and remarkable faces, most dimly lit from below. I wonder what would come out if the brownish tints were properly cleaned ...
All my churches were in the Old City, which is lovely, full of crumbling old buildings, little shops, cute little squares and, of course, dozens of churches. I was pretty tired of churches and art by mid-day though, having seen all kinds of wonders, from Gothic, 14th century frescoes, Renaissance paintings and sculpture, a Vasari ceiling – so far I've liked this one the best of all the Vasari stuff I've seen; he's not the greatest of painters - and lots of Baroque. I went to back to my little appartment for lunch and snoozed on the roof terrace on a deckchair for a bit. Then it got a bit cloudy so I did some work on my current art history module, reading about Louise Bourgeois, who died a few days ago. (How creepy is this: I Googled her up, found she was born in 1911, thought I'd do my next assignment on her as she might well die and there'd be lots of articles, flipped back to Google'd results and found a Reuter's headline saying she'd died, posted 5 minutes ago.....)
Finally went for a long stroll along the Bay of Naples and saw Vesuvius and Capri, although it had got hazy again. There isn't a real beach, just huge white blocks of granite, but there were some semi-dressed people stretched out on them, mainly Eastern European, judging from the languages I heard around me. The Italians did what I was doing: strolled, although a lot more were strolling in the shopping streets: they were as packed as any shopping street in China on a Saturday ...