The Museo Nazionale di San Martino, in Naples, contains an extraordinary mid-seventeenth-century picture painted by Domenico Gargiulo (Naples 1612–75), better known as Micco Spadaro. The context in which it was painted is largely obscure, but it can be surmised that this and a companion piece were done at the behest of the Spanish Regent, Stefano Carriglio, for the Court in Madrid; neither work ever left Naples. [1] Both depict central events in the history of Naples: the procession on 17 January 1631 to intercede for the end of an eruption of Vesuvius [2], and – by way of an eye-witness account – the popular uprising of 1647 in Naples, a spectacular occurrence that became known far beyond the borders of Italy. [3]

The scene takes place on the Piazza del Mercato, also known, after the votive Madonna kept in the Carmine church, as the Piazza del Carmine. The church can be seen in the middle ground on the right; in front of it is a chapel demolished in the eighteenth century, and to the right of the façade is the campanile that was added between 1456 and 1458. First built in the twelfth century, the church was enlarged between 1283 and 1300 thanks to a donation from Elizabeth of Bavaria. Elizabeth was the mother of Conradin of Swabia, who lies buried there. In 1268, Conradin became the first of many to be executed in the Piazza del Mercato (which was then extra moenia, outside the city walls). It remained the city's place of execution for centuries, the last persons hanged there being the Liberals of the Parthenopean Republic in 1799. Vesuvius, Monte Somma and parts of the Gulf of Naples can be seen in the background of the painting. The viewer's position corresponds to that of the church of Sant'Eligio, also built in the twelfth century, which stands on the western side of the Piazza.

The Piazza is filled with the insurrectionary masses. At several points the crowd parts, affording perspectival corridors and revealing a number of separate episodes that bring the Piazza to life and simultaneously relieve the anonymity of the throng – a compositional device clearly inspired by the example of Jacques Callot.

From the early sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, Naples was the second largest city in Europe (after Paris). By about 1650 it had more than 350,000 inhabitants. Naples was a capital city and a net consumer of resources; it never succeeded in making the vital changes necessary to increase the productivity of the local economy. This economic inflexibility, and the Spanish fiscal policy of the final phase of the Thirty Years' War, led to serious political and economic tensions. [4]

At this period, relations between the Spanish Crown and its possessions in Southern Italy were being severely tested. The huge war effort, the decline in imports of precious metals from the Americas, and the concurrent weakening of the financial and manpower resources of Castile, combined to afflict the government with a chronic shortage of money. Its demand that the provinces take a greatly increased share of the financial and military burden of the war was an infringement of their traditional local autonomy. Spain's continental war demanded a gradual centralization of power and the emergence of an absolutist system.

The strategic role of the Kingdom of Naples for Spain now underwent a change. It lost its function as an important Mediterranean base and acquired that of an economic reservoir. On 26 August 1636, Philip IV sent an express command to his Viceroy in Naples to extract as much as possible from the kingdom: 'Il vicerè procuri di saccare tutto il possibile di questo Regno.' [5]

The period of savage fiscal exactions between 1620 and 1647 was also, however, marked by a loss of authority on the part of the local organs of government. The increase in Neapolitan contributions went along with considerable political concessions to the local feudal nobility, which traditionally assented to and also regulated the raising of taxes for the Spanish Crown.

In the course of the two decades that preceded Masaniello's rising, four successive Viceroys – the Count of Monterey, the Duke of Medina, the Admiral of Castile and the Duke of Arcos – found themselves unable to perform their principal duty to the subjects of the Spanish crown, namely to administer justice. Their energies were principally devoted to the collection of money, which Madrid demanded in ever greater quantities; and the more money they scraped together the less they were able to stem the chaotic spread of lawlessness. Large sections of the nobility and clergy were able to place themelves above the law, and in many parts of the kingdom the Viceroy's writ ceased to run. Feudal magnates such as the Count of Conversato and the Duke of Maddaloni, backed by large retinues and extensive family networks, were able to oppress their vassals and abuse their power with impunity.

It was a well-known fact that the Kingdom of Naples was the reservoir from which Spain drew the resources to prosecute the war in its final stages; and this accounts for the degree of international political interest, especially on the part of France.

Reports from French agents, of whom there were many in Naples, unanimously told of a prevalent hostility to the Spanish government and a growing social and political tension. The situation, they said, was ripe for French intervention. There was, however, no agreement as to the best form for this intervention to take.

Cardinal Mazarin's assessment of the Neapolitan situation differed in one essential respect from that of Cardinal Gerolamo Grimaldi, one of the principal advocates of France's Italian policy, and from that of the French Ambassador, Fontenay-Mareuil. Both the latter wanted France to intervene directly to trigger the inevitable rising against Spain. Mazarin, however, feared that any such intervention might drive Naples closer to the Spanish government; he took the view that France should limit itself to encouraging and supporting such a rising.

In 1646, Mazarin concluded an agreement with Duke Tommaso Carignano di Savoia, whereby France promised assistance to the Savoyard prince if he were to secure the Crown of Naples. In return, France was to receive the city of Gaeta and an Adriatic port. In the same year, France mounted a military operation against the Spanish presidi in Tuscany. This plan, which Grimaldi had elaborated from a idea of Richelieu's, had three objectives: first, to disrupt communications between the Spanish possessions in Northern and in Southern Italy, and also between these and Madrid; second, to exert pressure on the Holy See, which had taken a pro-Spanish line under the new Pope Innocent X; and, third, to enforce a stricter neutrality on Tuscany. At the same time, Cardinal Grimaldi was at pains to nurture a pro-Savoyard party among the nobility.

This was the situation in Naples when, on 7 July 1647 – unconnected with the machinations of France – a revolt broke out under the leadership of Tommaso Aniello da Amalfi, known as Masaniello, a Neapolitan fisherman (born 6 June 1620). It was triggered by the refusal of the market traders to accept the newly introduced fruit tax, the Gabella. The episode that launched the rising is vividly described in a contemporary chronicle, Ragguaglio del tumulto di Napoli, published in Padua in 1648 by one Giraffi. [6]

The Republic of Naples was proclaimed on 22 October 1647. In April 1648 the rising was suppressed by Spanish forces under the command of John of Austria, and the civic rights that it had introduced were abolished.

No other event in the history of Southern Italy has enjoyed such a degree of European resonance, or has engraved itself so deeply in the historical memory, as has the rising in Naples in 1647, together with its leader, Masaniello. However, historical scholarship has yet to do justice to the importance of the subject. For the earliest adequate historical examination and presentation of the revolt, we must look to the study by Michelangelo Schipa (1918). [7] More recent work by Rosario Villari [8], Giuseppe Galasso [9] and Aurelio Musi [10], all writing in the 1960s and 1980s, draws a completely different picture of the 1647 revolt, in which it is no longer viewed as an urban jacquerie of purely local importance but within the context of European politics and of Neapolitan history as a whole. [11] At the same time, this rising emerges as a more complex phenomenon than previously supposed. In its earlier phases, other figures besides Masaniello gain in historical significance, notably Giulio Genoino, who had played a prominent role in the unrest of 1640. Masaniello himself did not last long. He was murdered on 16 July 1647, only nine days after the beginning of the revolt – allegedly because power had 'gone to his head'.

Only the second phase of the insurgency, after the murder of Masaniello, can be accurately described as an anti-Spanish revolt. The third phase lasted from October 1647, when the first Republic was proclaimed, until April 1648. Spadaro's painting is a representation of the first phase, when Masaniello was still in command. In 1647 Spadaro was working on frescoes in the Carthusian monastery of San Martino; he was therefore an eyewitness.

Spadaro's painting reflects the highly charged atmosphere of the rebellion, not only through its depiction of the cruelties incident to any violent uprising – arbitrary arrests, executions (top right) and looting (the laden cart entering the Piazza from bottom right) – but above all through its contrasts, as when it juxtaposes a scene of merrymaking (far right) with severed head carried aloft on a pike. This blend of celebration and death reflects the madness and the excesses of the first days of the revolt.

In the centre of the Piazza, the heads of those executed are displayed on the stone base of an unfinished monument. Their bodies lie at the foot of the podium. The monument had been commissioned by Masaniello from Cosimo Fanzago; it was never completed. The four sides of the base were to depict the concessions that the Viceroy, the Duke of Arcos, had granted to the Neapolitan people, and the monument was to have been crowned by statues of Philip IV, Arcos and Cardinal Filomarino. [12] It was destroyed after John of Austria occupied the city. Alongside it, on a stake rammed into the ground, the naked and mutilated body of a man hangs upside-down; its head and right foot are missing (fig. 2).

Alongside the individual episodes, the painting reveals an underlying narrative sequence. This begins in the background at top left with the figure of Masaniello, poorly dressed and barefoot, standing on a dais and addressing a group of people. Masaniello is seen again in the centre foreground, mounted on a rearing horse, in a pose that suggests a portrait of a military commander. This is clearly intended to indicate Masaniello's rise from agitator to leader of the rising.

The hanging corpse in the middle ground intervenes between the two images of Masaniello. In formal terms, it occupies the centre of the painting. This position makes the corpse, which seems to hang above the Piazza like a flag, into something more than a symbol of the cruelties of the time. It is, in fact, the key to the entire composition. The severed foot identifies it as the body of Don Giuseppe Carafa, who was murdered, and whose head and right foot were cut off, on 10 July 1647. For his presentation of the revolt, Spadaro has chosen the events of 10 July: a choice for which there are solid grounds.

During the first days of the rising, the Viceroy entrusted the two brothers Diomede and Giuseppe Carafa with the task of negotiating with the rebels. He chose them for two reasons: because the power of the Carafa family was likely to intimidate the rebels, and because the independent stance of the Carafa brothers would lend them the requisite credibility with the Spanish government. All this was quite wrong; clearly, the Viceroy had totally failed to understand the nature of the rebellion. The rising had begun with a cry of long life to the King of Spain and death to misgovernment: 'Viva il re di Spagna e muoia il Malgoverno!' [13] It was not directed against the Spanish Crown but against the administration that represented it in Naples.

I began by trying to define the causes of the crumbling of the administrative apparatus, which led to the spread of an unexampled degree of corruption: a corruption that made it possible to exploit political and bureaucratic power for private ends. [14] The rebels directed their protest against those abuses, and in particular against the powerful families, such as the Carafa and the Maddaloni, which had exploited the crisis of the Spanish monarchy to strengthen their own influence.

The condition of Naples in the 1640s of course requires to be seen in the context of the levies or asistencias exacted by the Spanish monarchy in order to finance the war; but this was only the most obvious of the causes of the revolt. Despite constant tensions and sporadic acts of rebellion, the baronaggio remained loyal to the Spanish monarchy. Only a few Neapolitan nobles fell prey to the separatist fever that held sway in the other Spanish possessions. This explains the failure of the French intrigues of 1646–48. Power relationships in Naples, as outlined here, also explain the emergence of a myth of kingship. People hoped for intervention from on high; the justice on which they founded their expectations was powerful, but it was remote.

The Viceroy was aware of the local situation. He knew, for instance, that some of the barons – including the Duke of Maddaloni – 'maintained sundry companies of bandits, with which they kept the countryside in a constant state of unrest, and many crimes were committed by the said bandits, who were under the protection of the said lords'. [15] In 1636 the then Viceroy, Monterey, had tried to bring this situation under control, at a time when banditry still fell far short of the dramatic situation that prevailed in 1647. He promulgated an edict, a Prammatica, but the protests of the feudal nobles forced his successor as Viceroy, Medina, to revoke it. [16]

The 1647 rebellion was thus much more than a chance protest against a new fruit tax.. When Diomede Carafa entered the Piazza Mercato to read the Viceregal proclamation of the removal of the new tax, he was greeted with the accusation that he was a traitor to his country. After this, the Viceroy and Carafa decided upon two separate strategies for dealing with the insurgents. In order to gain time for the arrival of warships from Spain, the Viceroy made himself constantly available for negotiations. Carafa took a harder line and organized an attack on the insurgents and their leaders.

The agreement between the Viceroy and the insurgents was signed on the night of 9–10 July, and the captains of the militias were summoned to meet in the Carmine church on the afternoon of 10 July in order to hear the agreement publicly read over. Carafa's plan was first to murder Masaniello, who was one of the most vocal leaders of the rising, and then to kill all the other leaders in the Carmine and on the Piazza Mercato. To this end, the Duke of Maddaloni brought in his private army.

The attempt to murder Masaniello failed, and the whole plot collapsed. Cardinal Filomarino, Bishop of Naples, who was present at the meeting, described in a letter to the Pope how barrels of gunpowder had been found in the sewers beneath the cloisters of the Carmine. [17] The people at once set out to hunt down the Carafa brothers and the banditti whom Maddaloni had smuggled into Naples. Many banditti were caught and beheaded, not least because the Church authorities had ordered them to be denied sanctuary in the churches. On 12 July the Viceroy himself gave support by issuing an edict that forbade any person to shelter the banditti on pain of death.

For the first time, the power of the nobility and of its banditti had been seriously challenged. The unsteady political resolve of the Viceroys had been supplanted by the anger of the people. Masaniello became the king of the uprising. The failed attempt on his life gave him an authority and a popularity that he had certainly not enjoyed in the first few days of the rebellion. The Carafa brothers tried to make good their escape, but only Don Diomede succeeded. Don Giuseppe was caught, and his head and right foot were cut off and placed on show for several days thereafter. [18]

Spadaro's painting is a synopsis of the first few days of the rebellion: it lacks only an epilogue to show the murder of Masaniello. But perhaps there is a hint of this in the equestrian figure of Masaniello himself: for before his murder it was said that he had been corrupted by power and had lost his reason. What Spadaro celebrates is the success achieved by the insurgents against the baronaggio and against the consequences of misgovernment. His work is therefore far more than an eyewitness report: it is the artist's reflection on the rebellion, a posteriori. Though the Republic soon collapsed, Masaniello had one success to his credit: the people had successfully risen against the prevailing abuses. When he died, he became a hero and a symbol for ever.

After 152 years had passed, and shortly before the outbreak of the 1799 revolution, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel wrote an article in the Monitore Neapolitano in which she voiced an urgent plea for a new Masaniello. To lay the fisherman's ghost for ever, King Ferdinand ordered a clandestine operation to scatter his bones and destroy the tomb that had stood since his murder in the church of the Carmine. Today, anyone who enters the church can read the following inscription on the right-hand pilaster of what is now the Chapel of San Siro:

FOOTNOTES