申し訳ありません。このコンテンツはただ今、英語のみとなります。 For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Travellers, artists and glimpses at the birth of an epos: the exhibition on the isola azzurra

Is it really our gaze that makes a place beautiful? Mount Fuji and Vesuvius, for example, do not depend on a painting or an observer to carry their own magnificence, nor does their existence require anyone to perceive it. A landscape or a city, however, are not simply what lies before our eyes; rather, it is also the sum of the acts of observation and interpretation that have come before us - gazes that have imagined and observed it in our behalf, through paintings, stories, photographs, desires...

It is specifically in this transition that myths take shape, because a place, even before being understood as a physical space, is first and foremost a cultural construct. Its geography is shaped by matter, but its identity is shaped by memories: all the stories that have taken shape within it, all the images that have depicted it, all the people who have lived there, all the travellers who have longed for it, and all the reminiscences that have been deposited there over time, in a continuous layering of presences and absences, of individual experiences and collective recollections...

Through this process, certain landscapes, towns and monuments cease to be mere territorial elements and begin to circulate with fervour in the collective imagination, becoming - in some cases - tourist attractions: this can be seen in Japan’s pictures of ‘famous places’ (meisho-e), with Taormina and Goethe’s Italian Journey, or again with Saint-Tropez and the works of Paul Signac and Brigitte Bardot... The island of Capri in Italy emblematically illustrates this process: this ‘pearl of the Mediterranean’, where today famous figures from the beau monde celebrate la dolce vita in the shade of the glittering windows of luxury shops and flower-filled Mediterranean pergolas, was in earlier centuries only seen as ‘an island good for nothing and famous only for having been the residence of Tiberius’, according to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, or even ‘a cliff for the desperates’, in the ominous words of the Jesuit Daniello Bartoli in the 17th century. The question therefore arises: what processes can transform a place from a peripherical, rugged and inhospitable territory into a destination of beauty and desire?

Capri is now recounting this transformation through a major exhibition at the Certosa di San Giacomo, The Myth of Capri. Two Hundred Years since the Discovery of the Blue Grotto (1826–2026). The turning point in the island’s history was, in fact, the rediscovery of the Blue Grotto in 1826 by August Kopisch, a leading figure of German Romanticism. This event marked in fact a decisive turning point in Capri’s international renown, and set in motion an extraordinary process of cultural development, attracting artists, writers and travellers from all across the world...

But how can a place enter the collective imagination, ultimately becoming a myth and a destination for tourism? Its image can indeed be shaped and reinforced through multiple forms of representation. Among these, particularly in the case of Capri, archaeology certainly plays a key role: the island, which had already served as an imperial residence in Roman times, experienced a major phase of archaeological exploration in the 18th century, coinciding with a growing fascination with Classical antiquity through the rise of Neoclassicism.

Figure 1 Head of Germanicus

Above all, Villa Jovis was the focus of these archaeological campaigns. This monumental complex, from which Emperor Tiberius governed the affairs of the Roman Empire during the final decade of his life in the 1st century AD, was systematically excavated from the first half of the 19th century onward, thanks to the efforts of the archaeologist Giuseppe Feola and the Bourbon dynasty.

Figure 2 Relazione storica dell'antichità, rovine e residui di Capri

Not only did this contribute to a deeper appreciation of the island’s historical heritage, but it also fostered a fascination with antiquity that would profoundly shape Capri’s physiognomy. Archaeology became, in this way, a privileged, highly cultured and erudite lens through which the island and its landscape could be interpreted and understood.

Figure 3 Head of Ulysses

Literature, alongside archaeology, likewise is a powerful means of constructing and narrating the identity of places. It was against this backdrop that the ‘rediscovery’ of the Grotta Azzurra took place: a karst cave in which sunlight, filtering through a submerged opening, is refracted through the water, bathing the interior in an intense, almost otherworldly blue.

Figure 4 François Vervloet, La Grotta Azzurra

Despite its evocative charm, which had even led Tiberius to choose it as a maritime nymphaeum, the cave remained unexplored for centuries, as legends claimed it was ravaged by witches, devils, and evil spirits. It was precisely this mysterious, almost supernatural dimension, rather than its cultural or archaeological significance – Romanticism against Neoclassicism - that captured the imagination of the German poet August Kopisch. In the company of his friend Ernst Fries, the boatman Angelo Ferraro, and the innkeeper Pagano, Kopisch ventured into the cave in 1826. Deeply moved by the experience, the poet helped consign to the collective imagination that extraordinary space suspended between rock, light, and sea, recounting his experience in Entdeckung der blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri, published in 1838. Rather than a discovery in the strict sense, this episode represented the cultural reawakening of a place destined to become one of the defining symbols of the Capri, which entered the geography of the imagination, becoming a place to see, remember, and long for.

Figure 5 Hermann David Salomon Corrodi, Un pescatore e sirene nella Grotta Azzurra a Capri

After archaeology and literature, it was ultimately painting that cemented Capri’s place in myth. Whilst, until the early nineteenth century, Capri appeared in paintings chiefly as a distant silhouette - a neutral backdrop to the Gulf of Naples rather than a subject in its own right - from the Romantic era onwards Capri attracted the attention of a growing number of painters: Jakob Philipp Hackert, with his landscape painting characterised by a stark analytical and documentary zeal; Giacinto Gigante and in general the School of Posillipo, with their romantic observation of Nature characterised by a vivid attention to the interplay of light and colour; Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with his sumptuous, almost fin de siècle reconstructions of the Classical world; and, above all, the English Pre-Raphaelites, in particular Charles Coleman, who not only immortalised the picturesque and classically rooted dimension of traditional Capri life, but also, at his Villa Narcissus, hosted and introduced numerous other international artists to Capri, fostering the formation of a veritable ‘foreign colony’ on the island.

Figure 6 Charles Coleman, Danzatrici

Figure 7 Charles Coleman, Narcissus

The exhibition draws to its conclusion exactly where the myth of Capri first took its root: in the act of the gaze. Every artist, traveller and writer had, in fact, helped to imbue the image of Capri with new meanings, selecting its views, memories, atmospheres and figures to build up a repertoire that still remains recognisable to this day - of which the Blue Grotto is perhaps one of the most eloquent symbols. Two hundred years on from Kopisch’s journey, the exhibition therefore invites us to reflect not only on what we see, but also on the gazes, images and narratives that, over time, have shaped the way we perceive our world.

Figura 8 View from the Charterhouse of St. Giacomo, where the exhibition takes place