In Search of Isabella di Morra with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Isabella di Morra: The Poetess in the Tower

High above the Sinni Valley, on a rocky spur in Basilicata, stands the castle of Valsinni, its walls thick, its windows narrow, its towers looking outward across a landscape both beautiful and isolating. In the sixteenth century, the fortress was home to Isabella di Morra.

Born into a noble family around 1520, Isabella spent much of her life confined within those stone walls. Her father, a baron allied with the French during the turbulent wars between France and Spain, fled into exile. The castle fell under the authority of her brothers, men said to be stern and suspicious. From within her enforced seclusion, Isabella wrote poetry: verses of isolation, longing, resentment, and a profound sense of imprisonment.

Alleged portrait of Isabella di Morra

She wrote of the “horrid valley” that enclosed her and of a fate she could not escape. In a world of arranged marriages and rigid honor codes, her voice was strikingly personal and dangerous.

At some point in the 1540s, Isabella began corresponding with a Spanish nobleman, Diego Sandoval de Castro, a married poet and official. Whether the exchange was romantic or literary remains debated. What is certain is that her brothers discovered it and killed her in the name of family honor. Sandoval was later ambushed and slain. The castle became the scene of blood, and Isabella’s brief life ended within the same walls that had confined her youth.

Centuries later, scholars rediscovered her work, recognizing in it one of the most original female voices of the Italian Renaissance.

Yet in Valsinni, another tradition endured. It is said that Isabella never left. On certain evenings, when the valley falls silent, a solitary figure appears along the battlements, gazing toward the horizon she once cursed.

Visitors to the castle speak of a presence in the tower rooms. Of sudden drafts in enclosed chambers and footsteps echoing where no one walks. Some claim to hear faint recitations rising from the stone, and lines of lament carried on the wind.

Was Isabella di Morra merely a tragic poet silenced by the violence of her age?

Or does the weight of injustice linger in the stones of Valsinni Castle?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

The Island of the Dead

Island of the Dead, 1880, oil on wood, Arnold Böcklin

“You will be mourned by myself, and others you will mourn, and by your presence, you will signal grief.”  — Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X

Whenever I visit Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I find myself completely absorbed by it. There is something strangely irresistible about the painting that makes it difficult to glance at and simply move on. The longer I stand before it, the more the surrounding gallery seems to recede, leaving me at the water’s edge, watching the funeral barge make its solemn approach.

A tiny, desolate island rises abruptly from dark, glassy waters, its pale cliffs enclosing a dense grove of towering cypress trees, symbols of death and mourning since antiquity.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the young Cyparissus, inconsolable after accidentally killing his beloved stag, begs the gods to allow him to mourn forever. Transformed into a cypress tree, the youth is destined to stand wherever others grieve.

Böcklin’s cypresses stand almost like a wall, concealing whatever lies at the island’s heart. Tomb-like openings have been hewn into the rock itself, as though the whole island were an immense sepulchre.

Across the still water, a small boat approaches the narrow inlet, guided by a solitary oarsman. Before him stands a mysterious figure shrouded in white, beside a festooned coffin. We do not know who has died, who accompanies the dead, or what awaits them within.

Perhaps this is why Island of the Dead remains so haunting. Böcklin does not attempt to show us what lies beyond death. He brings us only to its entrance and leaves us there, watching the ferry disappear beneath the cypresses.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 14th, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross 

In Search of Circe and Scylla with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Circe, Glaucus, and Scylla: The Curse of the Strait

Long before maps charted every current of the Mediterranean, sailors feared the narrow strait between Calabria and Sicily. There, they believed, an ancient curse haunted the waters.

According to legend, Scylla was not born a monster. She was a beautiful sea nymph, admired for her ethereal grace and sought after by many suitors. Among those who loved her was Glaucus, a Boeotian fisherman transformed into a prophetic sea god after tasting a mysterious herb.

Circe Invidiosa, 1892,
John William Waterhouse

Scylla did not return Glaucus’ affection, and in his despair he sought the aid of the enchantress Circe, whose island was said to lie somewhere in the western seas. Renowned for her mastery of potions, enchantments, and forbidden arts, Circe possessed the power to reshape the human form.

But the sorceress herself fell in love with Glaucus.

When Glaucus rejected her advances, refusing to abandon his devotion to Scylla, jealousy overcame reason. Circe poured an enchanted draught into the pool where Scylla bathed.

As the nymph entered the water, her body began to change. From her waist sprang the heads of ravenous dogs, snarling and snapping without end. The maiden disappeared, and in her place stood a terrifying creature driven by endless hunger.

Ovid recounts the transformation in his Metamorphoses, preserving one of antiquity’s most haunting tales of love, envy, and revenge.

Later tradition placed Scylla upon the rocky shores of Calabria overlooking the Strait of Messina, forever facing Charybdis, the monstrous whirlpool that churned off the opposite coast. Between them, ships were forced to choose the lesser danger.

For ages, seafarers navigating the strait saw not merely dangerous waters, but the lingering shadow of an old tale.

The natural hazards of the Strait of Messina almost certainly helped give rise to the myth. Its unpredictable currents and treacherous waters inspired the enduring expression “between Scylla and Charybdis.” Like the modern phrase “between a rock and a hard place,” it came to describe any situation in which every choice carries peril.

Was Scylla merely a poetic explanation for the violent waters that threatened ancient mariners? Or did the Greeks preserve through myth the memory of a place where the natural world seemed to yield to enchantment?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his young bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, beyond reason. Unable to accept her death, he turned to forbidden books and desperate learning, seeking to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

Drawn to the Sphinx

Aeolipile (steam blower), South German, Augsburg, or Bohemian, Prague (Czech Republic), ca. 1590-1600, bronze with dark patina, silver

After re-visiting the Della Robbia exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I first meandered through the nearby Northern Renaissance Gallery, then found myself among the antiquities of Greece and Rome. Along the way, I was drawn again and again to the figures of the Sphinx.

Winged, beautiful, and deadly, the offspring of Orthus and the Chimera (or, in some traditions, of Typhon and Echidna) belongs to that shadowy realm where beauty and terror become inseparable. An enigmatic creature of ancient Hellas, her riddle meant revelation or death. It is little wonder that artists and poets found her irresistible.

As I wandered through the museum halls, it felt as if I were passing through a dream where sacred mysteries, strange creatures, and intimations of death converged. The Sphinx seemed perfectly at home there, silently guarding the threshold between beauty and oblivion.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, August 30th, Feast of Santa Rosa da Lima, the Holy Martyrs of Salerno, and San Fiacrio

Intended to be filled partway with water through an opening in the sphinx's headpiece and then heated, this mysterious vessel releases pressurized steam through a pin-sized hole between her lips. If blown over glowing coals, the steam can create a flammable gas composed of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, so that the sculpture appears to spit fire just like the mythological sphinx

Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, Greek, Attic, ca. 530 B.C.

Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl, Greek, Attic, ca. 530 B.C. Inscribed on the base: To the dead Philo and Me [...] the father erected (this) monument, and together the dear mother...

Limestone Sphinx, Greek, Attic, ca. 550-525 B.C.

(L) Marble sphinx on a cavetto capital, Greek, Attic, ca. 580-575 B.C.
Inscribed on the plinth: I am the monument of [ ]linos.
(R) Sphinx stand, Greek, Attic, red-figure, ca. 520 B.C.

Nenfro statue of a winged lion, Etruscan, ca. 550 B.C.

Several statues of this type, made from nenfro, a kind of volcanic stone used
extensively at Vulci, depict winged lions and sphinxes. These were set up to
protect the entrances to subterranean chamber tombs covered by a tumulus
(earthen mound). They often appear in pairs and represent the Etruscan
response to a long tradition of guardian figures stretching back to
ancient Egypt and the Near East

The Tears of St. Lawrence

San Lorenzo, ora pro nobis

Unable to sleep, last night I crept into the backyard with a glass of absinthe and looked toward the heavens. The Perseid meteor shower was nearing its peak, and the new moon promised unusually favorable conditions. I had already gone searching for them on August 10th, La Notte di San Lorenzo, the Night of St. Lawrence, but the weather was less accommodating. Pontarlier in hand, I waited in the darkness in the vain hope of catching even a fleeting streak of light across the summer sky.

In Catholic tradition, the Perseids are known as Le Lacrime di San Lorenzo, the Tears of St. Lawrence, their falling light recalling the tears shed for the martyred deacon. Another tradition sees in their fiery descent the glowing embers of the flames upon which he was roasted.

Though no celestial fire revealed itself to me that night, I made my annual wish beneath the obscured heavens, trusting the old custom even without a shooting star to carry it.

Whether I saw them seemed almost beside the point. Simply keeping vigil beneath the firmament, meditating on the martyr whose blazing embers return to us every August, was enough. Somewhere beyond my sight, the Tears of St. Lawrence were falling. Evviva San Lorenzo!

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, August 13th, Feast of Sant’Ippolito Martire

In Search of Leucàsia with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Leucàsia: The White Siren of the Southern Sea

At the southernmost tip of Apulia, where the Ionian and Adriatic seas meet amid striking white cliffs, sailors have long spoken of a beautiful maiden whose song could sway both hearts and storms.

They called her Leucàsia.

According to legend, Leucàsia was a siren whose beauty rivaled her voice. She fell in love with a young shepherd named Melisso, but his heart belonged to another maiden, Aristula. Enraged by his rejection, Leucàsia unleashed furious winds and crashing waves upon the lovers as they embraced along the shore.

The Siren by John William Waterhouse

Choosing death over separation, they clung to one another as the storm-tossed sea engulfed them.

Moved by their tragic devotion, the goddess Minerva transformed the lovers into two rocky headlands, forever facing one another across the bay. Wracked with guilt, Leucàsia turned to stone and was said to have given her name to Leuca, now the town of Santa Maria di Leuca. Today, those headlands are known as Punta Ristola and Punta Meliso.

Some scholars see in Leucàsia another expression of the ancient siren traditions that once echoed throughout Magna Graecia. Others believe the legend arose later, shaped by the dramatic landscape itself as a poetic explanation for the lonely rocks and restless waters where two seas converge.

For generations, fishermen claimed that the wind sometimes carried a woman’s voice across the cliffs at dusk. Others insisted that pale shapes could be seen upon the rocks before storms rolled in from the horizon.

Whether born of imagination, echoing waves, or shifting light upon white limestone, the legend became part of the landscape itself.

Was Leucàsia merely a local legend woven around the rugged coast of Southern Italy?

Or did the ancient Greeks preserve, through myth, the memory of a place where the sea itself seems to sing?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his young bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, beyond reason. Unable to accept her death, he turned to forbidden books and desperate learning, seeking to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

The Sphinx

A Sphinx from Villa San Michele, Capri

The enduring image of the sphinx has long stirred the imagination, appearing in the haunting works of artists such as Gustave Moreau, Félicien Rops, and Franz von Stuck. Yet my own fascination with this ancient guardian was rekindled years ago during a visit to Villa San Michele on the island of Capri, where two silent sphinxes keep their timeless vigil above the Bay of Naples. The poem that follows is inspired by that memory and by the ancient symbolism of the sphinx as a guardian of mystery, a sentinel at the threshold between the known and the unknowable. ~ Giovanni di Napoli

The Sphinx

Long before kingdoms
Were swallowed by the desert,
Before temples became ruins
And the names of kings dissolved into dust,
The Sphinx stood watch.

She still waits,
In her fatal beauty,
At the threshold—
Between wisdom and folly,
Between life and death,
Between what may be known
And what must remain forever hidden.

For some mysteries
Were placed before mankind,
Not to yield their secrets,
But to teach humility
To those who dare
To meet the eyes
Of eternity.

The Forge Beneath Etna

The Forge of Vulcan, ca. 1660, Luca Giordano

Beneath Etna’s ancient slopes
Burned the hidden forge of
    Hephaestus,
Divine smith of gods and
    heroes,
Where bronze-skinned
    Cyclopes
Toiled without end.

Amid rivers of living fire
And showers of blazing sparks,
The weapons of heaven were
    wrought
Upon anvils older than time.

Each trembling of the
    mountain,
The ringing of immortal
    hammers;
Each torrent of flame,
The breath of the eternal
    furnace
Breaking forth into the
    world of men.

The Timeless Rhythms of the Heavens

A European (skull) mount of a buck,
 recalling the Buck Moon and the
ancient symbolism of renewal

Udremo a notte le sue lunghe muggia, udremo la voce sua di toro;
sorgerà il grido della sua lussuria
udremo nei silenzi della luna.

At night we will hear his long bellows, we will hear his voice like a bull’s;
the cry of his lust will rise;
we will hear it in the silences of the moon.
~ Gabriele D’Annunzio, Il Cervo

July has always seemed to me the most haunted month of summer. The sun still reigns over the earth by day, but the nights grow deeper and more mysterious, as though the heavens themselves were preparing for autumn’s long descent into darkness.

The month has already offered several wonders. On July 11th, Mars appeared beside the waning Moon and the ancient stars of the Pleiades in the predawn sky, an austere conjunction that recalled the firmament's timeless order. A few evenings later, on July 16th and 17th, brilliant Venus drew close to the slender crescent Moon in the western sky, creating one of the month’s most beautiful pairings before slipping back into the gathering darkness.

Yet some of July’s greatest mysteries still lie ahead.

Between the nights of July 28th and 30th, the Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower will send ghostly streaks of light across the southern sky. Less brilliant than the famous Perseids, these meteors possess a gentler beauty, appearing like silent embers cast from some unseen celestial fire.

Then, on the night of July 29th, the full Buck Moon will rise.

Named for the season when the stag regrows his antlers, the Buck Moon has long been associated with strength, renewal, and the untamed wilderness. Other traditions know it as the Thunder Moon, the Hay Moon, or the Mead Moon, preserving memories of storms, harvests, and ancient midsummer feasts.

For Christians, the symbolism runs even deeper. The moon has long represented the Blessed Virgin Mary, reflecting not her own light but that of her Divine Son. The stag likewise recalls Christ, who tramples the serpent beneath His feet and leads the faithful toward the sacred waters of eternal life. The annual shedding and renewal of the stag’s antlers has long served as an allegory of resurrection and new life.

As the month draws toward its close, keep watch upon the night sky. Watch for the silent fall of meteors, and when the Buck Moon rises above the horizon, remember the poets who found voices in its silence.

Luna d’argiento, lass’ ’o sunnà,
vaselo ’nfronte, nun ’o sceta…

Silver moon, let him dream,
kiss his brow, do not wake him…
~ Salvatore Di Giacomo, Luna Nova

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, July 27th, Feast of San Pantaleone

Graziella

Graziella, 1879, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre

Graziella gave her heart to a young stranger from a distant land.
While mending her grandfather’s net beneath the shadow of Vesuvius,
Their love blossomed beside the sea.
Yet fate proved stronger than youthful devotion,
And the day came when her beloved was compelled to depart.
Left alone upon the shore, she waited in hope and sorrow,
Her gaze fixed upon the horizon that would never return him.
At last, hope yielded to grief,
And she withered like a flower upon the Siren’s Bay

The Southern Italian Origins of the Vita Eremitica

The Ascension of Mary Magdalene, by
Tilman Riemenschneider (1460–1531)

Among the many traditions surrounding St. Mary Magdalene, few are as intriguing as her vita eremitica, the belief that she spent the final years of her life as a hermit devoted to prayer, fasting, and contemplation.

Although the New Testament says nothing about her life after the Resurrection, an anonymous medieval work known as the Vita eremitica Beatae Mariae Magdalenae profoundly shaped the image of the Magdalene as one of Christianity’s great contemplatives. Modern scholars believe this text was composed in the early ninth century in the monasteries of Southern Italy, where Greek and Latin monastic traditions converged in a remarkable synthesis that left an enduring mark on medieval Christian culture. Drawing heavily upon the Life of St. Mary of Egypt, it presents Mary Magdalene not simply as the first witness of the Resurrection, but as a woman transformed through solitude, asceticism, and union with the Godhead.

Its influence was immense. Many of its themes were later reflected in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, while its portrayal of Mary Magdalene as the long-haired penitent who retreated to the wilds of Provence inspired generations of medieval and Renaissance artists.

As the legend spread across medieval Europe, it took on new forms. In Provence, Mary Magdalene came to be associated with the cave of Sainte-Baume, where she was believed to have lived as a hermit. In the Italian Alps, she appears in folklore as the Magdalena Selvadega, the “Wild Magdalene.” Naked, clothed only by her long hair, and living apart from society, she became a mysterious figure of forests and mountains, preserving echoes of the vita eremitica while absorbing elements of local folklore.

Devotion to Mary Magdalene found renewed favor in Southern Italy under the Angevin dynasty, whose close ties to Provence, one of the principal centers of her medieval cult, helped foster devotion to the saint throughout the Kingdom of Naples. Thus, a tradition first shaped in the monasteries of the Mezzogiorno continued to flourish under Angevin patronage, reinforcing the dynasty’s prestige and legitimacy.

Though far removed from the biblical narrative, these traditions testify to the enduring fascination with Mary Magdalene as the saint who left the world behind in search of God. They also illustrate that one of the most influential chapters in her medieval legend was first written in Southern Italy, long a crossroads of the Byzantine East and Latin West.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, July 15th, Feast of Santa Rosalia

Pygmalion and Galatea

Pygmalion and Galatea, ca. 1890, Jean-Léon Gérôme

Pygmalion, a sculptor of rare genius,
Devoted himself to the pursuit of perfect beauty.
From ivory he fashioned a maiden
So flawless that he came to love the work of his own hands.
Day after day he adorned the silent figure,
Speaking to her as though life already stirred beneath her pale surface.
Moved by such devotion, foam-born Aphrodite heard his prayer,
And beneath his touch the statue awakened,
Cold ivory yielding at last to living flesh.

Controra: When Midday Falls Silent

Phoebus Apollo, beneath the blistering sun at Pompeii

As the summer sun bears down with its full fury, I find myself doing what generations of my ancestors from the Mezzogiorno—the Land of the Midday Sun—have done before me: stepping indoors, slowing my pace, and taking a breather.

There is a peculiar hour when the sun is at its zenith, the streets stand empty, the shutters are closed, and even the cicadas seem to dream. This is the controra.

Our forebears called it the Hour of the Spirits. Many believed that, beneath the crushing noontide sun, the souls of the departed and strange meridian demons wandered the silent roads. Children were warned to remain indoors—not only to escape the dangerous heat, but to avoid whatever unseen things lurked in the shimmering stillness.

More than folklore, the controra is also an act of resistance. In a civilization increasingly ruled by haste, productivity, and chrono-capitalism, these still hours remind us that not every moment exists to be exploited. There is dignity in pausing, in daydreaming, in reflection, and in simply being.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that meridionale—“southerner”—derives from the Latin meridies, meaning both “noon” and “south.” To belong to the South has always meant living by the sun, accepting its rhythms, and knowing that, for one mysterious hour each day, the world itself seems to hold its breath.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, July 5th, Feast of Sant’Antonio Maria Zaccaria

Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus and Eurydice, 1893, Auguste Rodin

When Eurydice,
The beloved bride of the
      poet-bard Orpheus,
Was claimed by death
He descended into the shadowed
       realm beneath the earth,
Carrying only his lyre and his
      undying love.

So moving was his lament
That even the rulers of the
      dead relented,
Granting Eurydice’s return
      upon one condition:
He must not look upon her
Until both had emerged from
      the kingdom of shades.

Yet at the threshold
Between darkness and light,
Doubt overcame faith.
Orpheus turned, and in that
      fatal instant
Eurydice vanished once more
      into the depths of Hades.

In Search of the Devil’s Bridge with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

The Medieval Aqueduct of Salerno: The Devil’s Bridge

In the historic center of Salerno, rising unexpectedly between narrow streets and weathered facades, stand a series of dark stone arches.

They call it the Devil’s Bridge.

Constructed in the ninth century, the aqueduct once carried water to the Monastery of San Benedetto. Built during the Lombard period, its pointed arches cut sharply against the southern sky, a geometry at once practical and severe. For centuries it served the city quietly.

Local legend insists the aqueduct was not built by human hands alone. It was said that a Salernitan magician—sometimes identified with Pietro Barliario, a shadowy figure associated with forbidden knowledge—made a pact with darker forces to complete the arches in a single night. Others claimed the Devil himself assisted in its construction, leaving behind the structure as proof of his labor.

The name endured: Ponte del Diavolo.

19th-century engraving of the Medieval Aqueduct of Salerno,
known as Ponte del Diavolo ("Devil's Bridge").

In later medieval and early modern folklore, such remarkable feats of engineering often attracted supernatural explanation. Towering bridges and aqueducts—seemingly defying gravity—were natural candidates for diabolical attribution. Across Europe, similar structures bear the same name.

During the Middle Ages, the city was renowned for its medical school, the Schola Medica Salernitana, where Greek, Latin, Arab, and Jewish knowledge converged. It was a place where science and superstition coexisted uneasily. Where healing and alchemy, theology and experiment stood in tense proximity.

To some, the arches were a triumph of Lombard ingenuity; to others, they marked a threshold—an intrusion of something not entirely benign.

At night, the structure takes on another character. The arches loom. The spaces between them darken. For generations, townspeople avoided passing beneath them after sunset. It was said witches gathered there, spirits lingered in the shadows, and something watched from the empty span.

Was the Devil’s Bridge merely a marvel of early medieval engineering?

Or did the imagination of a fearful age project its anxieties onto stone and mortar?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

Polyphemus and Galatea at Boscotrecase

Polyphemus and Galatea in a Landscape,
Roman wall painting from the villa at
Boscotrecase, late 1st century B.C.

Among the most haunting survivals of Roman painting is Polyphemus and Galatea in a Landscape, discovered in the Imperial Villa at Boscotrecase near the Bay of Naples. Painted in the final years of the 1st century B.C. for the villa of Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Emperor Augustus, the fresco belongs to the celebrated Mythological Room and now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The fresco depicts the myth of Polyphemus and Galatea. In later Greek and Roman tradition, the Cyclops Polyphemus—best known from Homer’s Odyssey and the volcanic landscape of Sicily—falls in love with the sea-nymph Galatea. She, however, loves the shepherd Acis instead. Consumed by jealousy, Polyphemus kills Acis by crushing him beneath a great stone. Rather than dying, Galatea transforms Acis into a river deity. Yet Roman artists often softened the brutality of the tale, presenting Polyphemus less as a man-eating monster than as a lonely and melancholy figure.

Polyphemus and Galatea
in contemplation

Here, the painter favors atmosphere over violence. Polyphemus sits upon the rocks in contemplation while Galatea appears upon the nearby water, evoking the later Sicilian legend of the Fiume di Aci, the River of Acis. Around them rise delicate columns, statues, trees, and fragments of architecture suspended within an almost dreamlike landscape.

The painting reflects the refined illusionism of Roman wall decoration during the Augustan age. Nature, mythology, and architecture merge into a vision less concerned with dramatic action than with mood and poetic stillness. The watery silence of the composition, softened by distance and faded color, gives the scene the quality of a distant memory.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, June 9th, Feast of Saints Primus and Felician

Salvator Rosa and the Fall of the Giants

“He is raised aloft that he may be hurled down in more headlong ruin.” ~ Claudian, In Rufinum*

Some works of art seem less like images than warnings. Salvator Rosa’s The Fall of the Giants (1663) belongs to that category. The great Southern Italian painter, poet, satirist, and engraver—born beneath the shadow of Vesuvius—was drawn throughout his life to scenes of upheaval, wilderness, violence, and metaphysical ruin. Few artists captured the sensation of a civilization descending into chaos so powerfully.

Here, Rosa turns to the ancient theme of the Gigantomachy: the war between the Giants and the gods of Olympus. The scene is not orderly combat, but catastrophe itself. Bodies tumble down mountainsides. Stone, flesh, cloud, and smoke collapse into one another. The heavens appear torn open as divine punishment descends from above.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art connects the work to the ancient understanding of cyclical decline found in Greco-Roman tradition:

“According to classical mythology, after the Golden Age came the Silver Age and then declined through the Bronze Age to the wicked Age of Iron. At the end of the Iron Age, brother fought against brother… Giants attacked the very throne of Heaven, piled Pelion on Ossa, mountain on mountain, up to the very stars. Jove struck them down with thunderbolts.”

That passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses feels strangely contemporary. The Giants are not merely monsters of pagan legend. They represent revolt against order itself: the attempt to storm Heaven, overturn hierarchy, and dissolve the boundary between the human and the divine. Their punishment is not arbitrary cruelty but the inevitable consequence of unleashed disorder.

Rosa understood this deeply. His own life unfolded amid rebellion, satire, and civil unrest, lending his visions of collapse an unmistakably lived intensity. Unlike the polished court painters of his age, he cultivated something harsher and more untamed. Formed amid the dramatic landscapes, popular traditions, and political turbulence of seventeenth-century Naples, his work possesses an intensity that feels almost prophetic. Even his landscapes seem filled with foreboding, as though nature itself remembers fallen civilizations.

What makes The Fall of the Giants so compelling is that Rosa does not present rebellion as triumphant or heroic in the modern sense. The Giants possess immense force, yet that very force becomes self-destruction. The more violently they ascend, the more violently they are cast down.

In this sense, the etching stands as more than a mythological scene. It is a meditation on the end of ages: on hubris, revolt, fratricide, and the collapse that follows when men attempt to place themselves above the order that gave them life.

And perhaps that is why the image still speaks so forcefully today.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, June 5th, Feast of St. Boniface

* The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that Rosa appended to the print an inscription from Claudian’s In Rufinum. Claudian—often called the last poet of classical Rome—used the downfall of the giants to condemn the corrupt imperial minister Flavius Rufinus, whose tyranny came to symbolize the exhaustion and decay of the Roman world itself.

In Search of Dracula in Naples with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Dracula in Naples: The Prince Who Crossed the Sea

In the sun-soaked streets of Naples, where saints and sinners share the same chapels, a stranger is said to have come to rest.

Vlad III of Wallachia

Not a saint, but a prince the world would one day call Dracula.

His name was Vlad III of Wallachia—Vlad Țepeș, the Impaler—a 15th-century voivod whose reputation for ferocity traveled faster than his armies. In life he fought the Ottoman Empire and carved his authority into a fractured frontier world. In death, his legend grew fangs.

Bram Stoker never set his Count in Naples, though he himself once lived there. Yet rumor insists that Vlad’s bloodline reached the Kingdom of Naples through marriage and exile. One of his daughters—Maria, according to local tradition—was said to have wed into Neapolitan nobility and carried with her relics of her father’s life: documents, portraits, perhaps even his remains.

In 2014, renewed attention fell upon a tomb in the cloister of Santa Maria la Nova. Its carved symbols—dragons, sphinxes, obscure heraldry—seemed to some observers to whisper of distant Transylvania. A dragon, after all, was the emblem of the Order of the Dragon, from which Vlad derived the name Drăculea—“son of the Dragon.”

Was it coincidence, romantic imagination, or the faint echo of a Balkan prince whose bones traveled farther than history records?

Most historians maintain that Vlad was buried in Romania, perhaps at Snagov Monastery, though even that grave remains uncertain. His body, like his reputation, resists confinement.

Detail of a marble tombstone depicting a knight's helmet surmounted
by a dragon's head in the small cloister of Santa Maria la Nova, Naples.
Courtesy of visitnaples.eu

Yet Naples is a city that specializes in layered truths. Greek foundations lie beneath Roman streets; ossuaries and catacombs run beneath Baroque churches. If a restless prince were to seek a second resting place, this would not be an impossible city.

No definitive inscription names him. No verified remains confirm the tale. And yet the carved beasts on that Neapolitan tomb—too suggestive to be entirely dismissed—continue to provoke speculation.

Did Vlad the Impaler make the journey in death? Or did Naples, with its love of relics and legends, simply adopt a foreign darkness and make it its own?

In the stillness of the cloister, where sunlight falls through arches onto worn stone, one can almost imagine a prince far from his native Carpathians—exiled even in death, suspended between history and myth.

Is Dracula merely a Transylvanian specter?

Or does a fragment of him lie still beneath Neapolitan sky, his legend drifting like sea mist through a southern city that has always understood how to live with ghosts?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

In Search of Alaric I with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Alaric I: The King Beneath the River

In the fading years of empire, when marble cracked and legions thinned, a foreign king rode through the gates of the Eternal City.

Sack of Rome by the Visigoths
by Joseph-Noel Sylvestre (1890)

His name was Alaric.

In 410 AD, his Visigothic warriors entered Rome—not as traders or mercenaries, but as conquerors. For three days they looted palaces, stripped gilded statues, and carried away treasures that had glittered since the age of Augustus. Rome had been sacked before in distant antiquity, but not in living memory, and to many it felt like the beginning of the end.

Alaric did not linger to build a throne among the ruins. He marched south, perhaps dreaming of Sicily and Africa’s grain fields. Instead, he died—some say of fever, others of exhaustion, and a few of divine judgment.

What followed is stranger still.

Near the city of Cosenza, by the banks of the Busento River, his warriors are said to have performed an extraordinary feat. They diverted the river from its course and, in the dry riverbed, dug a tomb for their king, laying him to rest with the spoils of Rome—gold, silver, sacred vessels, perhaps even relics taken from ancient temples. Then the waters were returned to their path.

And the captives—so the Gothic chronicler Jordanes records in his Origins and Deeds of the Goths (Getica)—were slain, so that none could betray the secret.

The Burial of Alaric in the Bed of the Busento River, 1895
The Cyclopedia of Universal History by John Clark Ridpath

A king buried beneath flowing water—his tomb sealed not by stone but by current.

Is it merely legend—a poetic flourish from the twilight of empire? Or does Alaric still lie beneath the shifting bed of the Busento, his treasure undisturbed, the river running over his grave for sixteen centuries?

Archaeologists have searched. Treasure hunters have speculated. Modern surveys have mapped the terrain. No tomb has been found; no golden hoard has been drawn from the mud. Yet rivers move, earth shifts, and secrets do not always remain obedient to time.

When the Busento floods and the waters run dark after heavy rain, some in Calabria still recall the old tale—the conqueror of Rome, hidden where no empire can reach him.

Is Alaric’s watery grave only a story born from Rome’s long decline?

Or does he remain there still, enthroned in silence beneath the restless river?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

The Riddle of the Sphinx on Elizabeth Street

Now that the pleasant weather has returned, I find myself once again drawn back to a favorite haunt—Elizabeth Street Garden. There is something about the place in springtime—the soft chorus of birds, the tentative blooming of flowers, the slow reawakening of the world. It invites not merely rest, but reflection.

I go there often with a coffee in hand, and almost without thinking, I make my way toward the two stone watchers near the entrance. Twin sphinxes—silent, brooding, yet never without presence. I have taken to greeting them as one might old acquaintances. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I like to speak to them quietly, turning over questions of life, fate, and purpose while they listen without reply.

Their silence, however, is not empty. It speaks in its own way. The sphinx has always been a creature of paradox: guardian and destroyer, keeper of sacred knowledge, poser of riddles whose answers are not given lightly. It symbolizes the dangerous unknown, intellect as a kind of threat, and the capriciousness of fate. It represents knowledge hidden from the many and revealed only to those prepared to receive it.

Sitting there, I am reminded of its ancient question: 

What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?

The answer, of course, is man—crawling as an infant, walking upright in his prime, and leaning on a cane in old age. Yet the longer one sits with it, the less simple it becomes. It is not merely a clever riddle, but a quiet summation of life itself: dependence, strength, and decline, all bound within a single arc.

And perhaps that is why I return.

There, between the flowers and the stone, with the city just beyond, I find myself in the presence of something older than memory itself—something that reminds me that life is not a straight path, but a passage through stages, each with its own dignity. The sphinx does not answer questions. It asks them. And in doing so, it reveals that whatever knowledge is worth having is not given freely, but earned—slowly, and often in silence.

So I sit, and I speak, and I listen.

And the sphinx, as ever, keeps its counsel.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 15th, Feast of San Cesare de Bus