• The Art of Immigration: Italian Art in an American Church (Most Precious Blood Church in New York’s Little Italy) by Mary Elizabeth Brown and Janice Carapellucci
Publisher: Mary Brown
Publication Date: April 13, 2024
Paperback: $27.40
Language: English
Pages: 210
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| Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
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| The Founding of Constantinople by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) |
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| Portrait of Pope Gregory XVI by Giovanni Gasparro |
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| Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
• Adéodat and Emmanuel Dufournel: Officers of the Papal Zouaves and Martyrs for the Pope edited by Brendan Cassell
Publisher: Papal Zouave International
Publication Date: April 1, 2024
Paperback: $19.95
Language: English
Pages: 140
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| Photos courtesy of Angela Cuccillato (28 April) |
Io sono un principe italiano illegalmente spogliato del suo potere, è qui l'unica casa che mi è rimasta, qui è un lembo della mia patria, qui sono vicino al mio Regno ed ai sudditi miei… vengono chiamati assassini e briganti quegli infelici che difendono in una lotta diseguale l'indipendenza della loro patria e i diritti della loro legittima dinastia. In questo senso anche io tengo per un grand'onor di essere un brigante! ~ Re Francesco II delle Due Sicilie (durante la permanenza in esilio nello Stato Pontificio) [1]
Not surprisingly, I have little good to say about Netflix’s new Italian ahistorical drama Briganti. Released on St. George’s Day (Tuesday, 23 April 2024), the six-episode miniseries tells the fanciful tale of the struggle between bands of brigands and occupying Piedmontese soldiers in Southern Italy looking for pilfered Bourbon gold. Buried somewhere in the “Badlands” of Basilicata two years after Garibaldi’s invasion of Sicily, the fabled treasure map unexplainably ends up in the possession of Don Clemente Degli Orti (Gianni Vastarella), a wealthy (and exceedingly violent) collaborator with the nascent Italian state.
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| (L-R) Giuseppe Schiavone (1838-1864), Carmine Crocco (1830-1905), and Filomena Pennacchio (left) with two other female freedom fighters |
Perhaps, at times, a little too much in the case of Michelina Di Cesare (Matilda Lutz). While eye-catching, the crimson dress and warpaint she wore in the season’s penultimate episode was more than a little over the top. Standing on the “altar” of a ruined church with ciborium and bucranium she looked like a savage Amazon more suitable for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (2006) or George Miller’s upcoming Furiosa (2024) than the famed Brigantessa her character was supposedly based off of.
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| Top: Matilda Lutz as Michelina Di Cesare. Bottom: (L-R) Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa, 2024) and Charlize Theron (Fury Road, 2015) as Imperator Furiosa |
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| (L) Michelina posing with guns. (R) "Aiming higher," Briganti's Michelina posing for a portrait dressed as the Blessed Mother with a rifle |
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| (L) Michelina with a bouquet of flowers. (R) The Piedmontese's handiwork |
The more I think about the show, the more confusing and inane I find it. The storyline is dumb and the writing is terrible. Why would Don Clemente marry lowly Filomena, an orphaned peasant girl beneath his station and whom he has nothing but contempt for? Why would he murder Filomena’s friend over a cup of water and then throw his wife into a well? If the water was so valuable, why would he risk contaminating the cistern with his wife’s body? None of it makes any sense.
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| I know I focus a lot on Michelina, but Filomena De Marco is the story's main protagonist. Her character is based on Filomena Pennacchio (1841-1915) |
During the big battle scene outside the church, why didn’t Michelina retreat with everybody else when they made off with the gold? Declaring, “We want victory,” she foolhardily advances toward the general and gets shot and captured. I get her wanting to kill Fumel, but while lying on the ground wounded her very next line was, “We have already won.” [!?!] If that was the case, then why didn’t she flee?
Even crazier, is why the briganti didn’t just open fire on the soldiers standing guard. Not only did they allow them to get into position, they let them shoot first. [!?!] A barbarous occupational force, the Piedmontese had no qualms about murdering innocent civilians or burning whole villages to the ground. For heaven’s sake, they collected severed human heads for Lombrosian experiments, so the hesitancy to obey their general’s command to shoot the populace was one of the most historically inaccurate parts of a series glutted with inaccuracies.
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| (L-R) The corpses of Nicola Napolitano, executed "Briganti," and Ninco Nanco |
~ Giovanni di Napoli, April 28, Feasts of St. Vitalis of Milan and St. Paul of the Cross
Notes:
[1] I am an Italian prince illegally stripped of his power, here is the only home I have left, here is a corner of my homeland, here I am close to my Kingdom and my subjects...those unfortunates who defend in an unequal struggle the independence of their homeland and the rights of their legitimate dynasty. In this sense, I also consider it a great honor to be a brigand! ~ King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies (during his stay in exile in the Papal States)
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| Reclining Woman Reading, Gioacchino Toma, c.1880 Photos courtesy of Cav. Danny Toma |
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| Rosina, John Singer Sargent, 1878 |
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| Country Road - A Hot Day in Sicily!, Francesco LoJacono, 1877 |
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| The Iconoclasts, Domenico Morelli, 1855 |
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| A Wall in Naples, Thomas Jones, c.1782 |
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| A View of Naples through a Window, Franz Ludwig Catel, 1824 |
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| View of Naples from Sant'Antonio a Posillipo, Ercole Gigante, 1840 |
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| The Painter's Studio in Naples, Massimo D'Azeglio, c.1827 |
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| View of Mergellina, Silvestr Feodosievich Shchedrin, 1826 |
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| Capri, Karl Theodor Boehme, 1896 |
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| Aurora Borealis Effect, Salvatore Fergola, 1848 |
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| Riviera di Chiaia from Mergellina, Anton Smink van Pitloo, 1829 |
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| Eruption of Vesuvius from the Maddalena Bridge, Pierre-Jacques Volaire, 1782 |
