Loro di Napoli. Ferdinando Bologna e la "Mostra del ritratto storico napoletano" (1954)

In 1954, at the age of just twenty-nine, Ferdinando Bologna was the curator, together with the more mature Gino Doria, of the 'Mostra del ritratto storico napoletano', an exhibition still today considered exemplary for several reasons: from a cultural point of view, an unrepeatable and unrepeated opportunity to trace a history of the South through the most representative and significant faces of those who have marked it with their presence; from an aesthetic point of view, an extraordinary possibility of admiring known and unpublished portraits made by great artists of past centuries, mostly from the South; from an organizational point of view, a precise indication of method, and that is to proceed towards a balanced selection of works that could balance the historical and historical-artistic aspects. The essay therefore intends to reconstruct and highlight what still today constitutes an essential chapter for the history of portraiture in Italian studies. The first paragraph reviews some attempts to create a visual history of the South, starting from the suggestions of Croce to arrive at October 1954, when at the same time as the opening of the exhibition on the portrait set up at the Royal Palace of Naples, 'Carosello napoletano' by Ettore Giannini was shown on the big screen. The second paragraph analyzes the reference models and the methodology used in the exhibition, dividing the selected portraits into three distinct iconographic typologies in order to identify the socio-cultural categories taken into consideration. Finally, the third paragraph discusses the legacy of the exhibition and its catalogue, focusing on some reviews published between the end of 1954 and the beginning of 1955 and recalling only some of the repercussions that these products had on subsequent historical-artistic studies.