Opens today in Casal di Principe Light conquers shadow: Uffizi art against the Camorra

Mattia Preti depicts his Vanity as a richly attired woman, with a turban framing a face invested with light and which, together with her inspired expression, is somewhat reminiscent of certain solutions by Domenichino, and with a robe covered by a light, finely decorated silk shawl. With his right hand he holds a mirror, the main connotation of vanity as an indispensable tool for the vain, who looking at himself has no time to look at others, and with the other he would seem to be caressing a chest filled with pearl necklaces. A work possibly dating from the 1750s, it has been part of the Uffizi collections in Florence since 1951, when the state bought it from a private collector. It is a work about which we do not know much (there are even those who advance the hypothesis that it might have been a fragment of a larger painting), and it is also an ambiguous work: is the fact that the woman turns her gaze away from the mirror and toward the heavens a sign that she has realized how ephemeral earthly goods are? And similarly, with the gesture she makes with her left hand, does the young woman perhaps turn material goods away from herself? These are questions that undoubtedly fascinate. And which allow us to read deeper into the meaning of the work.

Mattia Preti, Vanity (ca. 1650-1670; Florence, Uffizi)

The term vanity comes directly from the Latin vanitas, itself a noun derived from the adjective vanus, meaning “empty,” “useless.” It is from this first meaning that all those we now commonly associate with the concept of vanity descend: frivolity, insubstantiality, overconfidence in one’s own abilities, boastfulness, conceit. All negative meanings, of course. Which perhaps the woman, in her inspired attitude, seems to have understood. And it is for this reason that we have chosen Mattia Preti’s Vanity to tell you about an exhibition that opens to the public today, June 21, 2015, in Casal di Principe: Light Wins Shadow. The Uffizi in Casal di Principe. Because there is a foundation from which we must start: it is vain, useless and presumptuous any attempt that aims to fight organized crime without going through culture.

We have all heard of Casal di Principe, perhaps even just by catching the echo of a news report while eating a pizza at eight o’clock in the evening. And we imagine that none of us, or hardly any of us, have ever heard Casal di Principe mentioned in the mainstream national media for positive news. We all have the stereotypical image of Casal di Principe as that of a suburban town, prey to the most total decay, in the hands of the Camorra, which makes the best of things in the city. Well: for once we can seize the opportunity to dispel all the negative images we have of the deep province of Campania, because in Casal di Principe, for the first time, the Uffizi of Florence arrives, and it does so with an exhibition strongly desired by the director of the Florentine museum, Antonio Natali, who curated it together with his colleague Fabrizio Vona of the Apulian superintendency. Twenty works, eight of them from the Uffizi (the others come from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, the Reggia di Caserta and the Museo Provinciale in Capua), will be on display for four months, until Oct. 21, in what was once the home of a Camorra boss and is now the Casa Don Peppe Diana, a facility designed to promote and host cultural and social activities.

Of course, the fact that Casal di Principe is one of the most depressed places in Italy is undeniable: for a young person born in these parts, aspirations are not many. From an early age one finds oneself entangled in a reality of degradation, condescending when not colluding politics, and unemployment. Usually, those who want a different life emigrate, perhaps as far away as possible. But it is not rhetoric to say that the hope for a rosier prospect should never be abandoned: if it were not so, Antonio Natali and Fabrizio Vona would probably have continued to sit behind their desks, engaged in their daily routines. Instead, they have chosen the path ofactive civic engagement, on the ground, with a courageous exhibition that brings the Uffizi to Casal di Principe for the first time to show that the only way to beat every mafia is culture. And this is for a very simple reason: because culture opens eyes, forms consciences, nurtures the critical spirit, pushes people to think for themselves. And mafias proliferate and have easy ground precisely where culture is lacking: because culture helps to show what the alternative paths are. And so here is the reason for what was said at the beginning, which is that any attempt to defeat mafias without going through culture is futile.

It is also clear that it is impossible to beat a phenomenon that has been entrenched for centuries without a serious long-term perspective, involving actors engaged on several fronts and in different fields: from the economic to the social, passing, of course, through the cultural. But we like to think that initiatives such as the one devised by Natali and Vona as appointment number eighteen of the project The City of the Uffizi (the series of exhibitions that aims to bring art to the lesser-known, but not for that reason unworthy, centers of our country) can constitute a small piece of a huge mosaic whose construction can go forward with the contribution of each of us. The actions of the Camorra, it is obvious, will continue during and after the exhibition. But if the exhibition will have served to open the eyes of even a small group of people, who will perhaps talk about it to other people close to them, convincing them of the goodness of the initiative, and this will thus serve as a “launching pad” for future, new interventions that will involve an increasingly larger number of people, well, we will be able to say that Natali and Vona, who should already be given credit for having succeeded in putting together a project like Light Wins the Shadow, will have achieved a great result. And we are convinced that, in the end, they will be able to say that they have been successful. Even if a small success (besides the splendid one of having brought some masterpieces of the seventeenth century and not only to Casal di Principe) they have already achieved: in an age when exhibitions are mostly seen as box-office events and opportunities to make money, the fact that we are talking about an exhibition that has no other purpose than strictly cultural and social ones, is in itself a bet won.

The appointment is therefore from today until October 21 in Casal di Principe, at Casa Don Diana: to show that art and culture, compared to crime, have a much stronger and more powerful voice.

Light conquers shadow. The Uffizi in Casal di Principe, curated by Antonio Natali and Fabrizio Vona. From June 21, 2015 to October 21, 2015 in Casal di Principe (Caserta), at the Casa Don Diana

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