Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff

Naples (Napoli)

Also known as: Naples (Napoli), Naples, Napoli

Place places/cities Comprehensive Updated: 2026-05-24
Show in diary 158 mentions

Research Status: Comprehensive Last Updated: 2026-05-24 Diary Coverage: 1873 first aspirational mention; 1874 imagined refuge; 1876 extended visit (April); 1877 Carnival visit (February); nostalgic references through 1883 References: ~170 across diary

Overview

Naples, the great southern Italian port city on the Bay of Naples, is one of the most significant locations in Marie Bashkirtseff's diary. It appears first as a dream destination (1873), then as a fantasy refuge from Nice's social cruelties (1874), and finally as the setting for two extended visits -- in April 1876 and February 1877 -- that produced some of the diary's most vivid passages. Marie's Naples experiences encompass the full range of her emotional life: social humiliation and social triumph, romantic obsession, cultural discovery, and existential despair. The city continued to haunt her memory through her Paris years, surfacing as late as 1883 in passages of piercing nostalgia.

Historical Context (1870s)

Post-Unification Naples

Naples had been the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until Italian unification. The loss of capital status was economically devastating:
- 1860: Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand ended Bourbon rule
- 1861: Naples was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy
- Post-unification decline: The South lost its gold reserves to the new central banking system and forfeited tariff protections, causing workshops and factories to fail. The city's greatest resource -- its status as a royal capital -- was destroyed overnight
- 1870s: Poverty and overcrowding intensified despite the city's architectural grandeur. The Camorra filled the power vacuum left by the collapse of the old monarchist social order
- Emigration: Naples saw outflows of over 100,000 residents by 1880, the beginning of mass Italian emigration
- 1884 cholera epidemic: A devastating outbreak killed approximately 6,000 people in Naples alone, two-thirds of Italy's total cholera deaths. Matilde Serao documented the horror in Il ventre di Napoli (1884)

Marie herself observed the contrasts sharply. In her political analysis of Italian unification (April 12, 1876, 057.0068), she predicted that "Rome deviendra comme Naples, Milan et les autres villes de l'Italie" -- the great fortunes parcelled out, the galleries seized by the government, and the noble names "trainés dans la boue." Her understanding of post-unification Italy was remarkably sophisticated for a seventeen-year-old.

The Lazzaroni

The lazzaroni -- Naples's legendary urban poor, named after the biblical beggar Lazarus -- fascinated Marie. At the skating rink, she noted that "les lazzaroni comme il faut sont aussi bruyants que ceux de la rue" and that "les talents que possèdent ces aimables Masaniello s'exercent en société" -- referring to Masaniello, the 17th-century Neapolitan fisherman who led a famous revolt (068.0508, February 14, 1877). On the road to Sorrento, she described "des lazzaroni à moitié nus partout, des oliviers, un air divin" -- integrating the poverty into her landscape painting in words (068.0539, February 16, 1877).

Winter Resort and Grand Tour Destination

Despite its social problems, Naples remained a major destination for European aristocracy, continuing the Grand Tour tradition that had drawn northern Europeans south since the 18th century. British visitors to Naples increased from 5,000 to 10,000 annually between the 1830s and 1880s. The mild winter climate offered a similar appeal to Nice, attracting seasonal colonies of wealthy English, Russian, and German visitors. The international society Marie encountered in Naples overlapped significantly with the Nice and Rome circles: Count Doenhoff (chamberlain to the Kaiser, there with Prince Charles of Prussia), the Neapolitan Altamura, Prince Ruffo, and Count Larderei all moved between these social worlds.

Cultural Life

Naples in the 1870s retained extraordinary cultural resources despite its economic decline:
- Teatro di San Carlo: Founded in 1737, Europe's oldest continuously active opera house. Marie attended the veglione (charity masked ball) there during the 1877 Carnival and also saw Les Guaranis (Il Guarany by Carlos Gomes) and other performances. The theater had suffered financially after unification -- it even closed for a year in 1874 -- but remained prestigious
- Museo Archeologico Nazionale: Treasures from Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the famous erotic "Secret Cabinet"
- Palazzo Reale: The former Bourbon residence near San Carlo, which Marie visited: "nous avons visité le palais du Roi, près le théâtre San Carlo" (058.0198, April 19, 1876)
- Palazzo di Capodimonte: Marie visited and found the park "quelque chose d'admirable" but the palace itself "un peu caserne" compared to Roman grandeur (058.0088, April 16, 1876)

Neapolitan Music and Serenades

The canzone napoletana tradition was a living presence in Marie's experience. The serenades she heard from her hotel balcony left an indelible impression. Years later, in Paris (July 14, 1883, 100.0525), she recalled: "Je me souviens avoir, à Naples, toute seule au balcon, écoutant une sérénade... des moments vraiment délicieux; se sentir transportée et en extase sans objet et sans autre cause que ce pays, le soir et la musique. Je n'ai jamais retrouvé ces impressions à Paris ni ailleurs qu'en Italie." This was the era of classics like "Santa Lucia" (published in Italian by Teodoro Cottrau in 1849), though "O sole mio" (1898) and "Funiculì, Funiculà" (1880, celebrating the funicular railway up Vesuvius) came slightly later.

Marie's Relationship with Naples

1873: First Aspirational Mention

Naples first appears in the diary on April 30, 1873 (004.0069), when the fourteen-year-old Marie lists her dreams: "Je voudrais aller à Florence, à Naples, à Rome, étudier la peinture, le chant, la musique, à Nice c'est impossible." From the very beginning, Naples represented everything Nice could not offer -- artistic education, cultural richness, and escape from provincial mediocrity.

1874: Imagined Refuge

After the devastating Lewin ball invitation rejection (March 11, 1874), when the family sent to request an invitation only to be told "la liste était close," Marie and her mother lay together in bed weeping and planning escape. Marie wrote: "Nous avons parlé de vendre 55 et nous en aller à Naples, car à Nice il n'y a plus de salut pour nous!" (We talked about selling 55 and going to Naples, for in Nice there is no salvation for us!) (017.0263). This dramatic reaction reveals:
- The depth of social humiliation the family felt in Nice
- Naples as representing an alternative social scene where they might start fresh
- The quasi-religious intensity of Marie's language ("salut" = salvation)
- The family's willingness to make radical changes to preserve social standing The plan was never carried out, but it established Naples in Marie's imagination as the opposite of Nice -- a place of possible redemption.

1876: The First Extended Visit (April)

Marie arrived in Naples from Rome in mid-April 1876, age seventeen, and was immediately overwhelmed: "J'ai vu Naples ! C'est en effet beau à en mourir !" -- subverting the famous proverb Vedi Napoli e poi muori (See Naples and die) (058.0002, April 14, 1876). Her stay lasted about a week.

First impressions and contradictions. Marie's initial judgment was rapturous: "Naples est tout aussi belle que Paris, des rues larges, de belles maisons. Naples est la première ville du monde... Aussi belle que Paris, elle possède en plus la mer, et des montagnes divines, et un climat comme on ne s'en fait aucune idée" (058.0016). Yet she also noted the disparity between Naples and Rome: "à Naples c'est tout aussi sale avec la différence qu'on ne voit que des maisons de carton, à la française" (058.0088). Her architectural eye was already sharp.

Social navigation. Walking with Altamura on Via Toledo (Via di Roma), Marie discovered the Accademia -- the noble club -- and was horrified to learn Altamura was excluded because he was not noble: "Altamura n'est pas du grand cercle, bigre ! Et l'on m'a vue avec lui !" Her immediate social recalibration -- "Je deviens subitement fatiguée" -- shows her ruthless social instincts (058.0009).

The Pompeii excursion. On April 18, 1876, Marie drove to Pompeii with the party, admiring Vesuvius, Castellammare, and Sorrento along the way. The excavations prompted one of her most devastating metaphors: "La femme avant le mariage, dis-je, c'est Pompéi avant l'éruption et la femme après le mariage c'est Pompéi après l'éruption" (058.0133). The skeletons "dans des poses déchirantes" moved her deeply.

The horse races. The Naples races were a major society event. Marie's description (April 20, 1876, 059.0014) rivals her best Paris passages: "Une telle multitude d'équipages attelés de quatre chevaux, à longues guides, avec postillons, piqueurs, en perruque, en grande livrée, ne se peut imaginer ! On se croit transporté dans le bon vieux temps." She also noted the paradox of Neapolitan aristocratic display: "On dit les Napolitains pauvres, fort bien, je consens à passer pour pauvre et mener un pareil train. Pas d'argent et huit chevaux, et quatre voitures" (059.0015).

Emotional undertow. Throughout the 1876 visit, Marie's delight in Naples was undercut by obsessive thoughts about Pietro Antonelli. She had left instructions at her Rome hotel to tell everyone she had departed, "mais si le comte Antonelli venait on lui dira que je suis à Naples" (058.0019). The evenings alone were torment: "On n'a pas envie de se coucher à Naples, la mer hurle, je l'écoute et je suis en colère comme elle" (058.0019). And: "Dieu que Naples serait belle si j'y avais quelqu'un !" (058.0022).

1877: The Carnival Visit (February)

Marie returned to Naples in February 1877, at eighteen, for Carnival. This visit, recorded primarily in carnets 068 and 069, became one of the diary's most psychologically intense episodes. She was accompanied by her mother, niece Dina, and the elderly Pelikan.

The San Carlo veglione. The masked charity ball at the Teatro di San Carlo was a triumph of social theater. Marie and Dina wore "des robes noires et des capuchons à pèlerine en chantilly doublé de noir" (068.0268). Marie's strategy of absolute silence -- the "muettes" -- created a sensation: thirty men gathered around them, intrigued by the masked women who refused to speak. This silent performance demonstrated Marie's mastery of social manipulation.

Count Larderei. The hotel neighbor Count Larderei became Marie's consuming obsession during this visit. The masked ball flirtation, the intricate espionage through servants, the ten-minute train ride to Cancello bought on invented pretexts -- all of this played out against Naples's carnival backdrop. Marie learned through servants that Larderei kept a mistress (the singer La Righi) and had a daughter, which paradoxically increased her fascination: "cette idée que Larderei, un enfant lui-même, a un... enfant, cela m'amuse immensément" (068.0530).

The Chiaia and the Corso. Marie frequented the fashionable Chiaia waterfront promenade and watched the Carnival Corso from her hotel balcony at the Hôtel du Louvre. The skating rink on the Chiaia, the evening promenades, and the view of "toutes les voitures de Naples" from her window became the stage for her simultaneous social performance and inner collapse: "j'ai vu défiler devant ma fenêtre toutes les voitures de Naples et je n'ai pas osé me montrer dans la rue" (068.0553, February 18, 1877).

The excursion to Sorrento. On February 16, 1877, Marie visited Castellammare, Sejano, Vico, and Sorrento. Her landscape description is among her finest prose: the blue and calm sea, the sun, lazzaroni half-naked everywhere, olive trees, "un air divin, une petite brise qui rosissait les joues, ça et là des fleurs, au milieu d'une verdure éclatante tranchant sur le bleu de l'eau; des rochers bordant le chemin qui semblent droits comme des murs et pourtant dans une sorte de crevasse... une chèvre endormie" (068.0539). She also visited the Grotto of Posillipo (Pausilippe) and the Tomb of Virgil (068.0546).

Psychological collapse. The Naples Carnival visit ended in what the RSR researcher calls "Marie's psychological nadir." The combination of Larderei's departure, social shame carried from Rome, and her mother's illness produced a spiraling despair: "Aujourd'hui j'ai comme honte de tout, de Spa, de Rome, de Naples" (068.0568, February 21, 1877). Her self-interrogation -- "Aurais-je vraiment le cerveau détraqué?" (Am I truly mentally deranged?) -- marks the most severe crisis in the diary up to this point.

Victor Emmanuel II: Admiration from Afar

Marie's relationship with Victor Emmanuel II was one of political admiration rather than personal encounter. In January 1877, traveling through Italy, she described him in near-mythic terms: "la monstrueuse figure de Victor-Emmanuel, empreinte d'une étrange majesté, marchant sur Rome, se faisant proclamer au Capitole par 4.000 seulement Re e liberatore. Et accomplissant ainsi l'union du plus beau pays du monde" (068.0045). She saw him at the opera in Rome, where "Nous sommes dans une baignoire en face de Soroka, de la gentille princesse et du Roi." When he died on January 9, 1878, Marie's reaction was characteristically competitive: "Cette misérable est reine!" -- her fury directed at Queen Margherita, whom she felt had usurped a role meant for someone like herself (077, January 11, 1878). Larderei's sister was married to the Conte de Mirafiore, Victor Emmanuel's morganatic son, which gave Marie an indirect connection to the royal family.

Later References: Nostalgia and Longing

After settling in Paris to study painting, Marie continued to invoke Naples as a touchstone of lost pleasure and freedom:
- December 28, 1877 (077): "Zurlo au retour le soir, on a parlé de Naples... j'ai eu envie d'y aller... Non ! Je le regretterais, je sais, je le regretterais si j'y allais" -- the pull of Naples competing with her commitment to art study
- January 6, 1878 (077): "Oui, ma chambre me rappelle Naples, l'époque des voyages approche et je sens comme le parfum de l'ancienne oisiveté qui m'envahit... En vain" -- Naples as the scent of idle freedom she has renounced
- May 22, 1880 (088): Seeing Larderei at the circus in Paris with another woman, she reflects: "ce Larderei ne me rappelle rien sinon que Naples et Sorrente sont de beaux pays et que je voudrais y retourner"
- May 25, 1883 (099): "Je voudrais comme les autres briller et vivre... Comme à Rome, comme à Naples..." -- by now Naples has become a symbol of the social life her art career has displaced
- July 14, 1883 (100): The famous serenade passage -- listening alone on a balcony in Naples, "se sentir transportée et en extase sans objet et sans autre cause que ce pays, le soir et la musique" -- a memory of pure aesthetic bliss she can never recapture

The Bourbons de Naples Connection

In February 1878 (077.0372), Marie considered marriage to the Prince de Bourbon, a member of the Bourbon-Two Sicilies family. The financial calculation was precise: his 25,000 francs plus her 40,000 was insufficient. The plan involved petitioning King Umberto I and Queen Margherita "de rendre une partie de leurs biens aux Bourbons de Naples" -- the properties confiscated at Italian unification. This scheme, mixing romantic strategy with political ambition, shows how Naples remained entangled in Marie's marriage calculations even from Paris.

Key Sites Mentioned in the Diary

Cultural Attractions

- Teatro di San Carlo: Europe's oldest continuously active opera house (1737). Marie attended the veglione masked ball and multiple opera performances here (068.0268, 068.0406)
- Palazzo Reale: "Le palais du Roi, près le théâtre San Carlo" (058.0198)
- Museo di Capodimonte: "Le palais de Capo di Monte... le parc est quelque chose d'admirable" (058.0088)
- Pompeii: The excavations, reached by carriage via Castellammare (058.0129-0131)
- Tomb of Virgil and the Grotto of Posillipo (068.0546)

Streets and Promenades

- Via Toledo (Via di Roma): "C'est le Corso de Naples" -- the main promenade street, closed to carriages during Carnival processions (058.0003)
- Chiaia: The fashionable waterfront promenade. Marie walked "toute la Chiaja à pied" and watched the Corso di gala from her hotel balcony (068.0508, 068.0436)
- L'Accademia: The noble club on Via Toledo, from which Altamura was excluded (058.0006-0009)

Excursions from Naples

- Pompeii: Reached by carriage, admiring Vesuvius, Castellammare, and Sorrento en route (058.0129)
- Sorrento: Clifftop resort where Marie "acheté quelques objets en bois" and observed the landscape (068.0540)
- Posillipo (Pausilippe): "La descente par le Pausilippe" with views of the bay, Vesuvius, and "la grotte de Pozzuali qu'on aperçoit comme une bouche de canon" (raw carnet 10)
- Vesuvius: Marie planned to climb it but never did; she refers to it metaphorically: "Lave du Vésuve ! Fange du Tibre ! Orgue de Barbarie !" (carnet 07, her string of comic exclamations)
- Capri: Mentioned as intended destination (Grotte d'Azur) but apparently not visited: "tu visiteras la Grotte d'Azur et celle du Chien" (058.0103)

Hotels

- Hôtel du Louvre: On the Chiaia, where Marie stayed during the 1877 Carnival -- "notre balcon est au meilleur endroit, puisque nous logeons à l'hôtel du Louvre" (068.0436). The hotel's position gave her a front-row view of the Corso and, fatefully, placed Larderei in the adjacent room.

Significance in the Diary

Naples represented several intersecting themes for Marie:
- Escape and reinvention: From the 1874 fantasy of fleeing Nice to the 1876 arrival, Naples was the opposite of provincial constraint
- Romantic obsession: Both the 1876 and 1877 visits were dominated by impossible attachments (Antonelli, then Larderei), with Naples's beauty serving as both backdrop and amplifier of desire
- Social theater: The San Carlo veglione, the skating rink, the races -- Naples provided stages for Marie's performances of identity, from silent masked enigma to dazzling horsewoman
- Cultural education: Pompeii, the Royal Palace, Capodimonte, the opera -- Marie absorbed southern Italian culture with the same voracious appetite she brought to everything
- Aesthetic rapture: The bay, the serenades, the lazzaroni, the light -- Naples was where Marie experienced moments of pure sensory transport that she never forgot
- Psychological crisis: The 1877 visit ended in her severest breakdown to date, making Naples also the site of her deepest self-questioning

The city's dual nature -- magnificent and degraded, aristocratic and wretched, liberating and humiliating -- mirrored Marie's own contradictions. Her final word on Naples, distilled in the 1883 serenade memory, suggests that what the city ultimately gave her was not social triumph or romantic fulfillment but something rarer: a moment of selfless aesthetic surrender.

Related Entries

- #Rome - The other great Italian destination, preferred for its architecture and society
- #Florence - Northern Italian art capital, where Larderei's mistress La Righi was kept
- #Pompeii - The archaeological site that inspired Marie's most famous metaphor
- #Nice - The city Marie considered leaving for Naples in 1874
- #Sorrento - The resort town visited from Naples
- #Larderei - Marie's obsession during the 1877 Carnival visit
- #Antonelli - Marie's obsession during the 1876 visit
- #Victor_Emmanuel_II - The Italian king Marie admired
- #Chiaja - The fashionable Neapolitan promenade

Sources