Enfilade

Enfilade readers may find this volume from Bibliopolis particularly interesting for its analysis of the creation of the print collection of Carlo Firmian in the 1770s, its discussion of the publishing history of Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte and antiquarian practices in eighteenth-century Naples, early Neapolitan experiments with aquatint in the 1760s, and of publication projects such as the so-called Vestiture del Regno (begun in 1784) and William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei, of 1776.

Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino, eds., Le Stampe nel Castello: Studi sul Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2026), 302 pages, ISBN: 978-8870887570, €40. Also available in digital format, with the option of purchasing either the entire volume or individual chapters.

This volume brings to the attention of the public the first results of a several-year-long work of reorganization, conditioning, and cataloguing of the works pertaining to the Fondo Grafico (Prints and Drawings Cabinet) of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Naples. Created shortly after the foundation of the Società in 1876, and enriched throughout the years, the Cabinet contains today around 3.600 drawings and 7.000 prints, with works varying in quality, subject, and material conditions. Although it has always been accessible to scholars, the print collection is undoubtedly the lesser known part.

The recent reorganization work has allowed for a better understanding of this nucleus, unveiling its specificities and layered history: as a whole the collection appears valuable in that it presents the potential to complicate, and in certain instances also to rewrite, some passages of the historiography on the graphic arts and their fortune in Naples and beyond.

Even as the essays take important steps in that direction, they also look beyond the prints held by the Società, considering works from the collection in reference to other categories of objects (such as porcelain and terraglie, i.e. Neapolitan earthenware) as well as other collections of works on paper in the city. This approach has proven particularly successful in that it unveils articulate relationships between the material heritage held by the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria and wider discourses, according to a methodological model that has proven very useful for historical studies, but that had never before been applied to the Fondo Grafico.

Paola D’Alconzo is Associate Professor of Museology, Art Criticism, and Conservation Theory at the University of Naples Federico II, where she also coordinates the Master’s degree programme in ‘Cultural Heritage, Art History and Museum Studies’. Her research mainly concerns the history of art-historical heritage conservation and the history of collecting in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has focused in particular on the restoration and musealization of wall paintings found in excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; the reception of Vesuvian antiquities and their influence on artistic production; the collecting and antiquarian interests of Ferdinando Galiani; the regulations promulgated in the Kingdom of Naples and Spain to safeguard the archaeological and art-historical heritage; and the conservation and exhibition of paintings of the Farnese and later Bourbon collections. She sits on the directing board of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, being the referent for the Fondo Grafico.

Domenico Pino takes care of the Fondo Grafico of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria since 2024, being in charge of cataloguing, reorganisation projects, and access to the collection. He obtained a PhD in History of Art from University College London in 2025 with a thesis on printmaking in Naples between 1734 and 1799. He has held fellowships from the British Museum (2020), the Centre for the History of Art and Architecture of Port Cities at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte (2022–23), and the Pio Monte della Misericordia at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici (2023–25).

c o n t e n t s

Preface – Renata De Lorenzo

• Le Stampe nel Castello: Un patrimonio da riscoprire — Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino

• MetaFAD e il Polo Digitale degli Istituti Culturali di Napoli: Un modello di catalogazione e fruizione integrata — Donatella Zampano

• La Storia del Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria — Costanza Marsico

• Diplomacy in Print: Carlo Firmian’s Collection at Capodimonte — Emma De Jong

• Un’inedita veduta della città: Iscrizioni manoscritte sulle incisioni napoletane — Domenico Pino

• Alla ricerca di un metodo per pubblicare le prime scoperte vesuviane: Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte tra tentativi falliti e ipotesi in corso d’opera — Paola D’Alconzo

• Esperimenti e innovazioni dell’industria editoriale napoletana del ‘700: Il San Gennaro di Giuseppe Aloja — Domenico Pino

• Creato sotto pressione: Il Vesuvio e gli scambi interculturali dell’Illuminismo europeo — Domenico Pino

• 1770–1800: Gli anni d’oro dell’Illuminismo ferdinandeo e la fortuna delle Vestiture del Regno — Angela Caròla Perrotti

• Declinazioni dall’antico: Dalle stampe alle terraglie — Alessandra Zaccagnini

Index of names
Index of places