Naples, 21-22 March 2009

Sheep

These two sheep, plump and sloping out of the wind as they head over the brow of the hill, are a wonderful shorthand for a bucolic life the people who commissioned this painting - closed order nuns - had probably never experienced. They adorn the back of a bench in the majolica-tiled cloister of Santa Chiara in Naples, the one with the martyrdom of Saint Catherine, in comic strip detail and sequence, on a neighbouring wall. Other images show carousing groups, dancing, and various other high jinks, which must have rubbed salt into monastic wounds. Or maybe not. The convent was, after all, in Naples.

A wheel within a wheel

This is a convent wheel, currently in the Santa Chiara museum in Naples. I'd never seen one before. It was used in the convents of closed orders, whenever communication with the rest of the world was required. The nun would stand on one side of the wheel and speak into the drum. The sound would travel into the other half of the drum and out of the opening on the other side. I was there with my sister, we tried it and it works extremely well, though it wasn't clear to me why it should be a wheel rather than, say, a wall, unless the idea was that it could be spun round to accommodate particularly tall or short petitioners. Although presumably the nuns were accustomed to kneeling... The wall of the cloister closest to the museum contains scenes from the martyrdom of St Catherine. I wonder if the wheel ever reminded the cloistered nuns of the rather gruesome images outside.

Language

This was seen on a lamp post near Piazza Bellini in Naples yesterday. I don't think the last line is a joke. If it is, it's missing a heartfelt need.