A European View on Ruins in Naples and Messina during the 17th and 18th Centuries

Abstract

An analysis of iconography and a critical reading of sources allow to add new observations on the representation of cities in territories affected by the 1783 earthquake. The contribution aims to illustrate a slow cultural mutation and the symbolic, figurative meanings of this phenomenon. The philosophy of catastrophe puts the then prevailing optimism of reason into crisis and destroys the conviction that the present may be the best of all possible worlds. The Kingdom of Naples was one of the protagonists of that dynamism that pushed men to explore unusual territories along the Grand Tour route with the intent of acquiring new scientific tools of analysis. Southern Italy is a unique case in Europe due to the number of earthquakes during the modern age. In particular, the capital city, Naples, and Sicily were hit several times by earthquakes of varying intensity over a period from 1688 to 1783; that century was a fundamental passage in the history of earthquakes.