Domenico Viti [Lowyer]

Lithograph with contemporary coloring, circa 1877, signed at bottom A. Manganaro.

Plate from the famous series ““Il Palazzo S. Giacomo, Album degli 80 al Municipio di Napoli 1876 e 1877” collection of satirical images depicting representatives of the municipal administration of Naples.

The most important municipal figures are portrayed; judges, lawyers, architects, surveyors, seafarers etc. are drawn with caricature features and associated with clear elements that distinguish their profession.

In 1877 Antonio Manganaro (Manfredonia 1842 - Naples 1921), one of the most famous satirical draughtsmen of Naples in the second half of the 19th century, gave to the presses the color lithographed plates of Il Palazzo S. Giacomo Album degli 80 al Municipio di Napoli 1876 e 1877, which portray with caricature strokes the representatives of the Neapolitan municipal administration of those years. On the back of each plate, an ironic biography recounts the human and professional events of the person depicted. On the cover of the Album degli 80 to welcome the reader is Ferdinando Ramognini, Delegato Straordinario (today we would say Commissioner) of the Naples City Hall, appointed by the government on May 1, 1876, following the dissolution of the city council. Of Ligurian descent, Ramognini (1829 - 1898) had been a trusted man of Cavour, who favored his career in government. Before and after his Neapolitan commissarial experience, which ended in July 1876, he was prefect in several Italian cities and senator of the Kingdom of Italy from 1892 until his death. The politician is portrayed by Manganaro in an elegant dark suit on which the honorific of the House of Savoy is beautifully displayed as he opens a curtain like a theatrical curtain to show the entrance into Palazzo San Giacomo of Mayor Gennaro Sambiase Sanseverino Duca di San Donato with his mighty bulk, an unmistakable icon of post-unification Neapolitan politics, followed by councilors.

            Among the eighty amusing caricatures of municipal representatives, all wittily described with their own particular physiognomic features and with subtitles that in short mottos summarize their occupation or temperament, it is worth mentioning that of Camillo Minieri Riccio (Naples 1813 - 1882), author of important texts on the history of Angevin rule and the Neapolitan kingdom in general. The scholar held such prestigious positions as director of the Library of San Giacomo (1863), appointed representative of the Municipal Commission for the Preservation of Monuments (1869) and director of the State Archives of Naples (1874). In Manganaro's drawing, the elderly councilor, testifying to his primary study interests, is portrayed in a cluttered library, perched at the top of a small staircase, immersed in reading a large volume surrounded by other books resting on the rungs, ready to be consulted.

            With his biting pencil Manganaro, like other famous caricaturists active in those years in Naples, such as Melchiorre de Filippis Delfico, Enrico Colonna and Mario Buonsollazzi in art Solatium, taking his cue from daily events, pillorizes, but with grace and elegance, well-known personalities from the world of politics and culture on Albums, illustrated strennae and especially satirical newspapers such as L’Arca di Noè, Il bello Gasparre .e basta così, Il Caporal terribile., very popular in the aftermath of the Unification of Italy. Particularly sought-after were the caricatures published in Montecitorio Album dei 500 (1872-1874), in the volume Consiglio Provinciale di Napoli (1880) with tasty caricatures of ministers and parliamentarians as well as provincial councilors, and in the Album A zonzo per le sale dell'Esposizione di Belle Arti di Napoli (1877) in which he mocks the artists of his time.