This terracotta sculpture by Costantino Barbella, which in the current state of knowledge is unpublished, constitutes a rare testimony of its first phase of activity. In 1874, the year in which it was created, the sculptor was in Naples to study with Stanislao Lista at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts, which he was able to attend thanks to a subsidy granted by the Province of Chieti. It was a turning point for the young Barbella: the life-size group The joy of innocence after work (fig. 1), exhibited at the annual exhibition of the “Salvator Rosa” Promoting Company, it was purchased by the same company for Vittorio Emanuele II, who in turn assigned it to the collections of the National Museum of Capodimonte, where it is still kept today. That was the first important milestone of a career studded with successes. From that moment, in fact, his works began to enter prestigious collections, both public and private, such as the collection of Beniamino and Paolo Rotondo, from which the sculpture in question also comes. Largely donated to the National Museum of San Martino in Naples, the Rotondo collection included, among others, masterpieces by Domenico Morelli, Antonio Mancini, Francesco Paolo Michetti and Vincenzo Gemito.

Barbella's fame went beyond national borders, thanks to the ability, fully recognized by criticism and collecting, to tell country life with an elegant lyrical accent. A research, that of the Theatine sculptor, similar on the one hand to that of Michetti, who rediscovered the myth of Arcadia in the popular culture of Abruzzo, on the other, in literature, to that of Gabriele d'Annunzio. The "vate" wrote several times - and always in enthusiastic terms - about the sculpture of Barbella, with whom he was always in close friendship. With Francesco Paolo Tosti and, among others, Edoardo Scarfoglio and Antonio De Nino, the two met periodically in the so-called “cenacolo michettiano”, i.e. the convent purchased around 1885 by Michetti in Francavilla al Mare.

The work in question is located within a rich production of terracotta sculptures of reduced dimensions, in which, right from the outset, Barbella demonstrated that he best expressed his vocation as a poet of popular reality. In 1906, in an article for “Il Secolo XX”, the Roman writer Paolo Orano defined him «a great sculptor of tiny statues».[1] This attitude has been associated by biographers with his activity in the workshop of «trinkets and colonial items»[2] of his father, where he took his first steps as a sculptor making crib figurines. That of inspiration from cribs, as far as the Neapolitan tradition is concerned, is a topos that is also found in the biography of Vincenzo Gemito, with whom Barbella shared the propensity for a vibrant modeling. In any case, a certain crib flavor can certainly be found in the figure of the child being examined. We recognize the type of Neapolitan "scugnizzo", as the urchin who populated the alleys of the city was called, the protagonist of numerous works of art created by the artists of the Neapolitan school of the Barbella generation. Photography contributed to a large extent to the international success of this subject: think, for example, of the shots by the Alinari brothers or Giorgio Sommer, depicting poor children playing, playing an instrument or wandering around the streets of the center and which, when they had no documentary value, were sold as souvenirs, particularly to collectors from Northern Europe. It is therefore not surprising that the "scugnizzi" crowded the exhibitions - even the national ones, where the Neapolitan school was always well represented - between the 1860s and 1870s, among terracotta bronzes, more rarely marbles, of an anecdotal nature and mostly small in size . The "scugnizzo" had equal success in painting: think of those of Francesco Lojacono, Giuseppe Costantini and, above all, of Antonio Mancini. The introspection capacity of the latter's childhood portraits is also found in the present sculpture by Barbella, in which the artist reveals special technical expertise in the rendering of details, with a lively pictorial effect. In the following years, critics repeatedly underlined the sculptor's ability to give special attention to the patina of the surfaces[3] and at the release of the chiselling. In the course of his career, Barbella dealt several times with the themes of the universe of children: among the best known, it is worth mentioning here the figures entitled Sù su (fig. 2) and Bum! ... (fig. 3), sculptures that prompted d'Annunzio to ask himself a rhetorical question: «which sculptor has reached that perfection in working a surface?»[4].

Manuel Carrera

June 2023