Gezicht te Napels 1851 - 1900

Antoine Eugène Ernest Buttura made this drawing of Naples with pencil on paper. It’s a tranquil waterside scene, but this image invites us to think about social contrasts. On the left, we see two elegantly dressed women with a young boy, observing the commercial activity along the port. On the right, we see working people and horse-drawn carts in front of the imposing architecture of the city. These two groups, brought together in the same space, show us the social stratification of 19th-century Naples, a place then characterized by both aristocratic wealth and widespread poverty. We can understand more about this artwork by researching the history of Naples in the 1800s, and by exploring images and documents that reveal the social realities of the time. This reveals how art is always embedded in its social and institutional context.