Friedrich Preller's "Capri Odyssey," a lecture by Renato Esposito and Luciano Garofano

by Marco Milano

"Friedrich Preller's Capri Odyssey." Renato Esposito and Luciano Garofano will hold a lecture at the Serena Messanelli Zweig Foundation. The event draws on the exhibition "Capri Odyssey," running until August 5th. During the lecture, Renato Esposito will present and discuss the figure of the Homeric hero Ulysses, seen through Preller's eyes and compared with various works featuring him by authors such as Anselm Feuerbach, Arnold Böcklin, John William Waterhouse, and Alberto Savinio. Luciano Garofano will explore the arrival of Preller's works on Capri in 1938, on the occasion of the Augustan Bimillennium, highlighting the good relations between Capri and Weimar. The exhibition, curated by Renato Esposito and Luciano Garofano, compares the works of Friedrich Preller with the paintings of Fabio Capoccia, emphasizing the strong influence of the myth of Ulysses and the idea of a Homeric Capri. "German Romanticism has always identified Capri as the ideal setting for the hero's exploits, celebrated over the centuries more for his wit than his courage," the curators emphasize, "and John Wolfgang Goethe poetically perceives that in the sea and the islands of the gulf, 'Homer's words come alive.'" The works of the painter Friedrich Preller the Elder, which depict Ulysses' exploits against Capri backdrops, "rooted—as the curator explains—the idea of Capri as a 'Homeric island' in the collective imagination of German youth." His second trip to Italy in 1859 inspired the sixteen works exhibited in the Preller Gallery of the Landesmuseum in Weimar, and on the occasion of the Augustan bimillennium in 1938, the German museum donated sixteen colored woodcuts of the German painter's work to the Municipality of Capri. Unfortunately, four of them disappeared, and at the opening of the exhibition the other day, the Foundation's president, Emilio Ruotolo, announced the recovery and donation of Preller's lost works, which will be restored in their original order, with appropriate captions, in the council chamber of Capri's town hall once the exhibition has concluded. "I wanted to set and recreate the entire Odyssey in Capri," explained Fabio Capoccia, "going beyond the siren song that has always held the island captivated by its secret and enduring allure." The characters and events that flow in rhythm across the canvas embark on a journey that is both eternal departure and nostos. The exhibition, as explained, offers a prismatic, epiphanic, and didactic adventure, capable of synthesising the gaze with the timeless spirituality and ineffably beautiful action of Capri. Each canvas identifies the loci of the Imago caprensis: the Faraglioni, the Blue Grotto, Cetrella, Villa Lysis, the Natural Arch, and Marina Piccola. The visitor, surrounded by the color of the Odyssey, experiences an infinite and infinitely real return, perceiving the island of Capri as Ogygia, Aeaea, a wandering rock, or Ithaca all at once. "The destinies of Ulysses and his labyrinthine pilgrimage merge with those of the viewer, enclosed in a multifaceted and iridescent identifying chromatic substance." The Councilor for Culture expressed appreciation for the promotion of Preller's works. Melania Esposito announced a ceremony in her honor once the new installation is complete. And Fabio Capoccia, the author invited to discuss the exhibition with Preller, said he was "particularly pleased with this dialogue between classical works and contemporary language, to tell a story so distant in time yet so contemporary, because Ulysses' journey, ultimately, is the journey of each of us." And based on the myth of Homeric Capri, at the end of the month there will also be the "Capri Odyssey – Capri Gods" walk, with Renato Esposito leading a route starting from the Giardini della Flora Caprense and ending at the Arco Naturale.