The Madonna with the Fish, painted between 1513 and 1514 by Raphael, was the only canvas that the Italian Renaissance master produced for a Neapolitan chapel. A venerated and much-loved work, in which Mary appears with the child accompanied by Saint Jerome who reads the Bible that he translated into Latin, and by the archangel Gabriel and Tobias, who holds a fish in her hands.
The canvas was intended for the chapel of Santa Rosalia in the monastery of San Domenico in Naples, and soon became a fundamental point of reference for the artists active in the city during the 16th century, determining the evolution of Renaissance painting in the parthenopean city. But in 1645 it was bought by Felipe IV and sent to the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. The preparatory sketches are kept in the Uffizi in Florence. The painting passed through Paris between 1813 and 1822, from the hands of the Napoleonic troops, but finally fell to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where it can still be seen today.
Although with one exception, because now the Neapolitans celebrate that The Virgin of the fish has returned home for the first time in 400 years. The painting is the star of the exhibition The Spaniards in Naples. The Southern Renaissance at the Capodimonte Museum in the Italian city, a retrospective dedicated to one of the most prolific –and unknown– moments of Neapolitan art, the thirty years between 1503 and 1532, the political period that, after an important dispute between the The Catholic Monarchs and the France of Carlos VIII, was inaugurated with the entry of Spanish troops into Naples led by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.
In 1506 Ferdinand the Catholic paraded triumphantly reopening a long Spanish presence in the Partenopean city that lasted until the 18th century, but that period, known as the trentennio, quickly became a humanistic breeding ground. Spanish artists such as Pedro Fernández, Bartolomé Ordóñez, Diego de Siloe, Pedro Machuca and Alonso Berruguete moved to the Mediterranean city, which had already experienced a cultural boom in previous decades, and when they returned to Spain, they took their heritage with them. of the culture of the Italian Renaissance.
“They came to Italy to work and found very important assignments. They were very active in a city, Naples, in a particular ferment, as Machiavelli's Florence had been," said one of the curators, Riccardo Naldi, during the opening of an exhibition that had already shown a first version in October 2022. in the Museo del Prado, under the title Another Renaissance. But on this occasion, the star is Raphael's masterpiece, although they did not want to bring it alone, but to present it within the Neapolitan historical context, since according to the organizers it was key to transforming painting and sculpture in the city. "It is a unique masterpiece that the Neapolitans will admire again for three months," said the Spanish ambassador to Italy, Miguel Ángel Fernández-Palacios.
The inauguration of the exhibition, which can be visited until June 25, also left a debate within Italian politics on the Spanish question in Naples. The two opposing visions were provided by the two highest national authorities present: the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano; and the president of the Campania region, Vincenzo de Luca. De Luca focused his intervention on highlighting the prolific Neapolitan artistic capacity despite "knowing many periods of foreign domination." "More than domination it was an integration, almost a monarchy with a double head, in Madrid and Naples," replied the minister, also Neapolitan.
