Naples is shadows and light

Christian Leperino

Photography & Words: Lina Stefanou

First I saw his works. His masks at the Museo Madre and an impressive sculpture in the garden of the Archaeological Museum called Il Sogno dell’ Eroe. When I was there, it was surrounded by a bunch of students, and I heard them exclaim: “Is this by Leperino? Wow! Cool!”

Christian Leperino is waiting for me outside his studio in the beautiful courtyard of Santa Maria della Misericordia – an old church at the heart of Rione Sanità, the old historic centre of Naples. Built around the 16^th century, it was first used as a convent for monks and later for nuns, and eventually as a hospital for poor priests and pilgrims. Destroyed several times by floods, earthquakes and air bombings, it was left derelict and closed to the public for many years, in an equally run-down district which used to be under mafia control.

Until an artist saw it and envisioned what could be done with it.

“I came here one day, 12 years ago”, he says, “and I saw this church that was abandoned for many years. And I decided to transform this into a cultural place. I wanted to turn it into a school where children could come and learn art, and understand the history of the place through art laboratories and guided tours. I wanted to tell people about this place and this area.

Sanita was a poor and very difficult area. I wanted to help the children and keep them out of the streets. To give them the chance to go to l’Accademia. Through art, culture, workshops and many other activities related to teaching”.

Christian Leperino has the energy of one who has dedicated himself to a cause and has seen it through. Although he currently walks on crutches due to a recent accident, there is a fullness in his motion and a serenity in his gaze. He is accompanied by three students from the Academy of Fine Art, who come here twice a week for practical training with the Professor. We enter the studio and my gaze is drawn to the photos that show how the church was before him: almost a ruin, full of litter. I look at the beautiful clean courtyard around me, full of potted plants and with a stone tombstone in the middle. The change is almost miraculous. I wonder how hard this transition was, and how determined you must be so as not to give up.

“For me it was neither easy nor difficult”, he answers when I ask him, “because I had a very precise idea not to turn this place into a gallery, but to do a lot of activities related to the territory. So I was immediately well received by the locals. In fact, they even helped me to do this thing, because I involved the kids, the children, the teenagers, you know?

The difficult part was to convince the art world that this could become a place of congregation through culture. The difficult part was also to convince the locals from outside Sanità that you could do really contemporary art in the Sanità neighborhood.

What we do is redeem, help the kids grow in culture. At the beginning it wasn’t so easy, because the Sanità neighbourhood was seen in a bad way.”

While cleaning and removing tons of garbage, Christian discovered at some point that there were some stairs leading down. There, he was astounded to find a second church below the current one. “In ancient times the level of the streets in Naples was lower. Then the flood came and everything was destroyed, covered with mud. And they built another city on top of the old one”. Christian and his three students give me a tour to show me what was and what has become.
The underground church was cleaned, and the sanctuary now hosts a huge sculpture by Leperino which will be presented to art critics and collectors before this summer. The underground church will open to the public around September-October 2025.

The striking, dazzling white sculpture dominates the space. It tells parts of the legends of Naples, and features a pregnant Virgin Mary in the middle. It took him five years to build, and till now no one other than his students had seen it.

“Perhaps the strongest symbol of this place, of this church, is the Virgin Mary, because the name of the church is Santa Maria della Misericordia. So I chose a girl from the Sanità district of Naples to interpret this portrait, this character. She is the model who plays the Madonna, let’s say. She is real, her name is Ivana”. I ask him about how he got the idea for the composition.

“It is a work that tells the story of this place, and therefore also about its sinfulness when it was abandoned, but it also tells the story of the city of Naples, which is Magna Graecia, and the many historical eras it has known over two thousand years of history. That is, Naples, which is part of Magna Graecia, has inherited so much, so much culture that overlaps in strata and sediments. So you have the Greek era, the Roman era, the Angevin era, the Baroque, the Renaissance. The character of our city is this. So many styles, so many eras that are mixed together. It is also true that this city has light, beauty and shadows in its soul. The beauty and also the decay. The good and the bad. And just look there, you see? Beauty in the grand era is decadence. So when I had to think about what style, what character this sculpture should have, I looked at the city, which is made just like this. Naples is like this. Shadows and light. Here the past, history and the contemporary element merge together. They are present. It’s all mixed up”.

His students Xan and Chan from China (their names mean Happy Child and The Reason of the Sun, respectively, and are hard for Europeans to pronounce) and Albarosa from Naples are standing and listening attentively, and their presence seems to underscore the import of their teacher’s words.

And the ducks – what do they symbolise? I ask at the end.

“It is a tribute to nature. I wanted to pay homage to the local nature, the countryside, the trees, the animals.When the Greeks came here, over 2,000 years ago, there were no buildings, no city. There was no palace. Only ducks and green grass and water”.