Myths, Volcanoes and Visions of the Phlegraean Fields

Serious Topics

As part of the exhibition Dimanche sans fin. Maurizio Cattelan et la collection du Centre Pompidou, Fabio Pagano, director of the Phlegraean Fields Archaeological Park, gives a talk on this territory, at once geological, mythological and historical. This landscape inspired Monsù Desiderio, the pseudonym of two painters from Metz, François de Nomé and Didier Barra, who settled in Naples in the first half of the 17th century. Their painting Vue sur le golfe de Naples et les Champs Phlégréens, presented in the exhibition, reflects the Surrealists’ fascination with these twilight landscapes. The archaeologist explores how this region, the land of Virgil, Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl, has nourished artistic imagination through the centuries.