Il Golfo di Napoli, da Mergellina

Unterberger's canvas is the ultimate celebration of the most typical paesaggio napoletano. The Neapolitan gulf is here seen from Mergellina, whilst the artist focusses on the famous passeggiata on the seafront, alongside the park of the Villa Comunale. The first design for this park area dates from 1607, but it was Ferdinand IV who, almost a century later, asked the celebrated architect Carlo Vanvitelli and landscape gardener Felice Abate to lay out the Real Passeggio di Chiaia as a public park. The park, filled with splendid pines, palms and eucalyptus trees, extended from the Riviera di Chiaia to panoramic via Caracciolo, also boasting the Neo-Classical building occupied the Stazione Zoologica.

The present canvas is a view of the animated and most spectacular via Caracciolo. The popular anectodtes of the foreground - where the artist concentrates on the bare-footed scugnizzi playing with the young fishermen - extend into the background, gradually substituted by merry scenes of bourgeois life. The passeggiata is crowded with elegant ladies, walking with their children and accompanied by their nurses, while the dusty street is filled with diverse coaches and carriages. Unterberger's ability as a narrator reaches an unsurpassed peak, in this wonderful fresco of Neapolitan daily life on the seashore.