Dies palmarum (Two Neapolitan Girls Returning from the Festival)

In 1822 Léopold Robert came down to Naples, a city still held by the Austrian troops who had crushed a short-lived constitutional revolt the year before. He had made his name up in Rome painting the armed brigands of the hills, and Naples turned his eye instead to the everyday devotions of the south. This small canvas is one of the first things to come of that shift. Its Latin title simply means Palm Sunday. Two young women are walking home from the feast, carrying the blessed palm and olive fronds that Neapolitan families kept in the house until the next year. Robert lends them the upright, solemn bearing he usually reserved for saints, and dresses them in the crisp regional costume he studied piece by piece. The festival scenes of the Italian poor that he began here would carry his name across Europe within a few years.