A new secular icon today from Naples, and while this fresco is not quite Vesuvian, its sovereign purple and sunkissed golden tones and draped fabrics make it quite at home here in this historic city of classical antiquity.

Chilean street muralist INTI bespoke this vision in the Barra neighborhood, which its Wiki page says “has suffered much the same fate of urban decay as the rest of the eastern periphery of Naples, a fate that includes drugs and entrenched organized crime.”

And yet here rises the Polvera di Stelle (Stardust), a nurturing, protective maternal figure – though perhaps more Greta Thunberg than Sophia Loren – surrounded by mysticism and ancient-future symbolism.

“Look with the naked eye, without placebos or metaphysical aspirins.” INTI tells BSA. “Look without dogma, without wanting to rest on great truths. Look without easy answers that calm doubts, prevents us from seeing poetry in the uncertain and in the minuteness of our place in nature.”

The new mural is in collaboration with the Campania region and Jorit Foundation, says the artist.

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