If ever an event in the history of Napes, before the revolution of 1799, lefta resounding echo, it is the so-called Revolt of Masaniello, which began on7 July 1647, and ended with the city’s surrender to the Spaniards on6 April 1648. The revolt at once seemed exceptional. In a matter of days,Masaniello, a young man born in Naples, dressed as a sailor – redcloth hat, white loose leggings – became “head” of theentire city, so populous a place that it ranked alongside London or Paris.The written words of witnesses show their astonishment at the absoluteobedience this young man commanded. The Venetian resident (the proper titlefor ambassadors not to a sovereign, but to a mere viceroy) laid it all outplainly: on 10 July, the people’s head was

There is now a great body of scholarly literature about the revolt. It runsfrom the works of Michelangelo Schipa, La cosi detta rivoluzione diMasaniello and La mente di Masaniello, datingfrom 1913 and 1918, to those by Rosario Villari on the origins of the event,on its assorted moments, and on the writings that arose throughout itscourse: his La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli. Le origini1585–1647 and Per il re per lapatria, to name but two. There is the volume by Aurelio Musi,La rivolta di Masaniello nella scena politica barocca(1989) and his many essays. There are also the Masaniello pages of FrancoBenigno in Specchi della rivoluzione (1994), and, finally,there is Giuseppe Galasso’s reconstruction of the entire revolt, inthe volume of the Storia d’Italia devoted entirelyto the Kingdom of Naples.