_Alceste Campriani_, _Giacomo di Chirico_, _Rubens Santoro_, _Federigo Cortese_, _Francesco Netti_, _Edoardo Toffano_, _Giuseppe de Nigris_ have, all of them, this kaleidoscopic sparkle, this method of painting which gives pictures the appearance of being mosaics of precious stones. As in the days of the Renaissance, the Church is usually the scene of action, though not any longer as the house of God, but as the background of a many-coloured throng. As a rule these pictures contain a crowd of canopies, priests, and choristers, and country-folk, bowing or kneeling when the host is carried by, or weddings, horse-races, and country festivals; and everything is vivid and joyous in colour, saturated with the glowing sun of Naples. Alceste Campriani's chief work was entitled "The Return from Montevergine." Carriages and open rack-waggons are dashing along, the horses snorting and the drivers smacking their whips, while the peasants, who have had their fill of sweet wine, are shouting and singing, and the orange-sellers in the street are crying their goods. A coquettish glancing light plays over the gay costumes, and the white dust sparkles like fluid silver, as it rises beneath the hoofs of the horses wildly plunging forward. The leading work of _Giacomo di Chirico_, who became mad in 1883, was "A Wedding in the Basilicata." It represents a motley crowd. The entire village has set out to see the ceremony. The wedding guests are descending the church steps to the square, which is decked out with coloured carpets and strewn with flowers. Triumphal arches have been set up, and the pictures of the Madonna are hung with garlands. Meanwhile the _sindaco_ gives his arm to the bride, beneath whose gay costume a charmingly graceful little foot is peeping out. Then the bridegroom follows with the _sindaco's_ wife. All the village girls are looking on with curiosity, and the musicians are playing. Winter has covered the square with a white cloak of snow; yet the sunbeams sport over it, making it shine vividly with a thousand reflections. [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ FAVRETTO. ON THE PIAZZETTA.] Of course, the derivation of all these pictures is easily recognisable. Almost all the Neapolitan painters studied at Fortuny's in the seventies in Rome, and when they came home again they perceived that the life of the people offered themes which had a coquettish fitness in Fortuny's scale of tones. From the variously coloured magnificence of old churches, the red robes of ecclesiastics, the gaudy splendour of the country-people's clothes, and the gay glory of rags amongst the Neapolitan children, they composed a modern _rococo_, rejoicing in colour, whilst the Spaniard had fled to the past to attain his gleaming effects.