Atrium of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples for the exhibition "Parthenope. The Siren and the City," at @museoarcheologiconapoli from April 3 to July 6, 2026.

Traced on a veil with charcoal that almost disappears if you touch it, leaving your fingers slightly blackened. Ethereal, wavering, fleeting. Like a film rewound backwards, the moment captured by our gaze is the decisive moment of the fall, the death that gives rise to life, the fatal frame.

Parthenope is suspended on the threshold, conversing with the ancient sculptures, appearing fragmented. It may have just been reassembled by the merciful hands of archaeologists after its discovery, on the verge of falling back into pieces.

With a movement inverted from its birth, it seems to return to the womb of the city, to the primordial egg beneath the islet of Megaride, to the ancient burial from which man shook it to tell its story.