A work by the mysterious British street artist Banksy in Naples has been covered with graffiti and completely ruined. The work, a Banksy interpretation of Bernini’s Santa Teresa, was frescoed on a wall opposite the Cloister of Santa Chiara. The saint in ecstasy is depicted with a McDonald’s meal and a Coca Cola on her lap. This juxtaposition of holiness and the mundane is thought to be a comment by Banksy on consumerism.
It is, of course, ironic that an artist known largely for his graffiti should have his work ruined by more graffiti but no one is laughing over this in Naples, for the Banksy Santa Teresa was valued at $100,000.
The graffiti writer’s large, cubic letters cover not only the Banksy image but the Greek remains of the walls of via Benedetto Croce, which Banksy had been careful not to touch.
Naples has another Banksy in the form of a Madonna in Piazza Gerolomini and there have been suggestions that this work should be protected by video surveillance. However, some members of the city’s artistic community say that such a step would ridicule Banksy’s concept of a people’s art .
