Axel Munthe is one of the most fascinating characters in Europe before the two world wars. Swedish doctor trained in Paris and Rome, aristocrat, philanthropist and bohemian, defender of animals, brilliant writer, he acquired and restored the villa San Michele, at the highest point of the island of Capri, where he welcomed friends such as Oscar Wilde, Henry James or Stefan Zweig. He rubbed shoulders with the European nobility – his second wife was the English aristocrat Hilda Pennington-Mellor – but as a fervent believer he did not hesitate to go to the poorest neighborhoods of Naples decimated by cholera when other doctors fled, and he volunteered for the Red Cross in the trenches of the Somme and Verdun. He was accompanied by a halo of legend due to his interest in hypnosis and fame as a galantuomo, with multiple love affairs. For almost 40 years he was a friend and confidant of Queen Victoria of Sweden.
After losing his vision – although he would later recover it – Munthe (1857-1949) dedicated himself to writing some memoirs that in 1929 became a best seller. The history of San Michele (republished by Libros de Vanguardia in 2011) has been translated into some thirty languages ??and also gave rise to a film with the same title in 1962. His adventures were also collected in a collection of photographs that had been hidden in family albums. Until Katriona Munthe, his granddaughter, decided that the time had come to recover this extraordinary collection, made up of more than 800 photos and negatives, some of which were in quite poor condition.
By chance, in 2011 Katriona Munthe saw in the Les Bernardes room, in Salt (Gironès), the exhibition by María Belmonte about her book Pilgrims of Beauty (Cliff), which follows in the footsteps of famous travelers through Italy and Greece. like Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller or Munthe himself. And there she met the photographer Jordi Mestre, whom she commissioned two years ago to restore and digitize the photographs she kept. This work has culminated in the exhibition Honesta voluptas. Il giardino di Axel Munthe, riportata alla luce da Jordi Mestre , which can be seen until March 31 at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The curators, Katriona Munthe herself and Michele Iodice, have selected 140 photos restored by Jordi Mestre that show his passion for the classical world and the search for beauty from the surroundings of San Michele, an old convent built on the ruins of a temple Tiberius Roman.
Jordi Mestre (Girona, 1953) worked as a photographer for El Periódico and Avui, and later distinguished himself for his documentation of the excavations at Atapuerca and Orce and for a photo-report on grape harvesters, but he has also stood out as a restorer of old photography. His are the photo conservation works of Eduard Toda, Domènech i Muntaner and Josep Esquirol. “We got in touch with Katriona and I immediately realized that Munthe was a very special character, that the photographs in her albums featured the most relevant figures of her time and that they also came from the most reputable photographic studios,” she explains. Master. “It has been a unique experience, and although I did the main restoration work in my studio in Sant Miquel de Fluvià, I have been able to work in Tuscany and Capri, I have participated in a theater show and a film conceived by Katriona, which she is also an exceptional woman, and everything has culminated in this exhibition in that Neapolitan museum, where the images alternate with Greco-Roman sculptures”.
Among the restored photographs, there are numerous of Queen Victoria of Sweden. For almost forty years Munthe was her personal physician. And it is said that already on the deathbed, she whispered in his ear: “Come soon.” Beside her was King Gustav V, who made no secret of her homosexuality. Munthe was invited by the king to spend his last years at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. But the epicenter of these albums is the town of San Michele, the boat with which he sailed along the coast, his private life on the island, the parties… For Mestre, the atmosphere of San Michele reminded him of Mas Juny and the friends of the painter Josep Maria Sert, who in the 1930s capitalized on the glamor of the Costa Brava.
Axel Munthe’s photographic collection also brings together images of Venice, Paris, Cairo, Rome… and the different scenes of his life. There are photos of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, an event to which he was invited because he had worked on a technique to prevent the mummies from suffering from their contact with light. It is not surprising that in San Michele there is also a piece from that excavation along with a Canaletto. And there are photos of his mountaineering hobby, which led him to climb the Matterhorn, where he lost two toes due to frostbite. And his medical friends, nobles, his intellectuals. Most of the images are set between the years 1880 and 1914.
