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persistent chirping of cicadas lingers in the heat of the olive and orange groves. A still presence of the waters remains at the foot of the rocks falling sheer into the sea. The atmospheres and the sensations condense . Here is the lure of the places and the root of the spreading of legendary Myths, surrounding the Sorrentine Peninsula. So poets and artists, enchanted, still return to these lands as to home places. Thus here renews Arcady, the trembling frame where current burdens of life disappear. In the Arcadian landscape of sweetness and melancholy, a meeting and a closer confidence between Nature and Man occur. Nowadays cars, ferries taking tourists, modern roads and cement builging view new sights of the town. Yet in Sorrento something subtle still firmly permeates the air. The secrets of the most secluded passages and of the verdant cracks of the coast-line, the longing for sunsets and the boundless sweetness of the skilful Sorrentine women continue. These impalpable entice may be captured by Art, the Arcady idiom. At present the place still retains all his peculiar and charming atmosphere so long after the saddness of the human and poetic experience of Tasso and after the many creative visits by poets and painters for centuries. Here we are now at the exhibited paintings. They express an atmosphere passing from sinking into dreaming to going back to steady reality. Exploding sensuality is recorded by disciplines of sign in accordance. The pictures fix in the landscape an intense and mysterious lighting and a silent nesting of shadows. The converging trends and some consonances of these paintings might lead us to theorize the existence of an inventive Sorrento Painting School whose first principle clearly being an interrupted figurative tradition. We gladly put this fact in rilief now that preconceived opinions on figurative art have been Knocked down and the critics are bestowing more and more consideration to this artistic line. The artists of Sorrento prove to be quite aware of their task to represent, clearly and in a very direct way, man, the mistery of nature and the trascendent phenomena, all surrounding them. Therefore they focus and zoom better and better on their inspiring environment, helped and enriched by a not provincial or rather international seeking and interchange on the Art's matters. In fact the town of Sorrento, like all these magic places scattered from Vietri to Positano, including Capri, has had, in the centuries, the special advantage of being visited by many Italian and foreign artists, who sometimes have decided also to settle on the peninsula. For this reason, and also to pay a small tribute to a late American artist, we want to open the rewiew of the paintings with Randall Morgan. Randall Morgan was already in the lime-light in the U.S.A.; it is enough to remember that his works are displayed at the Whitney Museum and the Barnes Foundation. From 1960 his established artistic presence was a point of reference on the Sorrentine Peninsula. Morgan followed a sun-light and formal line, with a technical precision to detail. To understand Morgan's work there is to consider the Hyper-realism current, some indications taken from Magritte art and a fine exchange with Italian painting. When he moved to the Gulf of Naples he had already seized and absorbed all the metaphysical contents of the intense Mediterranean light. The light may be the category of a separate and silent absolute reality , after Hopper conception. This same light raises to be the real character of the landscape and still-life compositions of Morgan. Besides the "straight camera" of the artist brings into focus more and more frequently the drifting apart effect, originating by the balance of proportions and the formal abstract rhythms existing in the things. A mysterious deep sun-light system with dream and reality, widening and mingling. As for age Domenico Fiorentino is the veteran of the three generations of artists in the exhibition. Those who Know him are quite aware of the inexhaustible youthful impulse still visible in his artistic activity. Fiorentino is the heir of the European line, that has moved from Impressionism into a "fauve" expressionism, of course in the artistic way and synthesis developed in Naples and Rome area. Fiorentino is the instinctive artist, burning luminous colours of the Sorrentine Nature. A very valuable example of this is found in his painting "Olive-trees in Sorrento", to be compared with Morlotti. Nevertheless, throughout this selection of works on paper, everyone has the chance to appreciate other aspects of his art. In these paintings one can see this vigorous artist beyond the sensual chromatism of his palette. As a matter of fact, in the exhibited works, Fiorentino remarkably masters the formal controll of the signs and of the composition, with a rigour of Nordic Art. The sculptor Aniello Apreda is one of the three artists of the following generation presented in the exhibition. His works show a composed and well-structured strength. Apreda is mostly inspired by Classic Art, on which he was well educated. The ancient forms are remodelled by him into simple and warm constructions, related both to the attitudes and the values of humanity, rather strong in the catholic and seafaring people of Sorrento area. For this it is easy to understand his artistic connection with masters such as Manzu' and Greco. Moreover his religious concern may also lead to compare his style with other artists such as Nagni and Bucker, often fallen into oblivion. Apreda is also a painter and two paintings of his are presented in the exhibition. The strong structured scenery of these pictures recalls that indefinite sense of melancholy that is a distinctive part of the Sorrentine artistic values. The artistic outlook of Renato Balsamo places right at this point, remarkably on "night dimension". For technical Hyper-realistic perfection Balsamo is to be compared with Morgan. But he differs from Morgan for light effects. In fact in Balsamo's works sun-light beams do not performance the vibrations of sun heat and moreever there is a lack of those mysterious azures of serene sea/sky, typical of Morgan's. On the contrary his representation materialize like throughout a phenomenon of medium electricity. It is also like sights of the Prometheus boldness of BocKin. Somehow the paintings are besides the result of the multifarious investigation of the fine and versitile genius of an antique dealer and aesthete and of a "Durerian" naturalist. Representing Sorrento coast-line Balsamo captures and emphasizes, also trought filtering literature, that antique and problematic look springing from the shadows cavities of these places. This sensation is given, in more mysterious and gloomy way, by the rocks of the nearby island of Capri. A sort of "moon sight" component is found in the painting of Vincenzo Stinga, who holds a complex intellectual posture. From 1970 Stinga is the artist of "the return to painting". His painting is based on three branches : a manneristic understanding, a romantic abandonment and a shared and modern rescue of Sorrento's roots. The first factor represents the source of the rich play of quotations and cultural reference-marks : a significant example being his large sketch " The Sorrentine Martyrs". The second aspect enlivens his Renaissance attention for drawing. Besides Stinga throws a bridge between Art history heritage and his home town, where still takes place a dream around nature, emotion of sublime delight, melancholy and silence. Let us come now to the two exponents of the youngest generation of the exhibited artists. Giuseppe Ferraro carries on the artistic research of Randall Morgan in a sort of filial way. He is proud of his twenty years old friendship with Morgan and this trend causes him no problem in pursuing his own artistic idiom. Starting from the same accuracy in the descriptions Ferraro has developed a poetical pattern based on glimmered lights inside buildings, that is naturally connected with some portraits of existential and "catching atmospere" Cinema after Bergman, Antonioni and other regists of English School such as D.Lean, R.Scott. Afterwards he lands at depicting the things of reality flaking off into a diffused sun lighting effect. This is the result of a sort of "sedimentation" of the Mediterranean sun-light inside an Anglo-Saxon mind. In the work of Ugo Scala there is a Northen artists pull for certain. This Nordic trend has been spontaneously assumed in Sorrento, thanks to the travellers and also to the not rare mixed marriages. This feeling consists, for the most part, of an existentialist state of anxiety and the perception of the drammatic arcanum of the things. Moreover it is nourished by the romantic emotion of the sublime. This feeling drives Scala to find out an artistic figurative form to represent the world after Baltus and Tooker seek and following the paths of the new objectivity currents and vague pop art influences. For this artist you can also speak about a deep but tormented link with his roots. His spiritual excitement makes him able to poetically express intensely the mysterious atmosphere of his land of birth. The enchanting sunset, both very natural and metaphisical, depicted in his painting "A mysterous man at bath", the fascination and the fine excitement of the lights and shadows of this work are for us the most appropriate scene to end with our brief excursus among the Sorrentine artists and their Arcadian feeling towards their land.