The lucky hunchback: a figure of Neapolitan superstition
History of the lucky hunchback charm: the popular belief, the Neapolitan gobbetto in top hat and tails, number 57 of the Smorfia and the link with jettatura.
Alongside the cornetto and the horseshoe, the hunchback holds a special place in the Italian tradition of lucky charms. Figurines of an elegant little man in a top hat and tails, with a prominent hump, were sold for decades in Neapolitan workshops and souvenir shops throughout the peninsula. Touching the hump, according to popular belief, was supposed to bring luck. It is a custom we see differently today, but it has a long history and says a great deal about the culture that produced it.
Different bodies and popular attitudes
In many pre-industrial societies people with unusual physical features were the object of ambiguous attention, suspended between marginalisation and the attribution of extraordinary powers. In the case of the hump, a favourable reading prevailed in Italy: the hunchback was considered a bringer of luck, and touching the hump was thought to be auspicious, especially for those about to play the lottery, attempt a deal or face an important test.
This belief is now rightly regarded as disrespectful towards real people, who for centuries had to endure intrusive gestures from strangers. Studying it serves to understand the mentality of the past, not to revive it: it is an example of how superstition often turned physical difference into a symbolic object, stripping the person of individuality in order to make them an instrument of other people's fortune.
The gobbetto of Naples
In Naples the belief crystallised into a specific object: the gobbetto, a figurine of a hunchbacked man in a top hat, sometimes holding a cornetto or a horseshoe, gathering several protective symbols into a single figure. In the Neapolitan Smorfia, the repertory that links dreams, images and lottery numbers, number 57 corresponds precisely to the scartellato, that is, the hunchback, confirming his place in the city's imagination.
The gobbetto's elegant dress is a significant detail. It turns the character into a bourgeois gentleman of the late nineteenth century, like those who filled the city's cafés, theatres and gaming rooms. In this guise the hunchback no longer appears as an outcast but as a little gentleman of fortune, almost a gaming companion for those trying their luck at the lottery or at cards, in a Naples that loved to turn superstition into spectacle.
The hump and jettatura
In the culture of southern Italian superstition the hunchback occupies a place that mirrors that of the jettatore. If the jettatore brings bad luck with his gaze, often unwittingly, the hunchback is on the contrary a source of good fortune. It has been observed that in this opposition the hump seems to play a role similar to that of the horn: a protruding shape which, in the symbolic logic of folk belief, repels evil. It is an evocative reading, to be taken as an interpretative hypothesis rather than a historical explanation.
Today the lucky hunchback belongs more to the history of customs than to everyday practice. Figurines in ceramic, silver or coral remain collectors' items, witnesses to a theatrical and superstitious Naples. Recalling their history helps us understand the rich repertoire of Italian amulets better and, at the same time, to measure how much attitudes have changed towards people and towards the respect owed to each of them.