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The Church and the Piazza: Reflections on the South Side of the Church of S. Domenico Maggiore in Naples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Yoni Ascher
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Extract

The relationship between any building and its surroundings has always been an intriguing issue in the history of religious architecture. Studies on this subject usually treat the environmental conditions at the time of the building’s inception and their influence on its design. A somewhat neglected aspect is later urban requirements, which often affect the present appearance of old churches. In many cases, urban developments caused substantial modifications in the original structure of important churches, yet scholars tended to consider these changes as distracting from the artistic merits of the initial design. Stripping the building of these additions in order to discuss its original structure thus became a basic assignment for historians of religious architecture. In many cases, however, alterations originating in the development of urban needs became essential constituents in the present structure of old churches and in their daily functioning. Accordingly, they deserve to be studied as new architectonic creations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 45 , 2002 , pp. 92 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2002

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References

Notes

1 For an extensive history of the church’s architecture see Casiello, S. and Picone, R., ‘Il restauro ottocentesco della chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore a Napoli’, in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Conservazione e Storia dell’Architettura, Politecnico di Milano (Milan, 1992), pp. 81–132 Google Scholar; Picone, R., ‘Nuove acquisizioni per la storia del complesso di San Domenico Maggiore in Napoli’, Napoli nobilissima, n.s. XXXII (1993), pp. 34–55.Google Scholar

2 A comprehensive study of religious architecture in Italy around mid-sixteenth century is still lacking. The first chapter in Hall’s, Marcia B. Renovation and Counter-Reformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Sta. Maria Novella and Sta. Croce 1565–1577 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar, remains essential for the study of the modifications made in the inner spaces of the churches of the mendicant orders in that period. Hall argues that the project of unifying the inside spaces of these churches was influenced by the new requirements of the Catholic reform, yet she adds, ‘we have found evidence that the practices codified by Trent were begun before the Council’ (p.15). Milton J. Lewine has attempted in his doctoral thesis to define the architectural characteristics of church design in Rome in this period (‘The Roman Church Interior, 1527–1580’, Ph.D., Columbia University, 1960). His study is limited, however, to churches that were actually built in the sixteenth century. For a general survey of religious architecture in sixteenth-century Naples see Savarese, S., Francesco Grimaldi e l’architettura della Controriforma a Napoli (Rome, 1986), pp. 13–69.Google Scholar

3 The relevant archive documents are compiled in A.S.N., Monasteri soppressi, fasc. 425, vol. 1. The relevant historical descriptions include De Stefano, P., Descrittione dei luoghi sacri della città di Napoli (Naples, 1560)Google Scholar; d’Engenio Caracciolo, C., Napoli sacra (Naples, 1624)Google Scholar; Celano, C., Notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli (Naples, 1692)Google Scholar, ed. A. Mozzillo et al, 1970. Another important source, which is quoted in the following notes, is Perrotta, V. M., Descrizione storica della chiesa e del monistero di S. Domenico Maggiore di Napoli (Naples, 1830).Google Scholar

4 Archivio Generale del Ordine dei padri Predicatori (A.G.O.P.), ser. XI, n. 1580: Delle institutioni, locationi e titoli delle Capelle della Real Chiesa di San Domenico, e delle famiglie che possedono quelle O l’hanno posseduto. The description mentions an episode from 1626, concerning the Annunciation Chapel. Its terminus ad quern is the acquisition, in 1636, of the chapel of S. Stephen by the Spinelli family (see note 31 below), since this chapel is referred to as being in the possession of its former patrons, the Carafa of Ariano.

5 The painting, 101 x 178 cm, was the property of the Uffizi Gallery. After long being on loan to the Institute for the Middle East in Rome, it is now exhibited in the Museo Nazionale di San Martino at Naples. Giuseppe Ceci generalized from the painting a description of Piazza Domenico, S. in the seventeenth century (‘Il largo di S. Domenico’, Napoli nobilissima, xv [1906], pp. 161–62Google Scholar). He dated it to before 1658, because it does not include the decorated obelisk (Guglia) in the centre of the piazza, whose erection commenced in that year. This dating is accepted by Spinosa, N. and Di Mauro, L., Vedute napoletane del settecento (Naples, 1996), pp. 146–47Google Scholar, but in another book from the same year, also edited by Spinosa, the painting is dated to 1640–50 (Vedute napoletane dal Quattrocento all’Ottocento, ed. N. Spinosa [Naples, 1996], p. 51). Borrelli, G., ‘Il Palazzo Corigliano in Piazza San Domenico Maggiore in Napoli’, in Realtà del Mezzogiorno, XI (1971), pp. 209–19 (p. 216)Google Scholar, ascribes the painting to Ascanio Luciani. This attribution, accepted by the authors of Palazzo Corigliano, tra archeologia e storia (Naples, Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1985), was rightly rejected by Marshall, D., ‘Ascanio Luciano: A Neapolitan follower of Viviano Codazzi’, Paragone, n.s. XXXIX, n. 455 (1988), pp. 21–43 Google Scholar,note 62. In fact, any attempt to date the painting according to historical circumstance results in contradictory conclusions. At the top of the Corigliano palace, which occupies the entire right half of the painting, appears an elaborated cornice. This was demolished after the earthquake of 1688, a fact which would put the making of the painting before the earthquake. On the other hand, the two unsaddled horses that appear on the lateral walls of the polygonal apse of the church imply that the painting dates after the same event. According to Perrotta, the apse was repaired after the 1688 earthquake by the noblemen of the neighbouring quarter (Sedile di Nido). They commemorated their contribution by adding the two horses, which were the emblem of their quarter, to its external walls Perrotta, Descrizione storica, p. 7). The painting’s anachronism thus appears intentional. Di Mauro and Spinosa suggest that the painting was commissioned by the owners of the Corigliano palace, which occupies a large part of it. Indeed, it may have been ordered by the owners of the palace to commemorate its look before the cornice was demolished. In that case, the Guglia, then in its early stages of construction, may have been omitted to allow a comprehensive and undisturbed view of the palace and the piazza.

6 The Benedictine monastery substituted a former Basilean monastery in the eleventh century. The Benedictines ran a hospice there, whose buildings were destroyed or altered when the place was given to the Dominicans. The remains of the original building are not sufficient to allow a sound reconstruction of the original plan of the old monastery and its church. The existing parts of the old church of S. Angelo a Morfisa, usually considered to be remnants of the original Benedictine church, are rib-vaulted and have survived, most likely, from an Angevin building.

7 See the planimetric view of the city, incised by E. Dupérac and published in 1566 by A. Lefréry (Fig. 3), for the location of Castel Capuano (numbered 47). S. Domenico (encircled) is numbered 22. The axis of the church is actually in a north-west/south-east direction. Pane, who found this orientation slightly different from that of other major churches in the old city, believes that this deflection is due to the remains of the old Greek wall of the city that run near its west side ( Pane, R. et al., Il centro antico di Napoli, 2 vols [Naples, 1935], II, p. 20 Google Scholar).

8 The inhabitants of the new neighbourhoods came from Spain and from the Campanian province. On the urban development of Naples in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries see Il centro antico di Napoli; Heresy, G. L., Alfonso II and the artistic renewal of Naples, 1485–1495 (New Haven, 1969)Google Scholar; De Seta, C., Napoli (Bari, 1981)Google Scholar; Rotili, M., L’arte del Cinquecento nel Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1972)Google Scholar; Pane, G., ‘Pietro di Toledo viceré urbanista’, Napolinobilissima, n.s. xiv (1974), pp. 151–54Google Scholar. The lower decumanus was the only urban axis that could be extended to the west, since both upper decumani were blocked by religious institutions at their west ends. In the eighteenth century this straight street, by then already two kilometres long, received the name Spaccanapoli (the bisector of Naples), since viewed from the high Certosa di San Martino it divided Naples into two equal parts (cf. Fig. 3. S. Martino is numbered 41, near the high left corner). For an historical survey of the street and its surroundings, see Gleijeses, V., Spaccanapoli e il centro storico (Cava dei Tirreni, 1983), pp. 25–124 Google Scholar.

9 The oldest relevant views are the view incised by Sebastiano di Re according to a design by Carlo Theti, Rome 1560, and the Dupérac-Lefréry view from 1566. See De Seta, C., Napoli fra Rinascimento ed Illuminismo (Naples, 1997), p. 60, fig. 1Google Scholar; p. 68, fig. 10.

10 Between 1515 and 1615 the atrium housed the Studio — an institution inaugurated in 1505, which functioned like a royal academy. See Cortese, N., ‘Il governo spagnuolo e lo Studio di Napoli’ (1924), in id., Cultura e politica a Napoli dal Cinquecento al Settecento (Naples, 1965), pp. 33–119, esp. pp. 33–39Google Scholar.

11 According to Perrotta, Descrizione storica, p. 8, the church was ‘half buried’ by buildings at its rear. Making the piazza required the demolition of some chapels as well (see note 13 below).

12 In 1465, Inigo d’Avalos signed a contract with a master from Cava for the building of the monumental staircase. The staircase is built of local grey piperno stone. For the contract see Schulz, W. H., Denkmaeler der Kunst des Mittelalters in Interitalien, IV (Dresden 1860), p. 197 Google Scholar.

13 A.S.N., Monasteri soppressi, fascio 429 (Platea del Real Monastero di San Domenico Maggiore di Napoli principata nell’anno 1713 e compita nell’anno 1721): ‘Basso sotto le grade della porta della chiesa nel largo della piramide (i.e. the present Piazza San Domenico): Anticamente nel sudetto largo vi erano certe cappelle con alcuni edifici ed un arco del nostra monastero poi il re Alfonso fecce diroccare le sudette cappelle ed edifici ed apri la porta di nostra chiesa e fe fare la scalinata di piperno con il largo che oggi si vede e percio nell’istrumento fatto nel 1483 … si descrive detto largo con detta scalinata come propri beni del nostra monastero.’ Cf. Casiello and Picone, Il restauro, p. 122.

14 This idea was first proposed by Vitale, G., ‘La “regio Nilensis” nel basso medioevo. Societò e spazio urbano’, in Palazzo Corigliano (1985), pp. 85–92.Google Scholar

15 R. Picone, Nuove acquisizioni, figs 3, 4. The width of the original stairway is also apparent in the relevant part of the engraved view of Naples by Alessandro Baratta (1629) and in the famous city map by Giovanni Carafa, Duke of Noja (1745). On Baratta’s engraving and the map of the Duke of Noja see Seta, De, Napoli fra Rinascimento, pp. 105–16,175–81.Google Scholar

16 The historical description of the church, mentioned in note 13, maintains that in the restoration after the earthquake of 1456, ‘per timore che di nuovo non vacillase in caso di consimili terremoti vi si posero diversi ordini di travi… per tenerla piu forte ed incatenata’ (A.S.N., Monasteri soppressi, fascio 425, vol. 1, fol. 8).

17 The chapel adjacent to the Cappella Maggiore was given to the Carafa dei Maddaloni, who dedicated it in 1470 to S. Domenico Soriano. A part of the inauguration slab containing the family emblem with the date 1470 is still attached to its left wall. The first mention of the small chapel between this chapel and the thick wall of the vestibule dates from 1577, when it was given to the Toraldo family ( Valle, R. M., Descrizione storica, artistica letteraria della chiesa … di S. Domenico Maggiore in Napoli [Naples, 1853], p. 311 Google Scholar).

18 The engraving was published as an illustration to Michitelli’s, F. ‘La Piazza e Chiesa di S. Domenico Maggiore’, L’Omnibus Pittoresco, I (1838), pp. 169–71.Google Scholar

19 Casiello and Picone, Il restauro, figs 36–38, published four plans for the building, taken from the negotiations, between 1846 and 1852, between the Dominican friars and the proprietors of the relevant area. The plans are kept in the Neapolitan State Archive (Corte di Appello di Napoli, sez. Perizie, fascio 48, fascicolo 271).

20 Notizia delle cappelle che presentemente sono nella nostra chiesa (S. Domenico), 1777, ms. kept in A.S.N., Monasteri soppressi, fascio 425, vol. I, fol. 165: ‘li fù … concesso tutto il luogo che si trova sotto il coro e per poter discendere in detto luogo li concedé così dalla destra come dalla sinistra il luogo … per potervi fare la grada … e per fine di poter aprire in detto luogo una porta ed uscire alia strada.’ Picone, Cf., Il restauro, p. 37 Google Scholar.

21 The Notizia of 1777 ascribes the whole project to Fanzago. The present architecture, however, may date from a later period. For its attribution to Sanfelice see Picone, , Nuove acquisizioni, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

22 The sixteenth-century wall encompassed the monastery of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, which had previously been situated outside the old defence system (see Fig. 3, marked by an arrow). Consequently access to the monastery from the west or from the north was denied. For the urban history of this monastery see Venditti, A., ‘Urbanistica e architettura angioma’, in Storia di Napoli, III (Cava dei Tirreni, 1974), pp. 665–888, esp. pp. 801–10Google Scholar. In the eighteenth century Ferdinando Sanfelice used the city wall as infrastructure for a new star-shaped library of the monastery (destroyed in the nineteenth century). The detachment of this side of the monastery from the urban web is evident in a drawing by John Cozens, from 1782 ( Blunt, A. ‘John Robert Cozens in Italy: Recorders of vanished Naples-II’, Country Life, CLIV [1973], pp. 568-69Google Scholar).

23 The project was carried out between 1557 and 1566 by Annibale Caccavello and Giovan Domenico d’Auria. See Filangieri di Candida, A. (ed.), Diario di Annibale Caccavello scultore napoletano del XVI secolo (Naples, 1896), pp. cxix–cxxvi Google Scholar ( cf. idem, La Chiesa e il Monastero di S. Giovanni a Carbonara [Naples, 1924]Google Scholar).

24 Around 1300, Pope Boniface VIII erected a grand benediction loggia near this entrance. For the history of the Lateran transept faҫade and its renovation in the 1590s, see Freiberg, J., The Lateran in 1600, Christian Concord in Counter-Reformation Rome (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 10–18 and 23–24.Google Scholar

25 The small building appears in an engraving of the piazza datable to c. 1700, which was first published as an illustration to Pompeo Sarnelli’s Guida dei forastieri (Naples, 1703). This engraving, however, is very inaccurate and many of its details are false.

26 The plan and the painting differ at this point. In the painting, the two-storey building ends at the ground level of the chapel, and the wall behind it does not contain a window.

27 The hall of this former chapel cannot be reached today, but it is visible from the stairs leading to the funerary chapel of the Carafa of Roccella. Remains of the stucco decorations of two altars are still visible on its lateral walls, near the former entrance from the vestibule.

28 The present apartment, reached through the arched doorway to the right of the shop’s opening, consists of one room above the coffee shop at the corner and three rooms, one above another, situated over the shop (Fig. 9). The apse buttress extends into the space of the three rooms. The uppermost room is reached by a spiral staircase, like the one indicated on the seventeenth-century map.

29 The chapel contains thirty-eight similarly shaped urns, four of them empty, which seem to date from the late nineteenth century. The epitaphs commemorate members of the Carafa of Roccella from the seventeenth century until the 1920s.

30 Salerno, P. L. (ed.), La Basilica di San Domenico Maggiore in Napoli (Naples, 1991), p. 63 Google Scholar.

31 The tomb still exists, but its epitaph and family arms were changed in 1636 to commemorate Cardinal Filippo Spinelli, whose family acquired the chapel. For the history of this monument and the identity of its creator see Ascher, Y., ‘Tommaso Malvito and Neapolitan Tomb Design of the Early Cinquecento’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LXIII (2000), pp. 111–30, esp. pp. 117–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Filangieri, G., Documenti per la storia, le arti e le Industrie delle provincie napoletane, vi (Naples, 1891), p. 198 Google Scholar. The value of the work was estimated at 275 ducats.

33 The emblem of the Carafa della Stadera was the steelyard (‘stadera’ in Italian), a metal balance for heavy weights. The personal shield of Diomede Carafa consisted of the three horizontal stripes of the Carafa family, the rose of the Orsini, his mother’s family, and two oblong strips that may indicate the Molise, family of his grandmother (see Valle, , Descrizione storica, p. 347 Google Scholar). On various occasions, Diomede Carafa also used the emblems of the Carafa of Maddaloni, from which the Carafa of Ariano descended.

34 In the 1850 restoration of the church, the inner faҫade of S. Stephen’s chapel was transferred to the front of the first chapel on the left of the church’s main entrance, where it stands today. For a detailed report on this massive restoration, which caused the loss of many sepulchral slabs and other historical artefacts, see Valle, Descrizione storica.

35 Blunt, Cf. A., Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Architecture (London, 1975), pp. 33–34, figs 29, 38Google Scholar. Blunt, for whom ‘as far as Neapolitan architects were concerned Bramante and Michelangelo might have never lived’, describes the facade of our chapel as having ‘a broken pediment with a curious tablet inserted into the middle of the field’ (p. 30).

36 The engraved view of Baratta (1629) displays a pedimented window in the upper part of the chapel. The two-storey building behind the Rosary chapel is also indicated, despite the generalizing character of this view.

37 Blunt, Neapolitan Baroque, p. 18 and n. 43, thought that the balcony must originally have formed part of a fifteenth-century palace.

38 The two most interesting instances are Sangallo’s church of San Biagio in Montepulciano, built around 1520, and the facade of the church of S. Giacomo in Udine, built by Bernardino da Morcote between 1525 and 1533. The church of San Biagio includes a pseudo-apse, the roof of which was intended as a balcony surrounded by a long balustrade. It was reached through a long, spiral stairway, ending in a carefully designed portal ( Cozzi, M., Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio e l’architettura del Cinquecento in Valdichiana [Genoa, 1992], fig. 86Google Scholar). Its very high level, however, made it unusable, and in 1550, the portal was turned into a stained-glass window (see Barcucci, E., Il tempio di San Biaggio a Montepulciano [Montepulciano, 1979], p. 41 Google Scholar; p.61, n. 36, and Cozzi, figs 105,118). The balcony can be reached today through one of the four lateral openings. In Udine, at the same time as Bernardino da Morcote erected a new faҫade for S. Giacomo, a new city market-square was created in front of the church. The new faҫade includes a balcony above the portal. Intended forcelebrating masses in the open square, it contains in the middle of its back wall a small altar, crowned by aniche with a statue of the Virgin and Child. For the architectural history of this balcony see Zocconi, M., La facciata rinascimentale della chiesa di S. Giacomo Apostolo nella piazza del Mercato Nuovo a Udine (Trieste, 1960), pp.7–14.Google Scholar

39 The balcony above the portal of S. Giacomo in Udine is reached from the church through a small, lateral doorway that reminds the inner, lateral placing of the balcony’s doorway in Diomede Carafa’s chapel. The Udinese balcony is, however, a central part of the faҫade design and it has been used for a long time to celebrate Saturday masses in the square (Zocconi, p. 12).

40 For the life of Diomede Carafa, Bishop of Ariano, see Vitale, T., Storia della regia città di Ariano e sua diocesi (Rome, 1794)Google Scholar, passim, and Cruciani Troncarelli, M. G., s.v. ‘Carafa Diomede’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 19 (Rome, 1976).Google Scholar

41 Cortese, N., Feudi e feudatori napoletani della prima metà del Cinquecento (Naples, 1931), p. 114 Google Scholar, no. 34: ‘El duque de Ariano tenia una bella casa y muy principal en Napoles a Seio de Nido [i.e., in the quarter of the church of S. Domenico]. Esta casa es de grandes aposientos y bien labrada de pietra y en calle principal de la ciudad.’ The value of the palace is estimated at 10,000 ducats, together with a note that it is a high-priced property. This is indeed one of the most expensive items in the whole inventory (cf. Labrot, G., Palazzi napoletani. Storie di nobili e cortigiani 1520–1750 [Naples, 1993], p. 40 Google Scholar).

42 For an eyewitness description of Diomede Carafa’s residence see Praefecto, Jacopo, De diversorum vini generum natura (Venice, 1559), fol. 5r-5v.Google Scholar

43 For the historical importance of the Piazza S. Domenico and the palaces that surround it see Regina, V., Napoli antica (Rome, 1994), pp. 84–90.Google Scholar

44 Around 1560 this palace was acquired by another household of the Carafa, the princes of Stigliano. For the history of this palace see Borrelli, , Il Palazzo Corigliano, pp. 77–88, 209–19, 1157–86, 1285–315Google Scholar; esp. pp. 80–81, 208–09.

45 Regina, , Napoli antica, pp. 108–12.Google Scholar

46 Diomede’s grandfather Alberico was the first member of the grand Carafa family to win a duke’s title ( Volpicella, L., Regis Ferdinandi primi instructionum liber [Naples, 1906], p. 306 Google Scholar). His mother, Francesca Orsini, was granddaughter of King Ferrante of Aragon ( Aldimari, B., Historia genealogica della famiglia Carafa, 11 [Naples, 1691], p. 120 Google Scholar).

47 ‘Siene la cappella di S. Stephano della famiglia Carrafa del ceppe delli Duchi d’Ariano se vene prima era con il titolo di S. Thommaso Apostolo e Giov. Francesco Carrafa nell’anno 1515 lascio per dote a detta cappella cento due case et Hosteria site nella città di Puzzoli, quali furono censuati a Diomede Carafa Vescovo d‘Ariano.’ Delle institutioni (MS cited in note 4), description of chapel X. Eventually, however, at least some of these properties in Pozzuoli passed to the Jesuits. In a passage in his account regarding the life of Diomede Carafa, Duke of Maddaloni, Biagio Aldimari notes, ‘Nella medesima città di Pozzuolo, un’altro Diomede [e.g. the bishop of Ariano], che non ben si liquida qual fosse, se il presente, ò altro, possedendo uno grande compensorio di case, di rendita annuale di ducati seicento … quelle donò alia compagna di Giesù, che hoggi le possiede’ (Aldimari, II, p. 186). The proximity of Mergellina to the road to Pozzuoli may have been a major factor in Diomede’s choice of this area for his villa-palace.

48 This must have occurred sometime between 1703 and 1849, since the balcony appears in its original size in the engraving in Sarnelli’s Guida dei forastieri, and in its present state in Vianelli’s drawing (Fig. 6). Falconieri (Fig. 7) ignores it altogether.