Miscellaneous
Churches 3
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Again, more churches in various parts of Naples. And
again, they are no less interesting for their inclusion
under this "miscellaneous" rubric.
Santa Maria della Catena
is best known in Naples as the final resting place of Admiral Francesco Caracciolo,
executed in the wake of the fall of the brief Neapolitan Republic in 1799. He
was hanged aboard ship and cut loose to sink in the sea;
Neapolitan mythology holds that the body refused to sink,
floating to the surface and eerily bobbing its way towards
shore. Indeed, there is even a painting showing King
Ferdinand aboard his ship, aghast at the sight of the
admiral's corpse floating alongside. Whatever the case,
Caracciolo's body was retrieved from the sea and his
remains now rest in this small church.The church is in the Santa Lucia section of Naples and was founded by the fishing community in 1576, becoming a legitimate parish in the 1597. The street, via Santa Lucia, that the building fronts on, used to be almost at water's edge and, was, in fact, the main street leading up to the royal palace, a short distance away. That is difficult to see, today, since the urban renewal of 1900 put land-fill and extra blocks of large buildings between the church and the sea. That period of building changed the entire configuration of the coast line for hundreds of yards on both sides of the Castel dell'Ovo (Egg Castle), the most prominent landmark near the church.
The church was restored in the 1850s after many decades of neglect.
San Severo al Pendino
is in the oldest section of the city, not far from the Cathedral as well as a number of paleo-Christian sites and sitting
atop a treasure trove of as yet unexcavated Roman and even
Greek ruins. The church is from 1575 but was built on the
site of an earlier church, Santa Maria a Selice (of uncertain age,
except that records show it to have been "rebuilt" in
1448).The modest 19th-century look of the façade of the church is due to the fact that it sits directly on via Duomo, the main north-south boulevard that runs past the Cathedral (Duomo). That street did not exist until the late 1800s. Laying a straight road through the dense and ancient welter of buildings of the Pendino section of Naples meant slicing through and shearing off large sections of some buildings, even moving (!) entire buildings, such as the nearby Palazzo Como. The church was actually part of a much larger monastic complex truncated by the construction, and much of the original building simply no longer exists.
The church of the Santissima Trinità is on
via Tasso about halfway up the Vomero hill above the Chiaia
section of Naples. It is of recent construction (1934) but
is purposely similar to the church of St.
Thomas Aquinas, which was on the same site and torn
down in 1932. The interior has a single nave with five
chapels on either side and contains considerable trappings
from the earlier church, including the main altar from the
1630s, the work of Costantino Marasi and Giovanni Mozzetti.
The large canvas depicting Episodes in the Life of Thomas Aquinas is
also from the 1600s as are the secondary altars. The ornate
wood carvings in the church are from the 1700s.
Sant'Antonio a Posillipo
commands one of the most striking panoramas in the city.
The church sits on the Posillipo height above Mergellina facing southeast
with a view of the Chiaia section of town the bay itself,
the isle of Capri, and the
Sorrentine peninsula. Originally a monastery, the church
was founded in 1642 by brother Paolo Anzalone of the Third
Regular Order of St. Francis. The order was suppressed in
Naples under the French in 1809;
in 1835 the Dominican order took over the premises; they,
too, were suppressed by the new national government in the
1860s, then restored in 1883.The church was remodelled in the 1950s and, except for the onion-dome belfry held over from the 1750s, does not look at all like the structure seen in 18th-century depictions of the area. There remain within the building works of art from the 18th-century, but even as early as 1845, one source complained about the unremarkable architecture of the place. Yet, because of its location, the house of worship was (and remains) a favorite target for a "short pilgrimage", if you will--i.e., you can hike up to it from the church of the Madonna of Piedigrotta at Mergellina, below, along rampe Sant'Antonio, the steepest and crookedest road in Naples. At the end, if you can trick yourself into confusing exertion with devotion, you may feel that you have done something worth being blessed for.
The Church of Saint Martha
(#4 on this map) is at the
western entrance to the historic center of the city near
the tall belfry of Santa Chiara.
The church was founded in 1400 at the behest of Queen
Margherita of Durazzo and dedicated to Saint Martha, who
played prominently in the religious life of the queen's
native Hungary.The church used to be the premises for one of the most important brotherhoods in the city, to which various sovereigns and noblemen belonged. They would record their presence with signature and coat-of-arms in a book of parchment now stored in the Naples archives.
The church was damaged in Masaniello's Revolt (1647) and since then has undergone various episodes of restoration. The premises contain art work by Andrea Vaccaro.
Santa Maria in Portico
was built in 1632 and, at the time, was almost on the
beach, which fact is difficult to appreciate, what with
the intervening centuries of urbanization (including the
large park, the villa comunale)
that have pushed the church "inland," so to speak. The
church was one of those that grew up in the 1600s to serve
the needs of the then new
community of Spanish nobility that was stringing
sumptuous villas along the seaside. The architect was
Nicola Longo and the edifice was financed by the duchess
of Gravina, Felice Maria Orsini, whose vast property was
adjacent to the site of the church.The church grounds were originally much larger than what one sees today and included monastic quarters and a number of gardens. The complex also contained at one time the Orsini art collection and was, in fact, so palatial that the new Spanish viceroy, Marquis del Carpio, chose it as his residence upon his arrival in Naples in 1683. The closing of nearly all monastic property in Italy in the 1860s following the unification of Italy led to an inevitable breaking up of the complex, but it is still impressive. The facade is apparently not by Cosimo Fanzago, as was long thought, but rather by Arcangelo Guglielmelli and was done in 1682.
The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore
(#38 on this map) is one of the
four large basilicas of paleo-Christian
Naples that came into existence after the Edict of
Constantine of 313 a.d. declared religious tolerance. (The
other three are the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore, San Giovanni Maggiore and the Santi Apostoli.) The complete name
is S. Maria Maggiore della Pietrasanta. It was
built in 533, and its origins involve a strange tales of
ancient Naples. In 533, the Virgin Mary is said to have
appeared to Bishop Pomponius of Naples and commanded him
to chase away a swine possessed of the devil that had been
frightening citizens of the area. He did and then built
and consecrated this church on the site of an earlier
Roman temple dedicated to Diana. The relatively
modern appearance of the church is due to the
reconstruction of 1653.The remarkable red-brick belfry on the grounds
is the oldest free-standing tower of its kind in the city.
It was part of the original church complex, though built
later (c. 900 a.d.).
The church
of S.M. della Neve (Our
Lady of the Snow) is from 1571 and is
on the Riviera di Chiaia, across from the west end of the
Villa Comunale. It used to be
right on the beach and easily accessible to the community
of fisherfolk that had grown up in the mid-1500s well
outside of the main body of the city of Naples. The church
would then be one of about half a dozen that would stand
amidst the long string of exclusive
villas of Spanish nobility, who also started to move
out of the city at about the same time. Some fishermen
still work out of nearby Mergellina,
the Spanish villas have long since been subdivided, and
water's edge has moved about a block away to the other
side of a lot of landfill and a new seaside road laid in
about 1900.The strange name of the
church derives from the legend of the Miracle of the Snow;
that is, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in a
dream on the night of August 5, 352 A.D. to a wealthy
Roman couple as well as to Pope Liberius telling them to
use the couple’s wealth to build a church on the spot that
would be indicated by snow the next morning. Various
paintings, including one from 1429 by Masolino da Panicale
(in the Capodimonte museum
in Naples), show the snow on Esquiline Hill the next
morning and the Pope tracing in it the outlines of the new
church. The church was built and has been rebuilt many
times and is today the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore
in Rome.There is a fresco of the
snow episode in this Neapolitan church, but it and other
works of art within the church, all from the early 1600s,
have not been maintained well over the centuries.
The church of Gesù
delle monache [Jesus of the sisters] is about 50
yards in from the old northern city gate, Porta San Gennaro.
The church used to be adjacent to the gate before 1537
when the Spanish rulers of Naples
decided to expand the city walls, moving them outwards
wherever possible and, indeed, moving and rebuilding many
of the gates, themselves.
The original house of
worship on the site—as is the case with many places in
Naples—was a large convent plus church. Thus, the church
that one sees today is much smaller than the original
complex. The original, in this case, was a Franciscan
monastery built at the time of Joan II at the beginning of
the 1400s. Later in that century, Joan III, the widow of
Aragonese ruler Ferrante, expressed the wish to turn the
complex into a sort of pantheon for the ruling family of
Naples, the house of Aragon.
The dynastic change in Naples in the early 1500s, however,
changed all that; between 1527 and 1582, the complex was
rebuilt into its present form, at which point it acquired
the name Gesù delle
monache. The entrance and main facade are on the
west side of the original building. There were later,
splendid changes to the façade and interior during the
Baroque period. The convent part of the facility is now a
school, with the entrance around the corner on the street
that runs along the north side of the building.
The inside is particularly
rich with names of artists from the Neapolitan Baroque,
including Francesco Solimena,
Paolo De Matteis and Luca Giordano.
Santa Maria della Libera al Vomero is in
the Vomero section of Naples, that is, on the hill above
the city, precisely on via Belvedere, on the ridge
overlooking the slope and sea to the south. The origins go
back to 1572 when the church and adjacent convent were
commissioned by the secretary of the royal council of
state, Annibale Cesareo. At that time, there was a law
against building on the “St. Elmo hill,” referring to the
large new fortress that overlooked the city (and still
does); thus, actual construction did not begin until 1585.
Disputes over deadlines and building details with the
Dominican order in charge of construction eventually
caused the original terms to expire and the
church/monastery remained incomplete, although used. It
was closed in the early 1800s under Murat
during the general closing of all monasteries in the
kingdom, then given back to the Dominicans in 1820 after
the restoration of the Bourbons. The monastery was closed
again after the unification of Italy (again, during the
widespread anti-clericalism of the new nation). The church
remained open, but both church and monastic premises
suffered damage in the earthquakes of 1930 and 1980. The
latest restoration was completed in 1991. The old monastic
grounds are now a school. Little remains of the original
Baroque building on the outside, although there is
original artwork inside the church; strangely, sources do
not identify any of the artists, not even of the namesake
painting of Santa Maria
della Libera. (Libera
means “free,” but the term is generally left untranslated.
The origin of the name dates back to the tradition of
invoking the Madonna to liberate those who had been
imprisoned.)
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