entry
Jan 2010
The Church of San Giuseppe
delle Scalze
The
church of San Giuseppe delle Scalze
(also known to locals as San Giuseppe a
Pontecorvo) was open today, but not for
a church service. A neighborhood committee and a
private group of architects were sponsoring a
tour of the premises in order to draw attention
to the incredibly degraded state of a building
that really does deserve to be called a “jewel
of the Neapolitan Baroque,” in spite of how
overused that term is.
The church is at the
beginning of the steep road named Salita Pontecorvo
that leads to the west and up the hill away from
today’s Piazza Dante. A
first small church on the site was built in 1606
for sisters of the Teresian order; they also
acquired adjacent buildings for a convent.
Construction of the larger church, itself, was
started around 1640 and finished in 1663. The
larger church is particularly interesting
because it involved the conversion of what
had been a private dwelling, well beyond the extent to
which the property had been modified by the Teresian
sisters when they built the first church. The new
construction was made possible because urban expansion
to the west and up the hill slowed considerably around
the year 1600, and many noblemen who had built villas on
the hill moved elsewhere, clearing the way for religious
orders to move in. (The
Teresian
sisters were of the "discalced" [barefoot] Carmelite
order of Santa Teresa. The monastery for the same order
was S.M degli Scalzi,
built at the same time
and by the same architect, Cosimo
Fanzago, one of the great architects of the
Italian Baroque.
Fanzago's plan was ingenious.
To get around having to start from scratch, he
used the building that was already in place and
built a double façade. That is, the external
façade marked by three arched niches with
statues of St. Teresa, St Joseph and St. Peter
of Alcantara (photo above) is not the real
entrance to the church. The niches are open at
the back and let in light to illuminate the
courtyard of the original building. That
ex-courtyard space then has a double stairway,
typical of many large private dwellings of that
period, leading up to the second façade with the
entrance to the church; thus, the inside of the
church, itself, was originally the piano nobile
of the private dwelling, meaning the first floor
above ground level. The spaces on the ground
level on either side of the staircase were part
of the original smaller church from 1606. The
design with the double façade is not unique, but
it is rare enough to make it of great interest
in the history of architecture.
Of the works of art
commissioned for San Giuseppe delle Scalze, the
most significant was by Luca
Giordano: La sacra famiglia ha la visione dei
simboli della passion [The Holy Family
sees a vision of the Symbols of the Passion],
dated 1669 and signed “L.G.” That and other
works were removed to the Capodimonte Museum
for safekeeping after the 1980 earthquake. Many
churches in Naples were closed immediately after
the earthquake, but San Giuseppe remains one of
the few that never reopened. The earthquake
opened the flood-gates for the jackals of
art-theft to move in and walk off with whatever
they could. Some of what was plundered has been
recovered. The inside of San Giuseppe delle
Scalze is almost empty now. Such public
events as the one mentioned above might serve to
draw attention, the first step to getting money
somewhere down the line. It's a shame and truly
ironic that this “jewel” is in such sorry shape;
after all, Naples is in the midst of a
five-month celebration called “Back to the
Baroque.”
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