DOMENICO BIANCHI
Untitled
2009
Domenico Bianchi transforms the sheet into a drape of solid marble, a capricious arabesque capable of retaining the symbolic suspension of a Memento Mori amid its folds by the inherent quality which things possess of surviving man, revealing the transience of our earthly existence, as in the Baroque teache: the twisted and dramatic ...
Accessible from the Cafeteria courtyard (Pawnshop courtyard) that leads to vico Donnaregina, the 14th-century church of S. Maria Donnaregina is a prominent evidence of medieval times in Naples. In the 17th century, when the church of the same name overlooking piazza di Donnaregina was built, it was deconsecrated and closed to the public, as it was annexed to the cloister. Today the church – which since 1969 has been part of the Graduate course on monument restauration at the Faculty of Architecture of the Federico II University – can be visited during exhibitions and events organized by the Madre Museum, being used as an additional exhibition space, one of rare beauty and with a great evocative power.
The church belongs to an ancient convent complex founded by the Swabians in the XIII century, destroyed by the earthquake of 1293, and reconstructed and enlarged in 1325 by Queen Mary of Hungary, the wife of Charles II of Anjou. The building is preceded by a cloister characterized by a splendid lacunar executed in the early 16th century by a carver from Bergamo, Pietro Belverte. Designed by an anonymous Angevin architect – probably Lando di Pietro from Siena – the gothic church is designed, in compliance with the Franciscan system, as a simple hall with trusses, an apse with a pentagonal plan, ogival stained glass windows and a ribbed cross vault. It houses the splendid marble sepulchre of the magnanimous Queen, by Tino di Camaino and Gagliardo Primario (1325-26) as well as frescoes of paramount importance in the history 14th-century painting in Naples. The choir of the Clares – which, like the matronea and the palatine tribune, is an elevated space obtained from a tripartition of the hall – houses the largest cycle of 14th-century frescoes in Naples, attributed to Pietro Cavallini and Filippo Rusuti (1317-23 ca.). Moreover, it houses frescoes from the Loffredo Chapel, which haven’t been attributed nor dated as of yet.
Napoli crucifixed
12.06.08 | 29.09.08
Earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius, plagues, garbage crisis, bloody Camorra wars: in Naples, all the natural and man-made disasters over the centuries take on the character of essential events. Here, a metaphorical leap takes the truth of facts beyond reality. It is as if the city’s ...
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