Description
The church of the Gesù Nuovo is a great Baroque church in Naples, in Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, opposite the Basilica of Santa Chiara and the obelisk of the Immaculate Conception. From outside it looks like a palace, and in fact it was one: the facade is diamond-point, all of piperno.
The facade is the most curious thing. The ashlars are massive pyramids, the “diamonds”, and bear incised marks: for historians they are the signs of the stonecutters' teams, while a legend ties them to esoteric secrets. For some scholars they are even the notes of a musical score. In the center the marble portal is Renaissance, with Baroque additions of 1695.
Inside, the plan is a Greek cross, with marble work by Cosimo Fanzago. Above the entrance is the great Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple by Francesco Solimena, from 1725. In the apse Massimo Stanzione painted the life of the Virgin in less than a year, and the high altar is of marble, malachite and lapis lazuli.
One chapel is dedicated to Saint Giuseppe Moscati, the doctor of the poor canonized in 1987: his body is kept in the church. In the rooms next door a Second World War bomb is on display: it fell on the ceiling of the nave and did not explode.
On the polychrome marble floor, just inside, spreads an enormous coat of arms of Isabella Feltria Della Rovere, Princess of Bisignano and the church's greatest benefactor. Of Lanfranco's fresco only the four evangelists on the pendentives remain, and the right-hand organ, with 2,523 pipes, still plays: a rare case, because the Jesuits did not provide for liturgical singing.
Before, it was the palace of the Sanseverino, princes of Salerno, finished in 1470. In 1536 Ferrante Sanseverino hosted Charles V with a celebrated feast, but in 1547 he sided with the people against the Spanish Inquisition and had to go into exile.
In 1584 the palace was bought by the Jesuits, who turned it into a church: they removed the rooms, courtyard and gardens and saved only the facade and the portal. The dome painted by Lanfranco in 1635 collapsed in the earthquake of 1688; rebuilt, it was torn down in 1774.
The facade is the most curious thing. The ashlars are massive pyramids, the “diamonds”, and bear incised marks: for historians they are the signs of the stonecutters' teams, while a legend ties them to esoteric secrets. For some scholars they are even the notes of a musical score. In the center the marble portal is Renaissance, with Baroque additions of 1695.
Inside, the plan is a Greek cross, with marble work by Cosimo Fanzago. Above the entrance is the great Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple by Francesco Solimena, from 1725. In the apse Massimo Stanzione painted the life of the Virgin in less than a year, and the high altar is of marble, malachite and lapis lazuli.
One chapel is dedicated to Saint Giuseppe Moscati, the doctor of the poor canonized in 1987: his body is kept in the church. In the rooms next door a Second World War bomb is on display: it fell on the ceiling of the nave and did not explode.
On the polychrome marble floor, just inside, spreads an enormous coat of arms of Isabella Feltria Della Rovere, Princess of Bisignano and the church's greatest benefactor. Of Lanfranco's fresco only the four evangelists on the pendentives remain, and the right-hand organ, with 2,523 pipes, still plays: a rare case, because the Jesuits did not provide for liturgical singing.
Before, it was the palace of the Sanseverino, princes of Salerno, finished in 1470. In 1536 Ferrante Sanseverino hosted Charles V with a celebrated feast, but in 1547 he sided with the people against the Spanish Inquisition and had to go into exile.
In 1584 the palace was bought by the Jesuits, who turned it into a church: they removed the rooms, courtyard and gardens and saved only the facade and the portal. The dome painted by Lanfranco in 1635 collapsed in the earthquake of 1688; rebuilt, it was torn down in 1774.