Description
The church of Sant'Anna dei Lombardi stands in Piazza Monteoliveto, in the center of Naples. With its sculptures, chapels and sacristies, it is one of the most important testimonies to the Tuscan Renaissance in the city: Benedetto da Maiano, Antonio Rossellino and Giorgio Vasari all worked here.
The atrium is Gothic, in piperno stone, with the depressed arch typical of Neapolitan late Gothic. Inside, a single nave with a coffered ceiling and chapels on both sides, which look like a glimpse of Florence brought to Naples.
The showpiece is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Guido Mazzoni, from 1492. Eight life-size polychrome terracotta figures surround the reclining Christ: grief, fainting and very real faces.
Two figures have the features of the Aragonese royals. Joseph of Arimathea is certainly Alfonso II, and beside him, in all likelihood, is his father Ferdinand I. The group is in the Oratory of the Holy Sacrament.
The Piccolomini Chapel is among the most successful in the Florentine manner. Antonio Rossellino, Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano worked on it, taking up the scheme of the Cardinal of Portugal's Chapel at San Miniato al Monte, in Florence.
In the Correale Chapel is the Annunciation by Benedetto da Maiano, from 1489. Recent studies argue that other young Tuscan artists also worked on the altar, perhaps a very young Michelangelo, in the twisting putto at the top right.
At the end of a corridor behind the apse is Vasari's Old Sacristy, the monks' former refectory. The vault has allegories frescoed by the painter from Arezzo in 1544, and the walls have choir stalls inlaid by Fra Giovanni da Verona.
The church was founded in 1411 for the Olivetan monks by Gorello Origlia, protonotary to King Ladislaus. Under the Aragonese it became one of the court's favorites, and in Naples the Florentine bankers filled it with Tuscan artists.
It was the Strozzi, who had a branch of their bank in the city, who negotiated with the sculptors of the Piccolomini Chapel and paid them. The current name is more recent: in 1801 the Lombard confraternity arrived.
In the atrium is the funerary aedicule of Domenico Fontana, architect to Pope Sixtus V. The facade, too, bears the marks of war: the Gothic atrium was rebuilt after the bombings of 1943.
The atrium is Gothic, in piperno stone, with the depressed arch typical of Neapolitan late Gothic. Inside, a single nave with a coffered ceiling and chapels on both sides, which look like a glimpse of Florence brought to Naples.
The showpiece is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Guido Mazzoni, from 1492. Eight life-size polychrome terracotta figures surround the reclining Christ: grief, fainting and very real faces.
Two figures have the features of the Aragonese royals. Joseph of Arimathea is certainly Alfonso II, and beside him, in all likelihood, is his father Ferdinand I. The group is in the Oratory of the Holy Sacrament.
The Piccolomini Chapel is among the most successful in the Florentine manner. Antonio Rossellino, Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano worked on it, taking up the scheme of the Cardinal of Portugal's Chapel at San Miniato al Monte, in Florence.
In the Correale Chapel is the Annunciation by Benedetto da Maiano, from 1489. Recent studies argue that other young Tuscan artists also worked on the altar, perhaps a very young Michelangelo, in the twisting putto at the top right.
At the end of a corridor behind the apse is Vasari's Old Sacristy, the monks' former refectory. The vault has allegories frescoed by the painter from Arezzo in 1544, and the walls have choir stalls inlaid by Fra Giovanni da Verona.
The church was founded in 1411 for the Olivetan monks by Gorello Origlia, protonotary to King Ladislaus. Under the Aragonese it became one of the court's favorites, and in Naples the Florentine bankers filled it with Tuscan artists.
It was the Strozzi, who had a branch of their bank in the city, who negotiated with the sculptors of the Piccolomini Chapel and paid them. The current name is more recent: in 1801 the Lombard confraternity arrived.
In the atrium is the funerary aedicule of Domenico Fontana, architect to Pope Sixtus V. The facade, too, bears the marks of war: the Gothic atrium was rebuilt after the bombings of 1943.