Description
The church of Sant'Antonio Abate is an ancient church in Naples, at the start of the district that bears its name, on Via Foria. Outside it shows an eighteenth-century facade, but beneath it medieval pieces survive, starting with the portal.
Its most precious piece is the portal: white marble, with a pointed-arch lunette. The wooden doors, divided into ninety panels, carry the coat of arms of the Antonian order, the tau, and that of the Durazzo family. In 1905 a chronicler described them as among the few fourteenth-century doors left in the city.
The interior has a single nave with a coffered ceiling. Beneath the stuccoes you can still make out the Angevin arches of the chapels. On the pillars two fragments of fourteenth-century frescoes remain: the Crucifixion of Saint Anthony Abbot and a Madonna of Graces, with a child grabbing his mother's breast with surprising naturalness.
Farther on are two medieval statues, San Baculo dressed as a pilgrim (some say he is Saint James of Compostela, because of the shells) and Saint Anthony with the boar. Then a marble Madonna and Child, which tradition says has the face of Queen Joanna I, and a sixteenth-century baptismal font with Saint Anthony and his pig.
In the upper part of the church are paintings by Domenico Viola, a pupil of Luca Giordano: a Saint Nicholas and twelve hermit saints between the large windows. In the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament there is a fresco of the Deposition, restored in 2008.
Why does the saint have a pig beside him? In the fourteenth century a church and a hospital stood here. The Antonian monks treated "Saint Anthony's fire", shingles, with an ointment made from pig fat.
The Neapolitans got into the habit of raising piglets to give to the monks. The custom lasted until 1665, when during a procession a piglet slipped between the bishop's legs. Furious, he banned pig-raising in the city.
The origins are shrouded in mystery. Legend says the church was founded by Queen Joanna I of Anjou, but a document from 1313 proves that a church and hospital already existed. Sources are so scarce that in 1905 Benedetto Croce sent a chronicler to describe it for his journal.
In the eighteenth century Cardinal Sersale covered the Gothic facade with the current one. On the right an old pointed-arch portal remains, walled up: it was the entrance to the convent. The Risanamento, in the late nineteenth century, took away one side of the church to widen the street.
Don't miss
• The portal with its fourteenth-century doors.
• The frescoes on the pillars.
• The baptismal font with the pig.
Did you know?
• The 1905 chronicler wrote that Sersale had made "disfigurements" inside and out: the cardinal's coat of arms on the facade still keeps the memory of it.
• The square in front of the church came into being in the early 1940s, when the walls joining church, convent and lazaretto came down.
Its most precious piece is the portal: white marble, with a pointed-arch lunette. The wooden doors, divided into ninety panels, carry the coat of arms of the Antonian order, the tau, and that of the Durazzo family. In 1905 a chronicler described them as among the few fourteenth-century doors left in the city.
The interior has a single nave with a coffered ceiling. Beneath the stuccoes you can still make out the Angevin arches of the chapels. On the pillars two fragments of fourteenth-century frescoes remain: the Crucifixion of Saint Anthony Abbot and a Madonna of Graces, with a child grabbing his mother's breast with surprising naturalness.
Farther on are two medieval statues, San Baculo dressed as a pilgrim (some say he is Saint James of Compostela, because of the shells) and Saint Anthony with the boar. Then a marble Madonna and Child, which tradition says has the face of Queen Joanna I, and a sixteenth-century baptismal font with Saint Anthony and his pig.
In the upper part of the church are paintings by Domenico Viola, a pupil of Luca Giordano: a Saint Nicholas and twelve hermit saints between the large windows. In the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament there is a fresco of the Deposition, restored in 2008.
Why does the saint have a pig beside him? In the fourteenth century a church and a hospital stood here. The Antonian monks treated "Saint Anthony's fire", shingles, with an ointment made from pig fat.
The Neapolitans got into the habit of raising piglets to give to the monks. The custom lasted until 1665, when during a procession a piglet slipped between the bishop's legs. Furious, he banned pig-raising in the city.
The origins are shrouded in mystery. Legend says the church was founded by Queen Joanna I of Anjou, but a document from 1313 proves that a church and hospital already existed. Sources are so scarce that in 1905 Benedetto Croce sent a chronicler to describe it for his journal.
In the eighteenth century Cardinal Sersale covered the Gothic facade with the current one. On the right an old pointed-arch portal remains, walled up: it was the entrance to the convent. The Risanamento, in the late nineteenth century, took away one side of the church to widen the street.
Don't miss
• The portal with its fourteenth-century doors.
• The frescoes on the pillars.
• The baptismal font with the pig.
Did you know?
• The 1905 chronicler wrote that Sersale had made "disfigurements" inside and out: the cardinal's coat of arms on the facade still keeps the memory of it.
• The square in front of the church came into being in the early 1940s, when the walls joining church, convent and lazaretto came down.