The Lamentation
Real court faces in expressions of grief.
Baku — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Giuseppe Guida — CC BY-SA 4.0 · MentNFG — CC BY-SA 4.0 · MentNFG — CC BY-SA 4.0
"The Tuscan Renaissance church of Naples": Sant'Anna dei Lombardi (Monteoliveto) was built in 1411 and became the favoured church of the Aragonese court, which brought Florentine sculptors to it — and it is today the richest church in Naples in Renaissance sculpture rather than painting. Its masterpiece is Guido Mazzoni's Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1492): eight life-size terracotta figures around the body of Christ, their faces real portraits of court figures (one is said to be King Alfonso II himself) with grief so realistic it shocks — among the most powerful sculpture of the fifteenth century. It also holds the Piccolomini chapel with sculpture by Antonio Rossellino and Benedetto da Maiano, a painted ceiling by Giorgio Vasari, and the old sacristy with inlaid wooden stalls showing views of cities — Vasari is said to have painted its ceiling in a hundred days. Closed for decades after the 1980 earthquake, it was restored and reopened.
Real court faces in expressions of grief.
Painted in a hundred days over the old sacristy.
Piazza Monteoliveto 44, Naples
Santa Maria la NovaA flat wooden ceiling — no dome, no swirling illusion — carrying dozens of gilt-3 minutes walk4.5
Piazza del Gesù NuovoA square at the western edge of Naples's old city, holding the church of Gesù Nu3 minutes walk4.8
Santa Chiara ComplexBehind the huge Gothic church of Santa Chiara — the greatest of Angevin Naples a4 minutes walk4.6
Gesù NuovoThe Gesù Nuovo façade is Naples's architectural riddle: an entire wall of protru4 minutes walk4.8
Basilica of San Giovanni MaggioreIt stayed shut for forty-two years after collapses closed it in 1970, and it reo6 minutes walk4.7Because the fifteenth-century Aragonese court imported Tuscan artists to give its capital the look of the northern Renaissance; so this church in particular became a gallery of Florentine sculpture inside a Baroque city.