In a book the entire history of the Girolamini church in Naples in the seventeenth century

There is the discovery of a large amount of unpublished documents behind the volume I Girolamini. Stories of artists and patrons in Naples in the seventeenth century, Gianluca Forgione’s book, released this year and published by Editori Paparo (208 pages, €50.00, ISBN 9788831983334), a comprehensive, up-to-date and scrupulous monograph on the artistic events that affected the Neapolitan complex, and in particular its church, in the seventeenth century. It is a work that starts from the doctoral thesis of the author, an art historian, and has led to the discovery of contracts, wills, letters and a variety of documents that have enabled the scholar to reconstruct with abundance many of the most important events that affected the Girolamini in the seventeenth century, when some of the greatest artists of the time worked there (or worked for the church), from Guido Reni to Luca Giordano, from Pietro da Cortona to José de Ribera, from Domenichino to Francesco Algardi. A significant operation also because, Forgione himself reminds us in the foreword, working on the Girolamini complex has not been easy: “the difficulties that the scientific community has always encountered in the study of the monument are well known,” Forgione writes, “motivated first and foremost by the stubborn closure of the archives of the Neapolitan Congregation, which are still inaccessible,” a circumstance that has always made the study of the Girolamini difficult.

The book is structured in six chapters, devoted respectively to the construction events of the Girolamini church, to Guido Reni’s presence in the complex and, above all, to the collecting exploits of his patron Domenico Lercaro (from whose collection the famous Girolamini picture gallery originated), to the episodes of patronage of which Princess Anna Colonna Barberini became the protagonist, to the seventeenth-century interventions in the chapel of Saints Charles and Philip by the Oratorian Father Carlo Lombardo, to those due to other episodes of Philippine patronage, and to the role of Father Francesco Gizzio ’s patronage of the chapel of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. Each chapter is closed by adocumentary appendix that carefully reproduces the documents (many of them, as anticipated, unpublished) that Forgione made use of in his study, and closing the entire treatment is a rich bibliography.

The history of the Girolamini, Forgione recalls, began in 1586 when Francesco Maria Tarugi, Antonio Talpa and Giovenale Ancina, “among the first and most important followers of St. Philip Neri, decided to establish themselves in the capital of the Viceroyalty, accepting the invitation of Archbishop Annibale di Capua and the frequent encouragement of the Theatine Fathers of Naples.” It was August 15, 1592, when the viceroy of Naples, Juan de Zúñiga Avellaneda y Bazán, attended the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone of the Girolamini church, but the years between the arrival of the “Neapolitan” fathers and the beginning of the construction of the church are dense with correspondence exchanges between the three followers of Philip Neri established in Campania and the Vallicellians in Rome. Exchanges from which we learn about the desires, ambitions, and wishes of the three (the idea of the Neapolitan fathers, for example, was to build a church similar to that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome), exchanges of drawings (the architect of the church was the Tuscan Giovanni Antonio Dosio), and other information that clarifies the circumstances that led to the birth of the building. The book follows these events in detail, also devoting in-depth study to the procurement of materials. The body of the church was finished in 1619, but the work was destined to continue because throughout the century the Girolamini church continued to be expanded and filled with works of art.

Cover of the book The Girolamini. Stories of artists and patrons in seventeenth-century Naples by Gianluca Forgione

Interior of the Girolamini church. Ph. Credit Olivo Scibelli

These include those of Guido Reni, who arrived in Naples in 1621: the book, as anticipated, devotes a part of the second chapter to his involvement in the Girolamini enterprise, without neglecting some interesting color notes, such as the fact that the artist, as is well known, had arrived in Naples to attend to the decoration of the chapel of San Gennaro, but was then forced to give up because of the threats of the Neapolitan painters, who even hired a hitman to kill a collaborator of the Bolognese painter for intimidation purposes. Reni, therefore, immediately returned to Rome but maintained firm relations with a Neapolitan patron (but of Apulian origin), the tailor and textile merchant Domenico Lercaro, a very active art collector, for whom Reni executed a number of works destined for his collection. These included theMeeting of Christ with John the Baptist, which arrived in Naples in 1629, and probably the Saint Francis in Ecstasy and the Flight into Egypt. But Lercaro also maintained relations with other great artists of the time, such as Fabrizio Santafede, Giovanni Bernardnio Azzolino, and José de Ribera (to the latter Lercaro ordered five paintings, a Christ at the Column and four paintings dedicated to as many saints, namely Andrew, Peter, Paul and James the Elder, all of which are now preserved in the Girolamini picture gallery). One curiosity concerns the way in which Lercaro, one of the best tailors in the city, paid the artists: namely, with clothes. This is also the case of Guido Reni, a great fashion enthusiast, who used to dress in very elegant clothes: “Lercaro was able to pay him homage,” writes Forgione, “with some of his best creations, and Guido reciprocated him in an equally generous way, since in Naples he only put his hand to his brushes again for lu.” Lercaro’s is, in short, a very rare case of a tailor-collector: as anticipated, it is from his collection that the Girolamini picture gallery was born, since it was Lercaro himself who wanted to donate his collection to the complex, with the condition that he would never sell the paintings (the book traces the events by reproducing the documents pertaining to Lercaro’s collecting history and the will with which he made a gift of the collection to the Girolamini).

Another case of patronage is that of Anna Colonna Barberini, who, writes Forgione, “linked her name to important episodes of patronage, although these were often motivated by her fervent faith rather than by an unconditional love of the arts.” Among those whom the princess favored were the fathers of the Girolamini Oratory: the presence of two relevant works, St. Peter by Pietro da Cortona and the Reliquary Angels by Alessandro Algardi (the latter stolen from the church in the last century), are due to Anna Colonna Barberini’s generosity. But that’s not all: the princess also financed the altarpiece in the chapel of Sant’ Alessio (Pietro da Cortona’s Morte di Sant’Alessio, still in situ, a work of capital importance for seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting, whose cues were well grasped by two great Neapolitans of the time such as Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena), a case that the volume reconstructs by making use of unpublished documents.

Through the chapters devoted to the timely reconstructions of the events of Saints Charles and Philip, the latter known above all for the early 18th century intervention of Luca Giordano, but whose early 17th century marble decoration was carried out at the initiative of the Oratorian Carlo Lombardo (this is the intervention on which the book focuses, on which “little effort has been made so far by studies.” Forgione points out) by Dionisio Lazzari, and to those that saw two other Oratorian fathers, Giovanni Tommaso Spina and Antonio Scotti, as commissioners (the former allocated part of his inheritance to the decoration of the high altar and the dome of the church, while the latter had some works made, including an imposing silver antependium for the high altar: are worthy of a chapter dedicated to them since they are examples of commissions that did not come from political figures or wealthy devotees, but from the Filipinos themselves), we come to the last section of the book which, as anticipated, investigates the role of Father Francesco Gizzio for the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene.

Gizzio was prefect for the congregation at the Girolamini for 30 years, and was also known as a playwright (he also wrote a drama about Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi). Forgione’s research made it possible to find Father Gizzio’s will, which, the scholar explains, “provides valuable information about the Oratorian’s personality and his role as patron at the Girolamini,” in that he named the chapel of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi as his “herede particolare et universale.” Gizzio’s inheritance was to be used, meanwhile, to finish the chapel’s marble decoration; in addition, his father left to the complex the scientific instrumentation that was in his possession (telescopes, hydraulic and optical machines, mechanical instruments, globes, and also natural and artificial curiosities). His dream was to have his studio, his “Gizziana Gallery,” become a true “Museum of the Congregation of the Oratory of Naples,” along the lines of the one Athanasius Kircher had founded in 1651 inside the Roman College. For the chapel, Gizzio had also had a picture painted by Luca Giordano, a Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi with the Crucifix: it is worth noting, moreover, that it was Gizzio himself who introduced the cult of Magdalene de’ Pazzi to the Girolamini church. Again, the documents found by Forgione have made it possible to reconstruct the chronology of Luca Giordano’s work, which Gizzio began to pay for in 1689.

Stories of great artists, then, but not only. In Gianluca Forgione’s book, stories of patrons are interwoven with those of painters, sculptors, architects, and carvers, revealing unexpected folds of one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of art in southern Italy, told with a scientific tone (and with an approach and method very much oriented to documentary research, as we have seen), but which is also able to return an interesting fresco even for those who are not used to readings of this kind: a fresco that tells of an industrious Naples and artistic center of great importance, where an ever-expanding building site was located, among the most significant in Europe at the time, although perhaps little known today. And this book could also be the beginning of a new chapter in the centuries-old history of this art treasure.

In a book the entire history of the Girolamini church in Naples in the seventeenth century

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