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The Church of San Giuseppe delle
Scalze
 The church
of San
Giuseppe delle Scalze (also known to
locals as San
Giuseppe a Pontecorvo) was open
today, but not for a church service. A
neighborhood committee and a private group of
architects were sponsoring a tour of the
premises in order to draw attention to the
incredibly degraded state of a building that
really does deserve to be called a “jewel of
the Neapolitan Baroque,” in spite of how
overused that term is.
The church is at the beginning of the steep
road named Salita
Pontecorvo that leads to the west and
up the hill away from today’s Piazza Dante. A first
small church on the site was built in 1606 for
sisters of the Teresian order; they also
acquired adjacent buildings for a convent.
Construction of the larger church, itself, was
started around 1640 and finished in 1663. The
larger church is particularly interesting
because it involved the conversion
of
what
had
been a private dwelling, well beyond the
extent to which the property had been modified
by the Teresian sisters when they built the
first church. The new construction was made
possible because urban expansion to the west
and up the hill slowed considerably around the
year 1600, and many noblemen who had built
villas on the hill moved elsewhere, clearing
the way for religious orders to move in.
(The
Teresian
sisters were of the "discalced" [barefoot]
Carmelite order of Santa Teresa. The monastery
for the same order was S.M
degli Scalzi,
built
at the same time and by the same architect,
Cosimo Fanzago, one
of the great architects of the Italian
Baroque.
Fanzago's
plan
was
ingenious.
To get around having to start from scratch, he
used the building that was already in place
and built a double façade. That is, the
external façade marked by three arched
niches with statues of St. Teresa, St Joseph
and St. Peter of Alcantara (photo above) is
not the real entrance to the church. The
niches are open at the back and let in light
to illuminate the courtyard of the original
building. That ex-courtyard space then has a
double stairway, typical of many large private
dwellings of that period, leading up to the
second façade with the entrance to the
church; thus, the inside of the church,
itself, was originally the piano nobile
of the private dwelling, meaning the first
floor above ground level. The spaces on the
ground level on either side of the staircase
were part of the original smaller church from
1606. The design with the double façade
is not unique, but it is rare enough to make
it of great interest in the history of
architecture.
Of the works of art commissioned for San Giuseppe
delle Scalze, the most significant
was by Luca Giordano:
La sacra
famiglia ha la visione dei simboli della
passion [The Holy Family sees a
vision of the Symbols of the Passion], dated
1669 and signed “L.G.” That and other works
were removed to the Capodimonte Museum
for safekeeping after the 1980 earthquake.
Many churches in Naples were closed
immediately after the earthquake, but San Giuseppe
remains one of the few that never reopened.
The earthquake opened the flood-gates for the
jackals of art-theft to move in and walk off
with whatever they could. Some of what was
plundered has been recovered. The inside of San Giuseppe
delle Scalze is almost empty now.
Such public events as the one mentioned above
might serve to draw attention, the first step
to getting money somewhere down the line. It's
a shame and truly ironic that this “jewel” is
in such sorry shape; after all, Naples is in
the midst of a five-month celebration called
“Back to the Baroque.”
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