The Capuchin complex of the Santissima Trinità at Aversa and Fabrizio Santafede’s ‘Immaculate Conception’
The state of conservation of Italy’s art–historical heritage is not always enviable; in southern Italy, in particular, alongside meritorious and successful restoration projects, situations of extreme degradation persist. Not only do they threaten the integrity of the heritage itself, but jeopardize the conservation itself of the architectural and environmental context in which works of art are placed, with grave consequences also for a sound reconstruction of our history.
The aim of the present study is to contribute to a knowledge of a very significant fragment of that heritage: the ruined monastic complex of the Trinità dei Cappuccini in Aversa and Fabrizio Santafede’s altarpiece of the ‘Immaculate Conception’ (1606), formerly on the high altar of the church, but now dismantled and preserved, in some neglect, in the Biblioteca Civica in Aversa.
Based — where possible — on an objective analysis of the complex in question, backed up by the necessary study of the sources and the more recent bibliography, the paper proposes a reconstruction of the links between the Capuchins of Aversa and the Pinelli in Naples – the cultivated and prestigious bankers of Genoese origin who had obtained from Titian the ‘Annunciation’ for the decoration of their chapel in San Domenico Maggiore in Naples.
A painstaking archival search has enabled the author to establish that it was in fact Cosimo II Pinelli who had commissioned Santafede’s altarpiece. He then places the little known ‘Immaculate Conception’ in the wider context of the œuvre of the Neapolitan master and of the artistic scene in viceregal Naples just before and contemporary with the arrival of Caravaggio in the city. An equally fruitful archival search has also enabled the author to reconstruct the history of the entire complex of the Trinità from its foundations to the present day.
