Santa Maria della Sanità, Naples

Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità Basilica di Santa Maria della Sanità (in Italian)
Minor basilica
Location
Location	Naples, Campania, Italy
Geographic coordinates	40°51′35″N 14°14′56″E / 40.8597°N 14.2490°E / 40.8597; 14.2490
Architecture
Type	Church

The Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità is a basilica church located over the

, also called locally O' Monacone (the big monk).

History

The church was originally attached to a

.

The main altar is elevated and accessed via flanking Baroque-style spiraling staircases, all sheathed in polychrome marble. The entrance to the crypt or catacombs is beneath the altar, which was elevated above the site of the original chapel at the site.^[1] On the left of the nave is an elevated polychrome marble pulpit, designed by Dionisi Lazzari.^[2]

The crypt, once site of a paleochristian chapel, was supposedly the burial site for San Gaudioso, a bishop of North Africa. The crypt has ten shallow altars surmounted by frescoes by Bernardino Fera.^[3]

The interior of the upper church and chapels are decorated by painters such as:

• Giovanni Balducci (St Peter Martyr in right 2nd chapel)
• Giovanni Bernardino Azzolini (Virgin of the Rosary and a Condemnation of the Albigensian Heretics in the large chapel and an Annuciation in 3rd chapel on the left),
• Andrea Vaccaro (Marriage of St Catherine in right 4th chapel and St Catherine of Siena receives Stigmata in right 5th chapel)
• Girolamo de Magistro (Santa Lucia left large chapel)
• Giovanni Vincenzo Forli (Circumcision in large chapel on left)
• Luca Giordano (San Nicola with saints Ambrose and Ludovico Beltrando below in the first chapel on the right, Sermon of San Vicenzo in right 3rd chapel beside the original 5th century icon; also painted Virgin with St Rosa in left 2nd chapel, and a St Hyacinth a cui porge una scritta "gaude fliimi hyacinte". He also painted a St Pius V with Dominican Saints)
• Pacecco de Rosa
  (St. Thomas of Aquino)
• Gaspare Traversi (ovals in 3rd chapel on left)
• Aniella de Rosa
  (San Raimondo da Pennafort in first chapel on left)
• Also works by Anna Maria Bova, Francesco Solimena, Giovanni Pisani, and Filippo Donzelli.^[4]

The original church was connected to the veneration of

. In the 1500s, a 6th-century image of the Madonna and Child was uncovered here, and led to the establishment of this church.

The marble pulpit dates from 1677 to 1705. The organ, now in disuse, dates from the early 1700s.^[5]

References

External links