Monumental complex Purgatory ad Arco
Baroque church of skull-carved facade above, radiant chapels of Neapolitan Baroque painting below.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Monumental Complex Purgatory ad Arco in Naples opens in 1661 with an unproven young painter named Luca Giordano, later nicknamed Luca Fa Presto for painting fast, handed a whole side chapel inside a church whose facade is carved with skulls and crossbones. It follows his Death of Saint Alessio, an old man dying beneath a staircase recognized too late by his own family, and the visible debt its swirling drama owes to his teacher, the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera. Upstairs, painters Massimo Stanzione and Andrea Vaccaro filled the church with the color and movement that set the standard Giordano had to match. Look up at Stanzione's altarpiece before turning to the chapel he was given to fill.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Pio Monte della Misericordia
Baroque church housing a single Caravaggio altarpiece, commissioned by a still-active charity founded by seven young noblemen.
Chiesa Museo di Santa Luciella ai Librai
Tiny baroque chapel hiding a hypogeum crypt and a mummified skull venerated as a listener to the dead.
Donnaregina Monumental Complex - Diocesan Museum of Naples
Gothic convent choir holding Naples's largest surviving fourteenth-century fresco cycle.
Charterhouse & Museum of San Martino
Baroque monastery church sheathed floor to ceiling in inlaid marble shipped from four countries.
Monumental Complex of Saint Anne of the Lombards
Renaissance chapel holding a life-size terracotta Lamentation, its mourners modeled on real Aragonese courtiers.
Basilica di Santa Maria della Sanità
Baroque church with a majolica-tiled dome, built over ancient catacombs by a friar-architect.