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The Cappella Cacace and Cappella Firrao compared

The Cappella Cacace and the Cappella Firrao in respectively San Paolo Maggiore and San Lorenzo Maggiore together form an interesting case for the development and innovative character of funerary chapels in Naples, halfway the seventeenth century. A turbulent and worldly city with an artistic expression that has remained almost isolated from the great art-centres of Italy, Naples drew above all sharp lines between citizens, aristocracy and clergy. Especially in smaller projects, such as funerary chapels, innovative art attempted to establish new ways to relate between those different groups.

The question guiding this research read: to what extent and in what way do the innovative aspects within the Cappella Firrao and the Cappelle Cacace relate to each other and, more broadly, to the Neapolitan baroque?

Both projects are small-scale. That implies that their commissioners and the artists involved do not necessarily feel the pressure to conform to and respect the larger social situation, or the specific location. The archway of the Cappella Cacace shows how far they can go to disregard that situation. Within their own space, both chapels answer to very specific goals. The unity with which they do so is the most important artistic achievement of these chapels.

Spatial unity in the Cappella Firrao in San Lorenzo Maggiore

In the Cappella Firrao a space is created within which the relationship between its commissioners, Cesare and his father Antonino Firrao, and the Madonna can be elaborated. In all aspects, materially as well as formally, the chapel acknowledged the relationship between the three, and did so in a particular spatial way. For instance, the framing of the marble statues with aedicule (though stylistically a residue of a classical background that was no longer fashionable) helped to outline the separate spaces in which they repose. Though the aim and treatment of space in the Cappella Cacace are different, the designer implemented a similar method to craft the material and form of the chapel. The resulting space likewise forms a unity in which not only the statues, but also the theme of the chapel, the rosary, is honoured. Herein lay the innovative aspects of both chapels, and simultaneously their distinctive powers.

The relation with Neapolitan baroque in general appears more complex, because of the numerous analogies between motives, use of materials and origin of shapes. All contributions of artists, sculptors, painters and architects alike, who have worked in the Neapolitan milieu, have received a distinctive mark that allows identifying their work as a coherent whole.