The Matter of Miracles: Neapolitan Baroque Architecture and Sanctity

Investigating the miracle of the Neapolitan saint San Gennaro's liquefying blood in relation to art, architecture and philosophy, this book offers a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of baroque relics, reliquaries, metals and materiality. Focused on the richly adorned baroque Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro, this study embraces sanctity and salvation, and questions the cultural impact and consequences of Spanish colonialism within Europe in the city of Naples. It examines the matter of the baroque miracle through a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. Bronze and silver architecture and sculpture are subjected to energetic transformational interpretations, which give a vitally new approach to baroque sanctity, in which the city is seen as an event in the history of holiness. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation, to engage fiercely with materiality as potentiality and thus with art and architecture as potentially transformative.

Author: Amelia Jones, Helen Hills
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 10/13/2016
Pages: 656
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 3.30lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780719084744

About the Author

Helen Hills is Professor of History of Art at the University of York