Una storia secolare di arte, vita e umanità
Edited by Francesca Amirante, Photographs by Luigi Spina
Texts by Francesca Amirante, Vittoria Vaino, Daniela d’Acunto, Giacomo Sances, Silvana Musella Guida, Fausta Blasi, Adolfo Mutarelli, Giulio Raimondi, Daniela Menafro, Mimmo Borrelli, Angela Catello
This volume is dedicated to the compound of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco, located in the historic center of Naples, and including a small and precious seventeenth-century church, a museum, a historical archive, and a large hypogeum housing the ancient cult of the “anime pezzentelle”, or souls in Purgatory.
The text edited by Francesca Amirante takes readers on an intimate journey through history, art, worship, and socio-cultural practices, in addition to offering in-depth information on paintings, sculptures, silverware, sacred vestments, and manuscripts, plus short essays focusing on the cult of the “anime pezzentelle”, the rich seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musical output as well as the historical archive.
Luigi Spina’s photography serves as a guide and his gaze portrays the complexity of this unique place: the spaces, the details of the works, the ex-votos. The images dialogue with the textual apparatus, highlighting the extraordinary nature of this compound, established around the idea of purgatory and the care of souls.
Francesca Amirante, an art historian, and professor is driven by her passion for popularizing cultural heritage. Since the 1980s, she has dedicated herself to projects aimed at enhancing the city of Naples, where she founded several associations, taught graduate courses, curated exhibitions, and edited publications. She is president of the Progetto Museo Association and curator of the Museum Complex of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco. She is the author of essays, guides, and catalogs. Since 2016, she has been the creator of the Accogliere ad Arte project that focuses on the relationship between cultural heritage and humanity.
Luigi Spina, photographer, began his visual research with several photography series focusing on amphitheaters and the civic sense of the sacred, the links between art and faith, the search for ancient cultural identities, and the physical confrontation with classical sculpture, the obsessive research on the sea, the boxes of the dreamer archaeologist (Giorgio Buchner). With 5 Continents Editions he has published, among others, The Buchner Boxes (2014), Hemba (2017) and Mythical Diary (2017). With the same publishing house, he inaugurated the “Hidden Treasures” series that boasts the following titles: The Farnese Cup (2018), The Alexander Mosaic (2020), Saint Dominic by Niccolò dell’Arca (2020), I Confratelli (2020), Sing Sing, Pompeii’s Body (2020), and The Riace Bronzes. He created with 5 Continents Editions the extensive photography project Interno pompeiano (2023, published in English by Thames & Hudson with the title Inside Pompeii) and the series dedicated to the plaster casts of Antonio Canova: Canova. Four Tempos (2020 – 2024). In 2023, he was awarded the Amedeo Maiuri International Prize for Photography.
Edition in Italian with English abstracts at the end of the volume.
