The Matter of Miracles: Neapolitan Baroque Architecture and Sanctity (Rethinking Art's Histories) - Hardcover

Hills, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719084741 ISBN 13: 9780719084744

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2016

Synopsis

This book investigates baroque architecture through the lens of San Gennaro’s miraculously liquefying blood in Naples. This vantage point allows a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of the power of baroque relics and reliquaries. It shows how a focus on miracles produces original interpretations of architecture, sanctity and place which will engage architectural historians everywhere. The matter of the baroque miracle extends into a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. The study will transform our understanding of baroque art and architecture, sanctity and Naples. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation to engage fiercely with materiality and potentiality and thus unleash baroque art and architecture as productive and transformational. -- .

About this title

About the Author

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

From the Back Cover

The matter of miracles offers a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of baroque relics, reliquaries, metals and materiality, through investigation of the miracle of the Neapolitan saint San Gennaro's liquefying blood in relation to art, philosophy, architecture and the city.

Focused on the richly adorned baroque Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro, this study embraces sanctity and salvation in the material analogies at work among city, saint, volcano and blood to question the cultural impact of Spanish colonialism within Europe in the city of Naples. It examines the matter of the baroque miracle as transformational through a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. Bronze and silver, architecture and sculpture are subjected to energetic 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.

The matter of miracles will particular appeal to students and scholars of urban studies, art and architectural history and theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719084741
• ISBN 13: 9780719084744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 656