Complex of Salvatore

by Salvatore Di Liello

In the winter of 1765, the astronomer and traveller Lalande expressed wonder upon seeing a brand new telescope of London make in the library of the Jesuit College of Naples.
However, the religious complex, known as the Collegio Massimo dei Gesuiti, already had a long history by then.
To outline its essential moments, we must go back to the High Middle Ages when some diaconias of Basilian and Latin rites were established on the Monterone hill, in the southernmost part of ancient Neapolis.
Among the ancient churches on the hill overlooking the sea, integrated into the medieval iunctura civitatis (city junction) and the site of a documented ducal palace from Norman times, was the church dedicated to Saints John and Paul.
The Jesuits, who arrived in Naples in 1551 and were initially welcomed in a house on Via dei Giganti, acquired the fourteenth-century palace of Giantommaso Carafa in 1554, along with adjacent buildings along the ancient cardinal axis, which corresponds to the present-day Via Paladino.
Once they gained ownership of the land, in 1557, the Jesuits began the construction of the Casa Professa, the College, and a church, with the intention of centralizing the headquarters of the religious order tasked with countering the spread of Lutheranism in the capital of the Spanish Viceroyalty.
As extensive historiography attests, the history of the Collegio Massimo dei Gesuiti begins with the expansion of pre-existing structures directed by Polidorio Cafaro.
Following his death in 1558, the Jesuit architect Giovanni Tristano took over.
The renowned consiliarus aedificiorum of the Society of Jesus (1558–1575) provided the design for the church, completed in 1566 under the direction of master builder Domenico Verdina, who was responsible for executing Tristano's design.
Tristano had returned to Rome in 1560.
From 1568, another Jesuit architect, Giovanni de Rosis, a student of the consiliarus, reworked the previous design to accommodate additional existing structures but was unable to complete the work.
He was called to Rome to take over the works of the Collegio Romano after his master's death.
Up to this point, the initial construction was delayed due to necessary property acquisitions, including the ancient church of Saints John and Paul, where Tristano had designed the chapel according to the directives of the Counter-Reformation.
A few years later, with the arrival of Giuseppe Valeriano in Naples in 1582, the decision was made to separate the Casa Professa from the complex, relocating it to the monumental Sanseverino palace in the heart of the city.
On the other hand, the College would be expanded into a new large building that would incorporate the nearby Santa Maria Donnaromita complex, thereby gaining an outlet onto the central Strada di Nilo or Strada di Nido, the ancient lower decumanus.
Although Roberta Carafa, Duchess of Maddaloni, had promised substantial donations for the project, opposition from the nuns of Donnaromita forced a reconfiguration of the ambitious plan, redirecting the expansion to the southern sector, where additional buildings were acquired.
After further delays, in the first decade of the 17th century, construction resumed with the building of the new church according to the design of Pietro Provedi, who was succeeded upon his death in 1623 by Agazio Stoia.
The courtyard of the College was located on the side of the church, which was completed in 1624.
Its classicist rigor echoed the Collegio Romano and more broadly the Tuscan models introduced to Rome by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Cosimo Fanzago, active in the complex between 1630 and 1654, would later carry out the Baroque modernization of the building with minor interventions in the courtyard and more significant additions in the church.
He enriched the church with the two Baroque marvels of the chapels of Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Ignatius, dramatically inserted into the ends of the transept, where the artist placed the extraordinary statues of Isaiah and Jeremiah emerging from niches in the walls.
Lazzari's works, starting in 1680, included the refectory, the library, the pharmacy, and, above all, the so-called ‘long garden’.
A comparison between an 18th-century drawing, Baratta's urban view (1629), and the map of the Duke of Noja (1750–1775) reveals the transformations of the complex with the addition of the enclosure, the new courtyard with a central ‘citrus garden’, and the ramps leading to the lower Sedile di Porto street.
With the pragmatic sanction of November 3, 1767, the secular history of the College began: following the expulsion of the Jesuits as a result of that provision, the complex, henceforth called the House of the Savior, was first occupied by the royal schools, which were established between 1768 and 1770 based on the design by Ferdinando Fuga.
Later, in 1777, it became a University, following the transfer of the original Study from the palace intended by Ferdinand IV to house the Farnese collection.
New interventions affected the complex in the early nineteenth century, during which the Mineralogical Museum was established (1801), housed in the former Library of the Jesuits, which became the venue in 1845 for the VII Congress of Italian Scientists.
This was followed by the University Library (1808), and then the Zoological Museum (1836–1837), which led to the clearing of the eighteenth-century ‘citrus garden’ and the formation of the current southern courtyard.
These works were followed by those of renewal, within which engineers Guglielmo Melisurgo and Pier Paolo Quaglia, between 1893 and 1896, expanded the Savior complex by adding more buildings and opening a new entrance on the expanded Via Mezzocannone, where, at civic number 8, between 1926 and 1929, the portal of the fifteenth-century palace of Fabrizio Colonna was reconstituted and incorporated into a new late Gothic facade.
New work was carried out after wartime damage and, later, after the earthquake of 1980, which resulted in the closure to the public of the Mineralogical Museum, reopened in 1994 after extensive restoration.
Since then, the monumental halls have been part of the Museum of Natural Sciences of the Federico II University, which has also incorporated the Zoology, Anthropology, and Palaeontology museums.

From the volume "Passeggiando per la Federico II" (second updated edition) edited by Alessandro Castagnaro - photographs by Roberto Fellicò - FedOAPress