Madonna with Child and souls in Purgatory

Basilica of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli

The Madonna recomposed.

The Madonna with Child and souls in Purgatory is a marble bas-relief dating from the sixteenth century and attributed to Annibale Caccavello (Naples, 1515-1570). We know of Annibale Caccavello’s artistic activity from the “Diario”, a book of accounts in which the sculptor recorded all the financial transactions relating to his commissions. He worked for some years with his master Giovanni da Nola in the Basilica, and most of the reliefs depicting historical episodes on the base of the funerary monument of Don Pedro de Toledo, which stands behind the high altar, may be considered his.

These interventions, together with other comparable works of his, such as the one realised with Giovan Domenico d'Auria at the Basilica of San Pietro ad Aram, strongly suggest that the Madonna with Child and souls in Purgatory may also be attributed to him.

The work has always belonged to the congregation of San Giacomo; at first it was kept inside the Basilica, but it was later removed and relocated to the cemetery of Poggioreale, in a chapel belonging to the Arciconfraternita. There it was stolen and damaged, although the main subject was saved and in recent years returned to the Basilica, where it has been placed in the “Sala degli atti”.

The attention that the Friends of Naples association has brought back to the Basilica, and the first restorations of the altars of the side chapels, have drawn many scholars to the church. It was precisely their attentive eye that recognised, in an understair space of the church, a number of marble architectural elements attributable to the master and capable of restoring unity to the work.

The anastylosis of the icon was also made possible thanks to the contribution of professors Riccardo Naldi, lecturer in art history at the Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale, and Francesco Esposito, lecturer in restoration at the Università di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa, specialists in stone materials and wall paintings and members of our Scientific Committee, who, after seeing the work and examining their photographic archives, retrieved a photograph of the monument with all its missing pieces.

With the exception of the two half-columns, the Corinthian capitals and the putti on the entablature — components not yet recovered, images of which have been handed over to the Nucleo Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Artistico — Friends of Naples has been deeply committed to the philological recomposition and cleaning of all the recovered parts.

Today the entire work is safe in the Salone degli Atti of the Basilica of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli.