Natale Masuccio

Natale Masuccio (* 1568 in Messina , † 1619 in Messina ?) Was an Italian baroque architect in Sicily .

Masuccio was a member of the Jesuits who sent him to Rome in 1597 to train as an architect, where he dealt with current trends in Roman architecture, for example that of Giacomo della Porta . Back in Sicily, his first project in 1603 was the renovation of the Jesuit church in Palermo, which he designed architecturally to meet the requirements of the Jesuits' divine service by assigning the pulpit to a central location in the nave. The interior, which he designed with precious marble mosaics, becomes the prototype of the figuratively decorative splendor of the Jesuit churches in Sicily.

Natale Masuccio: Palazzo Monte di Pietà (Messina) historical photography

In 1604, also in Palermo, he designed the college and church of San Stanislao Kostka for the novices of the Jesuits (the college buildings were destroyed in the course of the uprisings of 1848). In 1614 the College and the Church of the Jesuits followed in Trapani , the facade of which is attributed to Marco Nobile and Tommaso Blandino. With the architectural exaggeration of the individual building elements, Masuccio falls back on the Florentine mannerism of the 16th century. From 1604 he supplied designs for the college and Jesuit church in Messina, which were destroyed by the great earthquake in Messina in 1908 . Conceptually, he laid out the building in the form of a Renaissance palace around two inner courtyards, which met the requirements of a Jesuit school and the college for the Jesuit brotherhood. The complex for the Jesuits in Sciacca can be dated from 1613 to 1617 and the last one he built was the Palazzo Monte di Pietà in Messina from 1616 .

literature

• Masuccio, Natale . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 24 : Mandere – Möhl . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1930, p. 231 .
• Salvatore Boscarino: L'architetto messinese Natale Masuccio. In: Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura. Issue 18, 1956, ISSN  0485-4152 , pp. 8-20.
• Maria Giuffrè: Baroque Sicily. Michael Imhof, Petersberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86568-264-2 , pp. 19, 100, 156, 236.
• Giammatteo Portera: Masuccio, Natale. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Volume 72: Massimino-Mechetti. Istituto della Enciclopedia, Rome 2008 ( treccani.it ).