Santissimo Salvatore (Palermo)
The Chiesa del Santissimo Salvatore (English: ' Church of the Most Holy Redeemer ') is a Baroque church on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Palermo .
Building history
Originally there was a monastery founded by Robert Guiscard in 1072 for nuns who venerated Saint Basil of Caesarea . Legend has it that the daughter of King Roger II and later wife of the Hohenstaufen emperor Heinrich VI. , Konstanze von Hauteville , was abbess here.
From 1528 the church was largely renovated and reworked again in the Sicilian Baroque style according to a design by Paolo Amato between 1681 and 1699. The Santissimo Salvatore is considered the main work of the architect.
For the church, badly damaged by the earthquake of 1726, the architects Giacomo Amato and Gaetano Lazzarra provided the design for a new dome, which was built by the master mason Simone Marvuglia (the father of the famous architect Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia ). The church was badly damaged during World War II in 1943 . The war damage was largely repaired during the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century. Today the church is mainly used as a concert hall.
facade
The facade is richly structured by pilasters with Corinthian capitals, niches and windows vaulted by segmented gables, beams and balconies. The lush architectural decorative elements protruding from the masonry are deliberately emphasized by the white plastered spaces. The cranked cornice is completely lined with agraffes . Two niches designed for sculptures with a shell canopy and baroque frame have remained empty. The facade is closed at the top by a cranked segment gable, the facade corners are crowned by pinnacles .
Church interior
Amato designed the church interior as an ellipse into which an irregular octagon is inserted, on which square chapels and altars are grouped. The interior is structured by pilasters, the walls are covered with colored marble, frescoes and elaborate stucco decorations with countless putti. A mighty oval dome with a double dome arches over the choir and is decorated with fragments of a fresco “From the life of St. Basil ” (1763) by the painter Vito D'Anna .
Frescoes
- Vito D'Anna : Dome fresco: “Glory of St. Basil ” 1763–65
- Vito D'Anna: frescoes in the entrance hall
- Filippo Tancredi : Dome frescoes in the main chapel (1705)
literature
- Giuseppe Bellafiore: Palermo. Guide to the city and the surrounding area. Istituto Geografico de Agostini, Novara 1959.
- Adriana Chirco: Palermo la città ritrovata. Flaccovio, Palermo 1999, ISBN 88-7758-469-6 .
- Maria Giuffrè: Baroque Sicily. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86568-264-2 , pp. 103-104.
- Antonio Cottone, Simona Bertorotta: New Domes for Old Churches (Palermo 1943) (PDF). In: Karl-Eugen Kurrer , Werner Lorenz , Volker Wetzk (eds.): Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History . Neunplus, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-936033-31-1 , pp. 409-416
Web links
- http://www.lasiciliainrete.it/tour/provincia_palermo/palermo/soggetti_singoli/ss_salvatore/1_20/
- http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francesco_toscano/Chiese%20di%20Palermo/pg002.html
Coordinates: 38 ° 6 ′ 51.5 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 31.5 ″ E