The “machinery” of San Gennaro

In the Early Modern period, the cult of San Gennaro was the occasion during which the city of Naples represented and tested the delicate balance between its socio-political components. It is enough to think of the role played by the Sedili, the six urban sections in which the city government was organised, in preparation for the celebrations of Spring. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the celebrations, in addition to the rite of the liquefaction of the blood, also included the setting up of extraordinary scenic apparatuses to symbolically represent the life and martyrdom of Gennaro. As one scholar has written “at that time, in Naples there was a veritable ‘Baroque construction yard’, linked to the festive practices”. (Rosa Franzese, La Festa di Settembre in onore di S. Gennaro tra ‘600 e ‘700. Macchine e apparati luminosi, in «Campania Sacra», 11-12 (1980-1981), p. 217). These productions were the work of major artists, including the great Baroque architect Cosimo Fanzago, the author of, among other things, the famous obelisk, the Guglia di San Gennaro (inaugurated in 1660), a monumental column placed in front of the Cathedral, which still exists, upon which there is a bronze statue of the patron.