ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro in Naples Cathedral to interrogate the matter of holiness in baroque. Naples through the silver reliquaries of protector saints in which the chapel abounds to explore how we might rethink place in relation to holiness, and architecture in relation to religious devotion, as more than its representation. The chapter approaches Neapolitan baroque architecture in relation to holiness as an inquiry into materiality treating the silver of the reliquaries, like San Gennaro's blood itself not as essences to be excavated, but as qualities to be discovered or invented and it treats place as brought into being through new interrelationships of holiness and matter. The early descriptions of the Treasury Chapel interfuse and confuse materiality, preciousness and nobility with brute matter, literal enumeration, money and cost. Enumeration rapidly replaces evaluation, and emphasis on terms associated with high social rank, such as magnificence and nobility, elides a sense of the chapel's salvational work.
