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The
Convento with the Chiesa of the
Maddalena
was founded by Charles I° of Angiò in 1269,
outside Porta San Nicola, as Hospitium
Lebrosorum,
institution that in succession was transferred to the
Ospedale of Sant' Eligio, in the same town of Aversa. In
1420 the Convento was given to the Minori Conventuali. Ten
years later, in 1430, Iacopo Scaglione of Aversa made the
beautiful cloister
built of grey stone widened later by monk Angelo Orabona,
archbishop of Trani, which added the
marble
pit with
the coat of arms of the family name in it, and made the
vaults of the porticos be fresco ed with stories and
propitious Franciscans.
The
Francescani stayed there till 1813 when they occupied the
Convento
of San Domenico.
The building later became the casa of the madmen of the
"Regno di Napoli".
Of
the ancient Angioin institution,
Convento
and church of the Maddalena,
nothing more has left, while the period rinascimentale the
fine cloister
with
the
pit goes back to the renaissance period surmounted by two
renaissance small Tuscanian
columns
- the older one, San Bernardino's, was built during the
liable pause of the saint in the Convent - and the the
presbyterial area of the church with the high semisferical
dome that emulates Florentine landscapes by
Brunelleschi.
The
inside of the church, at a unique nave, in good part
transformed in the baroque period, presents some works of
remarkable artistic esteem: the
marble
sarcophagus of Paolo Lamberto,
made built by his brother Pirro in 1555, known as work by
Giovanni da Nola, and, of the same author, the
statues
of the cona of the high altar.
The works are of an expressive intensity while the
realization is of an fine technique skill that invests each
distinctive minimum particular. In front of the sarcophagus
of Lamberto there is the marble one of
Angelo
Orabona
(1575) with the coat of arms of the family name and, in the
back, the relief of the Maddalena.
On the right side of the, painted on the cloth with
Gesù
Bambino that appears to Sant'Antonio of
Padova
and frescos
with the Miracoli of
Sant'Antonio,
of an unknown painter of '700; in the second,
Santa
Lucia, Sant'Antonio, Sant'Aniello that adore the Eucharistic
symbol ,
of Nicola Mercurio (1713); in the third a very handsome
ligneous
Crocifisso
on a trunk of a tree (beginnings XIV century); the following
altar is ornate with the fresco of the
Madonna
col Bambino,
of XVI century.
On
the right hand of thetransept ther is the beautiful cloth
(in restauration) of theAdorazione
of the Magi (XVI
century), by Pietro Negroni; on the right wall, a
San
Pasquale Baylon,
according to Parente, by Onofrio Marchione (XVIII century).
The cona of thehigh
altar
is fine with the relief of the Madonna
col Bambino
that overtops a church thatcorresponds to the modelof the
sixteenth century of our Franciscan church and, in the
niches, The Santi
Pietro e Paolo.
On the left side of the transept there is the table on the
seventeenth century of Immacolata
Concezione,
that overtopped an altar (1777). On the left wall a cloth of
the seventeenth century with San
Francesco and Santa Chiara appear to San Pasquale
Baylon,
while on the right, the cloth with
Jesus
in the house of Marta and
Maddalena
('600).
On
the left hand of the nave a cloth of the eighteenth century
with San
Celestino;
a cloth with San
Pietro of Alcantara and San
Bernardino
('700); in the second chapel, an interesting
Crocifissione,
while in the first emerges the very beautiful
Maddalena
(first half 1700), by Carlo Mercurio.
Currently,
a tryptych, a Madonna
between San Sebastiano and San
Francesco
by Angiolo Arcuccio (second half XV century), and two cloths
with scenes
of battles
by Ilario Spolverini are restauration.
In
the pronaos of the façade there is a
marble
decoration
adapted as a sarcophagus.
In
the March of 1813 the Frati Minori left the convent that
became a seatof the psychiatric Hospital, fate that many
conventual structures suffered. After this change the
Convent became "Casa di Cura dei folli" (1813).
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