05/11/2024
CHAPEL OF SAINT ASPRENO IN THE CATHEDRAL OF NAPLES (located by the main Apse, ont he right side)
The ashes of the saint are placed in an urn behind the altar of the Chapel.
Remaining intact in its Gothic structure, the paintings were made by Filippo Tesauro, the Elder in eighteen compartments to create the so-called Acts of Saint Aspreno.
Namely:
1- in the first panel, Saint Aspreno is depicted meeting Saint Candida, the latter from the Christian iconography in several parts and in several moments of restoration of the paintings appears without a halo, because she was removed from the list of saints following the ascertainment of the unfounded news of her existence and the uncertain fact that she was baptized in Naples by Saint Peter himself who arrived in the city from his epic journey from the Ionian Calabria to Rome, in the church of San Pietro ad Aram alla Duchesca.
2- In the second icon, Candida herself is portrayed while conferring the dignity of the episcopate on Saint Aspreno.
Symbolically signified in the act of passing him the staff of Saint Peter;
3- in the third icon Candida is with Saint Aspreno who go piously and devoutly to the feet of Saint Peter the Apostle.
Then it will be a concurrence of elements taken from the life of Saint Aspreno and so:
4- in the fourth icon the Saint is baptized,
5- in the fifth he performs the miracle of giving sight to a blind man,
6- in the sixth he heals a cripple,
7- in the seventh a paralytic, a brief setback and he recovers:
8- in the eighth he is consecrated bishop directly by injunction of the hands of Peter the Apostle;
9- in the ninth he preaches to the people,
10- the tenth is about his venerable death;
11- in the eleventh he performs the miracle of obtaining children for a sterile woman;
12- in the twelfth the couple grateful for the miracle obtained has a church built in his honor,
13- in the thirteenth he heals a woman afflicted by a headache;
14- in the fourteenth a parent who obtained the miracle of having a son from a wife who could not have children runs to the temple to give thanks to the Saint;
15- in the fifteenth the Saint miraculously heals a woman suffering from arthritis,
16- in the sixteenth he heals one from nephritis,
17- in the seventeenth one from the so-called “mal caduco”, the epilepsy
18- in the eighteenth and last icon he heals one from a severe disease.
In 1440 Tesauro, the Younger, succeeded in the intention of reordering the brightness of the pictorial system which Filippo Andreali, a disciple of Francesco Solimena, also had a hand in in 1750; instead, the "Bas-relief of the Virgin" behind the altar is by Annibale Caccavello and to the side the two urns are by Guglielmo and Nicola de Tocco; on the right wall from the entrance of the Chapel is the tomb of Gianbattista de Tocco while to his left is that of Giangiacomo, a work in the style of Merliano and Santacroce. Until 1370, this Chapel also housed the urn of Archbishop Beltrando Meyshones who died in 1362 and the tomb of Cardinal Rainaldo Piscicelli who died in 1452.