Church of Sant’Angelo a Nilo

Donatello's Touch: The Secret Renaissance of Spaccanapoli

In a small church on the Decumano, a masterpiece sculpted in Florence by Donatello and Michelozzo changed the history of art in Naples forever.

In the beating heart of Spaccanapoli, just steps from the statue of the Nile God, a small piazza opens up, dominated by a church: Sant'Angelo a Nilo. For centuries, it was the noble chapel of one of the city's most powerful families, the Brancaccio, who had their residences here.

Founded in 1385, the church has a Gothic soul, but its interior was magnificently redesigned in the Baroque style. Yet, the greatest treasure it holds belongs to another era, another language.

To the right of the high altar lies a work that alone is worth the visit: the Sepulchre of Cardinal Rainaldo Brancaccio.

It is not just any funeral monument. It is an absolute masterpiece of the early Renaissance, commissioned from two Florentine masters: Donatello and Michelozzo. It was sculpted in Pisa between 1426 and 1428 and shipped by sea to Naples.

Observe it: the putti opening the curtain, the serene figure of the Cardinal, and above all, the bas-relief at the base. That scene, the Assumption of the Virgin, is indisputably the work of Donatello. With its revolutionary perspective (stiacciato) and its emotional charge, it brought the Florentine Humanist language into the heart of a still-Gothic Naples for the first time.

Sant'Angelo a Nilo is a time capsule. It is the place where the Neapolitan Baroque, with its decorations and theatrical light, frames one of the first, purest breaths of the Italian Renaissance. A dialogue between eras, an encounter between Florence and Naples, waiting silently to be discovered.