Leggere, Interpretare e Ri-configurare il convento di Santa Maria della Sanità a Napoli | Reading, Interpreting and Re-configuring the Convent of Santa Maria della Sanità in Naples

The history of architectural thought is profoundly intertwined with the literary tradition of description, an approach rooted in the rhetoric of ekphrasis, which uses text to evoke a visual and sensory experience almost equivalent to that provided by the image itself. Through expressive use and pathos in textual composition, the written word becomes a means to ‘imagine’ and understand the described object, enhancing the reader’s perceptual experience and facilitating critical analysis. In the outlined context and within the framework of research conducted on the monastic complex of Santa Maria della Sanità in Naples, the proposed contribution advances the analysis of an unpublished narrativedescriptive source titled Vita del P. Maestro F. Domenico di S. Tommaso (1689), written by Dominican friar Ottaviano Bulgarini of the Order of Preachers of Sanità, to honor the memory of Fra’ Domenico Ottomano, born Osman, the son of Sultan Ibrahim and the young Giacoma of the noble Beccarini family from Manfredonia. Specifically, it is in the sixth of the ten books that comprise the volume where the author recounts how Fra’ Domenico arrived in Naples to attend the novitiate school in the convent of Sanità, concluding with a detailed description of the convent itself, in response to the Fathers’ desire to show the young novice “all the parts of that sumptuous and renowned monastery.” Through this detailed textual description, the reader is led on a captivating mental journey, rediscovering the spaces of the ancient convent. The combination of such richly detailed descriptions contributes to this study by offering a reassessment and integration of previously examined documentary and iconographic sources, as well as a reinterpretation of the convent’s architectural configuration.